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Author Topic: Arcade Emulation Questions  (Read 137 times)

Kaiser Zero

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Arcade Emulation Questions
« on: November 22, 2009, 02:07:00 AM »
With the release of Final Burn Legends, it seems that there is now a great unified arcade emulator. I have always been into console emulation (primarily SNES, N64, NES, PSX) and the sets are very straight forward, since they are only emulating one system. I understand the FBL emulates several different systems (CPS1, CPS2, Neo Geo, Mame, etc). I do have a Kawa-X version running on my box with CPS1, CPS2, and Neo-Geo, and a separate MAME emulator (basically just with the Simpsons game) would would like to combine the sets.

Questions:

1) Can I migrate the CPS1, CPS2, and Neo Geo roms over to FBL easily?

2) In regards to MAME, when I check my sources, I see tons of mame roms in different sets, for different versions. Should I get the set with the highest number, or what? They are inclusive of previous sets, I'm assuming?

3) I have seen MAME roms in different formats, mainly recursive folders with zip files in them, and CHDs. I have no idea what a CHD is, but they seem to be much larger in size than the zip files. I saw one mame set with lots of small zip files and thousands of games (7-8k, I believe), and another with larger zip files and less games (100 or less, and not the Simpsons...), and a CHD set with a smaller amount of games but with much larger file sizes. Why all of the different sets?

I understand that I am completely new to this, so I figured I would ask you guys for some guidance. Can you please explain the differences between all the sets, as well as tell me which sets I need to grab to have the largest pool of games available for FBL?

Thanks,
KZ.
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Mega Man (?)

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Arcade Emulation Questions
« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2009, 02:18:00 AM »
A CHD file is a compressed image of the hard drive used in an arcade cabinet.

For FBL that may depend...
It is new and I don't believe there has been a totally optimal rom set put together yet...
I know there are dats provided though.

If you are completely new to MAME in general, I would check out something like "CoinOps Reignite Showcase" first.
It is a emu and romset that is all set up & configured already... (even has video previews now)

As well as definitely keeping and eye on FBL.
Some really exciting stuff happening there. smile.gif

EDIT: Yeah, what cbagy said.
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Kaiser Zero

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Arcade Emulation Questions
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2009, 02:40:00 AM »
Thanks for the quick responses, guys, they helped a lot. :)

Is CoinOps an xbox only setup, or should I be wary of PC setups that will not be useful to me. I have searched around for some information about CoinOps, but release notes aren't too helpful if you don't know what you're looking at (which is also why the FBL release notes are exciting and confusing at the same time). Am I basically grabbing the CoinOps collection as a "starter kit" for xbox arcade emulation?

Also, in the FBL thread, someone said:

"roms that work in CoinOps wont show up in FBL, they are from an incompatable set."

Is that true? Will those CoinOps rom sets not work in FBL?

Also, thanks for the CHD head's up, I'll grab some zip sets, I guess.

Edit: In addition, which sets should I be aiming for? Can you guys give me a set checklist of sets that are supported by FBL, to truly maximize the game list? I have CPS1, CPS2, Neo-Geo, and MAME on the list so far.
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Kaiser Zero

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Arcade Emulation Questions
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2009, 02:51:00 AM »
The best MAME collection I can find (7957 roms) is MAME 0.131... the FBL thread says 2700 games are playable, so I'm assuming I can't play every game contained there (unless most of those 7957 are different regions, and there are only sub-3000 unique games in the pack), but would that set be a good one to grab and plug into RomCenter, or is it too old?

Edit: I'm seeing that RomCenter is for 32-bit Windows. Will I have huge compatibility problems with the app in Win 7 64-bit? Should I run it in 32-bit XP mode?
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Mega Man (?)

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Arcade Emulation Questions
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2009, 03:04:00 AM »
Yes... The 7957 rom set contains all regions. There for, individual games will be much less.

Is there a 32bit xp mode on windows 7...? cool... cool.gif
Yeah, I would use that if it has it...
I bet many people wont know about this until everyone starts to switch over to 7.
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Kaiser Zero

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Arcade Emulation Questions
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2009, 03:10:00 AM »
Yup, all versions of Windows 7, Professional edition and higher, support XP mode. You can download and set it up at http://www.microsoft...c/download.aspx

There's a full virtual machine setup built into Windows 7, it's very simple and works well so far.

Also in regards to RomCenter... is it better to use an older version and not the newest (3.40)? The .dat included with FBL doesn't seem compatible with RC, even with the datutil tool to convert it (unless I used it wrong). 3.40 wants a .rdt file, which is not there or output by the datutil.

That's my last question for the night before I heed the sandman's call.
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Kaiser Zero

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Arcade Emulation Questions
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2009, 09:48:00 PM »
I got RomCenter working and have been playing around with my mame romset that I got (almost 8000 games). I loaded the included .dat and did a fix on all of the games there. There are lots in my set that are gray. I am assuming that the only games in the .dat file included are the ones that will definitely work? So, I can safely delete all of the gray roms (after backing them up) from that folder and be fine?

Also, how do I get rid of extra regions for games and just keep the main region?

Thanks again.
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