Which MAME emulator is best? And how do I start directly to one of them?

glennefj

Hi! I'm building a small simple 1-player arcade cab. I was originally going to have a mini-ITX board, but everything got rather expensive for a small 1-player cab. And the last time I tried using the Raspberry Pi, everything was complicated, and it was really slow. But as I had a R-Pi in my drawer, I though, "Hey, maybe someone has done a simple install", and yes; PiMAME is awesome! Such a great project - Thank you:)

But, as I will generally use this cab for simple MAME-games, what should I do? Should I use MAME4ALL? Is it possible to edit a file to start directly to M4A? No offense, but I don't like the look of the emulator menu :P I do have Linux knowledge, and SSH etc.

Again, thanks for doing this, you've made a great contribution to both arcade-fans and Raspberry Pi. I would most likely never have thought of using the R-Pi for MAME, as I thought it was too demanding.

How about NEO GEO and Metal Slug. Will it work? I had problems on a dual core 2 ghz computer.

Hope someone can answer my questions.

thex

I am using Mame4All, but like you, I also hate the menu for it. So i added M4A to advance menu so that I can boot up directly to that. All of the emulators I am using are in the one single menu.
Here is how I did it (I have had help from others to pull this off!);

Bootup to AdvMenu
1. edit /home/pi/.profile
2. remove/add advmenu from/to the bottom of the script
a. default = python /home/pi/pimame_files/menu.py

Add Mame4All to AdvanceMenu
1. Edit advancemenu.rc
2. Insert the following lines;
emulator "mame4all” generic "/home/pi/emulators/mame4all-pi/mame" "%s"
emulator_roms "mame4all" "/home/pi/emulators/mame4all-pi/roms"
emulator_altss "mame4all" "/home/pi/.advance/snap"
emulator_include "mame4all"
emulator_attrib "mame4all" missing exclude

glennefj

Thanks!
I will test this out!

I actually like the Mame4All menu, but not the black, DOS-like menu on PiMAME.

If I add M4A to advancemenu, will it then open Mame4All, and you'll have to choose the game afterwards, or will AdvMenu automatically choose and launch the M4A rom?

thex

It will automatically open the AdvMenu and choose and launch the M4A rom.
I like this way becasue I can see the screenshot of the game I am playing.

glennefj

Thanks!

I was trying to avoid to have to open several menus etc. I like the M4A menu actually, nice retro feeling, but I agree regarding screenshots!

Hopefully I'll be able to get started on my cabinet soon, and get the Pi up and running.

omegadot

I start pisnes in rc.local so the menu starts if I kill it. Now I've rewritten a lot of the menu to accept joy input though.

SSilver2k2

omegadot - please fork pimame from github and submit a pull request. I'd love to have your additions.

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