25 replies to this topic

[RMila75]

I'm having trouble making a cheat work with MAME version 0.36.
I made a .DAT file with the cheat in it and placed it in the MAME directory.
Is that where it should go? What do I need to do while the game is running to make it work?
I'm trying to use a cheat for the game "Blaster".
The line I entered in the .DAT file looks exactly like this:
blaster:0:973E:3:0:Invincibility

[Nukey Shay]

You need to enable the cheat file...and the file itself needs to be in the base Mame directory (c:mame). The way that you do this is by adding the -cheat switch to the commandline, or simply enabling the option if you are using Mame32 (options->default options->misc.)
When the game is loaded and running, hit the TAB key to bring up the menu, and select CHEAT from the list...and hit enter on the top line to select the cheat from the CHEAT.DAT file. While running the game, you can use the F6 key to toggle all the selected cheats on/off (since some games will refuse to reboot if cheats are active).

How come you are using such an old version?

[RMila75]

Well, I'm using 0.36 because the newest version caused a protection fault (or what not) and I got ticked off and went back to the old version I had been using. What version is most reliable? I know there are about seven versions by now (???)
I will give it a try with the cheats. I seemed to get that far before but things were not responding very well. I'll keep at it. Thanks!!

[Nukey Shay]

Many more versions than just 7...the Mame dev team used to issue out public beta versions up until version .37b13 IIRC. That got to be quite a hassle with them trying to keep things current, so they abandoned the public beta system and switched to numbering the versions sequentually (it was figured that they had released 52 versions altogether...so the next one to be released was numbered .53).

And what is best is whatever works best for you

[RMila75]

OK, I got the cheat to work with Blaster!
Finally, I've played all the way through a game that first got my attention in a gaming magazine in 1983. Twenty years is a long time to wonder what "that cool 3D game with Paradise at the end" is all about.

The whole cheat menu thing runs a bit weird for me however. It tends to lock up my system about half the time.
I will get to MAME.dk and find a newer version other than the one I tried before and see if things improve.

[Sharky]

MAME .36 is an old version, and my MAME versions have never been that old.

Im using MAME .66 (althought MAME .68 they r up too)

Go to http://www.mame.dk/emulators/ and download MAME .68 the latest version and you will also (if you wants all the cheats to all your games) need to download the CHEAT.DAT serperately and put that put in your Cheat Folder in your MAME Directory. Then just hit TAB.. Its as simple as that.

[Sharky]

Noo! MAME .69 is out now!.. I should of checked first

Go download that one!

[Nukey Shay]

Rmila can't use the new one (see above)...not all computers like the Windows core that they are using now (an AT/XT for example).

[Sharky]

Nukey Shay said:

Rmila can't use the new one (see above)...not all computers like the Windows core that they are using now (an AT/XT for example).

I dont know what an AT/XT is but this "protection fault" may be of been common and fixed with the later versions.


But its worth a try i guess.

[Nukey Shay]

AT/XT - those really old IBM systems that used to run @ 20mhz
OK...so I lied, I dunno if Mame ever actually worked with those. But the gist was the core itself. Anybody remember the last Mame version that was written without Windows in mind? One of the .37 betas, I think.

[RMila75]

Well, I upgraded to MAME .69 and I hate it!
When I got it to work, every game would be playing too slow.
I just tried to go back into it and fiddle with more settings, but now all I get is the "blue screen of death" every time I try to load a rom.
I'm using a Celeron 300 with 64 megs of RAM and WIndows 98. Sure, it's an obsolete system, but it should be able to handle MAME, right?

[Nukey Shay]

I'm running pretty much the same setup...200mhz Pentium Pro w/ 64mb ram and Win98, and I don't have many serious problems with Mame32 version .53. I'm guessing that Mame needs some kind of compatability mode running for your hardware.

What are your card specs? Vid card, color depth, Sound card? ISA, AGP, or PCI?

[RMila75]

Yamaha DS-XG PCI (I've been told it's crap)
ATI 3D Rage Pro 2 mb video (also crap)

I think the blue screen errors have something to do with my old version of MAME having its own line in the system registry and Windows not liking the new version trying to create its own entry (maybe???)
When I deleted the original MAME line in the resistry, I did get games to load, but they ran too slow.
For some reason, now, 24 hours later, the blue screen crap is back again.

[Nukey Shay]

Hmm...how's the color depth? Do you have it set higher than 16bit (i.e. 24 or 32 bit)? Also, you might try disabling direct draw and any "auto" configurations...Mame32 lets you do this easily under default options.

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[RMila75]

I'm set at 16 bit color.
I'm about to get off the internet for the evening and invest a little more time in this MAME question.
I'll try those settings changes and let you know.

[Nukey Shay]

RMila75 said:

I'm set at 16 bit color.

Nono...I meant that you should try using something higher. It will mean that you will have to reduce your screen size to 640x480 or 800x600, but I believe that Mame runs like mud using 16bit color.

[Sharky]

I noticed all of the games slowed down after installing a higher version (it was Win32MAME .66.

But now ive got MAME .66 DOS to work and have enabled scanlines and its quite fast again now.

