Thanks goes out to ladysephiroth for help with this!
MAME: Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
This is what most people want. After all what is a arcade cabinet with out arcade games right?
MAME is one of the easier emulators to set up..and can be the hardest to "get right". MAME is very customizable and can be tweaked down to the last detail.
First off we are going to assume that you know what mame is and have it installed. If you you have no clue what i am talking about go here
http://mamedev.org/release.html(Note: Tihs is written for basic mame and some knowledge of the "command line" is needed. Most front-ends use the command line version of mame..thus they act like a gui (graphical user interface)
To begin:
First this write up assumes that you have a folder called mame in your home folder (ex. /home/mame) where your mame program is. That will be our "base" folder.
When you first start mame you will get an error stating no games found. Go ahead and exit. Once you have found games, or roms, (you can get test roms here
http://mamedev.org/roms/ place them in your 'roms' directory. If you don't have one you can make one. (Normally in your mame folder to keep everything organized.) Now you'll need to open a terminal.
Press command+space bar and type terminal.
Once there type
cd mame then type
mame -cc this will create a mame.ini file in the folder that you are in. Now open the new mame.ini in your text editor.
Your mame.ini will look something like this:
#
# CORE CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
#
readconfig 1
writeconfig 0
#
# CORE SEARCH PATH OPTIONS
#
rompath <-here (ex. $HOME/mame/roms)
hashpath
samplepath
artpath
ctrlrpath
inipath
fontpath
cheatpath
crosshairpath
The rompath is the only thing we are worried about right now. You can erase the entire line up to but not including the word rompath. Then type your path to your roms. Now save the changes now type in your terminal mame and start it. You should see a blue box with a list of games you have. You can press enter to start a game or press esc to quit. Your mame now works! you can from a terminal start a game directly (which is how front ends like attract mode work) by typing mame [game name]. (e.g. mame carpolo) in a terminal will start carpolo)
Rom problems:
First never unzip a rom unless you know what you are doing! MAME can not load an unzipped rom. Roms can be gotten singlely or in "update"packs. You need to have all the needed files in the zip and all te needed zip files.
Example namco's Galaga you have galaga.zip but there are other files it needs (.zip) to start. Why not just put them all together? Well you can and mame will be happy and load fine. However, some of these files are in other namco games (e.x. mappy, rally X, ect.) so now you have them twice...or more..and it's a "waste of space". Loading mame from a terminal MAME will spit out any errors of missing files and tell you
the extra roms you need. For more go here:
http://www.xente.mundo-r.com/mame/Update286.html pdf version here
http://www.xente.mundo-r.com/mame/pdf/Update286.pdfMissing sounds:
With some older games you need what are called sound samples. These are not emulated sounds per say but raw sound files called by mame at the appropriate time. With ot them you do not hear the sounds in the game. Play galaga without sound samples and when you die your ship explodes without a sound..Who wants that!? So after you find the sound samples you put them in your folder (e.g
mame/samples) and in your mame.ini change your sample path:
#
# CORE SEARCH PATH OPTIONS
#
rompath $HOME/mame/roms
hashpath
samplepath <---here (ex. $HOME/mame/samples)
artpath
ctrlrpath
inipath
Now you will have all your sounds!
chd files:
Compressed hard drive (or compressed hunks [of] data..depending on who you are talking to.) are large (some are HUGE) data files. Mostly this is a hard drive image (ex. killer instinct) or a CD-ROM (ex. street fighter III) or a laser disc (ex cliffhanger). These need to be placed in a sub-folder ( just make one) in your roms folder with the name of the rom. (e.g. /mame/roms/kinst/)
Basic Tweaks:
For vector games open your mame.ini and save it as vector.ini Now any changes in that vector.ini will only effect vector games (e.g. asteroids, tempest, star wars) This is done so that you can tweak vector games differently than raster games (e.g. pacman, donkey kong) You can tweak vector games to have more "glow" like they used to look in the arcades. That is outside the scope of this writing.
If your game is running poorly there are a few things you can do for speed boosts.
First the lower your monitor/screen resolution the easier it is for mame. Note that these games did not run in high definition so it really doesn't if you have an hd card/monitor or not (in fact your graphics card makes little difference...mame uses RAM and CPU).
Second if you are using shading effects turn them off (this does use more of your graphics card to overlay the effect and some CPU).
Third you can lower the sound-settings (again most games did not have top notch sound). This is done by looking at the mame.ini and looking for the core sound settings:
#
# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound 1
samplerate <-- here
samples 1
volume 0
change the samplerate. 48000 or 44100 or 22050 or 11025 are you best choices.
Forth is your core video options:
#
# VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video <-- here
numscreens 1
window 0
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
unevenstretch 1
centerh 1
centerv 1
waitvsync 0
syncrefresh 0
scalemode none
Change the video setting here. (someone tell me the options so i can fill it in please)
To go fullscreen
#
# VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video
numscreens 1
window 0
maximize 1
keepaspect <---here
unevenstretch <---here
centerh 1
centerv 1
waitvsync 0
syncrefresh 0
scalemode none
Change keep aspect and uneven stretch to one (1)
I hope that will get you started with some basics of mame. Happy gaming!
mame for mac is here:
http://sdlmame.lngn.net/gui based
http://qmc2.arcadehits.net/wordpress/