So yes it requires a bit of fiddling around.

[RMila75]

I think I have solved the "fatal exception" problem. It looks like there was a conflict with either my anti-virus software or my Zip drive. I'm too lazy to figure out exactly what program needs to be shut down to stop the errors.
As for the slowdown issue, it looks like it's happening to someone else as well, so I will have to mess around with it even more, or just try the DOS version like Sharky did.
But I will try a new color setting as well.

[Sharky]

I wonder?

Is MAME actually saving stuff or modifying the Zips files the games ROMs are in ?

Because some of my Rom-sets get corrupted after a while it seems and I have to go and downloaded a new fresh version of some of the games.

Bit of an annoying thing..

[Nukey Shay]

Since Mame is an emulator that supports a wide variety of CPU types and machine hardwares as vastly different as a 2600 and a current console, the data in the zipfiles needs to be changed occasionally to provide compatability with newly-added or updated romsets. Kinda like a restaurant menu that needs a new dish added...you may need to move a few things to put it on the menu In addition, sometimes games are changed to be truer emulations (i.e. fixed colors, sounds, etc.)...or more complete dumps of the game boards are discovered. And some others need to be altered in order to work with the "parent" romset (the program data common for all the versions of a given game). Some games will never be emulated in Mame...since some had no CPU at all and have nothing to emulate. Well...OK, Pong was for a short time, but that was just a simulated game "hard-coded" into the Mame program itself.
An interesting situation happened last year with the Ms.PacMan game. This game was supported for quite a long time in Mame...or so it was often thought. Actually, the original game's roms were encrypted (scrambled, as a form of copy-protection)...so the game that was emulated was actually a bootleg copy of the game. So once the original encrypted game was finally decypted, it suddenly became the parent romset and the existing "bootleg" romset was altered (since it's no longer the parent) and renamed.
So it might seem that Mame is making things difficult for you, but in reality it is getting better at what it does.

[Nukey Shay]

BTW mame.dk keeps a list of all romsets that change for each version. So if you download the next version of Mame, you also need to download the romsets in the list. If you skip a few versions, you'd have to download all the games changed for each version (!). There is a bit of strategy involved when downloading new games...since newly-supported hardwares are almost guarenteed to be updated again in the near future (remember all those CPS2 games?). So it often pays to wait around for a couple versions of Mame before updating...lest you be downloading the same games over and over (sometimes a GIG's worth of downloads between versions).

[Sharky]

I C, I dont think so far there would be do much difference between MAME .66 (Which i have) and MAME .69.

I was thinking of making all my Zipped ROM-SET set to read-only, so they dont get corrupted. But it probably be a waste of time.

And i have 3 MAME .66 versions (MAME-DOS), MAME-WIN32, and MAME-WIN32 (WIth the front-end).

Sometimes i decide which one i feel like using before i play my game, and after a while some do corrupt after a while.

But as you said some of those (Corrupt ROMS) may work with MAME .53 (My last version before i upgraded!).

So to get them to work with MAME .66, I better get the updated Rom-Sets.

[Nukey Shay]

Here's a trick that I've used to be sure that I wasn't going to be downloading the same games multiple times when updating between a number of version changes. Go here first:
http://www.mame.dk/changes/
That's the menu for each version. Start at the newer version of Mame you have (.66) and work your way backward to the version of Mame just past the one you previously used (.54). On each page, you can see all the links to new/added/removed games (removed games can be deleted out of your roms folder...they are just taking up space). When you click on them, save them to a new folder apart from your roms folder. Once you complete a version's updated romsets and move to the next lower one, the browser will prompt you that "file xxx already exists" for games that have been changed between versions. It would also do this if you had been downloading to your roms folder directly, but since you are working your way backward in a new folder...it's easy to see that you already have the currect version of the romset for your Mame version Once all the downloads are complete, move the whole mess into the roms folder using Explorer.
In addition, there is a program called "Missing" available at Mame.net that scans your roms folder for missing and bad romsets...and it builds a webpage for you that links directly to the mame.dk downloads

If you really want to make a LOT of files read-only, you can flip into the dos prompt, go to the directory, and type attrib *.* +r...but as you said it's not really necessary (Mame isn't corrupting your games...the newer version of Mame expects to see changed games).

[Nukey Shay]

BTW since you are using three different builds of Mame, you may need to have seperate folders for the cfg & nvram folders. This is easy to change in Mame32, since you can just select a different folder. Dos Mame expects all the files in those folders to work with Dos Mame.

Does anybody know if this is still the case?

[Sharky]

I guess theres no choice now but to get the latest MAME version, latest ROM-SETS.

Then obviously they will began to get corrupted if I just install a later MAME version(s) (MAME .81-even though it not out yet) in the future and thats it. And run them with the same Romsets (Games) then some would get corrupted.
Cause I didnt bothered to read the Whats New in MAME .xx and replaced those as well.

Whoa! Bit of work now, and thought just installing the later versions of MAME was long enough. Oh well, Thats MAME!

So Anyway now I know y my romsets were mstery getting corrupted now.