MAME games not starting

[sekelje]

Hi,
Thank you for this frontend. It has all the functionality I ever wanted .

But I have encountered two issues with MAME games.
MAME is working on its own, all necessary files are provided (extras, xml) and emulator is configured through EFind.
For first issue I have found a solution/workaround.

First issue was getting QP to print MAME games to a folder.
Problem was when only one rompath was defined in mame.ini (absolute or relative, it doesn't matter) I got this error:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rYfVYc ... DH1a7/view

Notice the "MAME roms path: undefined". Solution was to have two or more rompaths defined in mame.ini (i.e roms;chds).
After that QP started printing MAME games.

Second issue is MAME games are not starting, this message box pops out when I try to start a game:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14qlXlc ... iu3fE/view

I have tried to change emulator parameters, but nothing helps.

[butter100fly]

Hi

Thanks for these, found the first problem already (I took [1] from the mame roms path array when I should have taken [0]). So can release the fix next version....well done on working out the workaround, users who also choose to have all their MAME games in one single roms folder, can use your workaround in the meantime!

For the second error, you'll usually get this error if either the path to the game, or the path to the emulator to run the game with, is somehow wrong in the romdata you're trying to launch the game from: could you post here what command line QuickPlay is trying to launch for one of these games that produce that error (right-click in the roms window on a mame rom that causes that error and select 'Run Rom with Dialog' and then right click on the text in the 'Command Line That Will Be Run' section). It could also help if you post the mame romdata.dat that QuickPlay made for you (so find the file in QuickPlay's 'data' folder, which will look just like the structure you have setup in the left roms sidebar in QuickPlay)

[sekelje]

Hi,

That got me thinking, I have tried to reverse the order of rompaths in mame.ini, but unfortunately the problem still persists. Also have tried to use absolute path as second rompath with the same result.

"Run Rom with Dialog"


romdata.dat
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UJ-1v ... s4sLo3w44b
(Maybe data is shifted by one column?)

MAME is configured through EFind and path to the emulator is correct. Everything works if folder is populated with "Scan For Roms" pointing to MAME roms directory.
As I understand MAME only needs short (rom) name to start a game (assuming rompath is properly configured) and option for full paths in QP MAME options is there for other arcade emulators.

[butter100fly]

Ok I see what the problem is, though I'm yet to investigate why its happeneing in your case and fix it in the code, doubtless my fault again though (caused again in the previous release, which was a great deal of work for me so i'm not surprised some things slipped though testing). So very sorry about this!

Yes indeed you're correct: if you don't intend to run these ROMS with any other emulator you shouldn't need filepaths in your romdata.dat (although it can be VERY handy to run MAME Softlist ROMS with RetroArch emulators, but maybe that's not your thing!). If you look in your romdata.dat. the filepaths in there are all just '{rommame}.zip' (e.g.: 1941.zip) which is incorrect, since they'd all have to be in QuickPlay's directory to run.

But hopefully you have a few options to fix this without waiting for me to release a new version, the best two are probably:
1) The column in your romdata.dat the has {mamename}.zip in it (e.g.: 1941.zip), if you chose not to print filepaths, should point merely to a known file or folder to pass a check in QuickPlay that a file exists, so if you notepad++ and mass edit all the mame romdata.dats you made when printing, and replace all instances of ¬*.zip¬ with ¬./qp.exe¬ (if there's one file we know will exist its the quickplay executable itself), that should work for you.
2) Make your MAME Rompaths absolute paths, and turn ON filepath generation and re-print all those romdatas, you should then have, for instance, R:/Arcade/MAME64/ROMS/1941.zip instead of 1941.zip in that entry in your romdata.dat. Try changing paths for all ROM-types (CHD, Software List ROMS, Software List CHDs) in mame to R:/Arcade/MAME64/ROMS

I also see that the rompath in your mame.ini doesn't have to be absolute, it can be relative to your MAME directory, I've missed that, so even if the code was working as I anticipated it, you'd still just have ROMS/1941.zip and it still wouldn't work, so I also have to write in a check for relative path or paths, and add your mame executable directory to the head of the path if this is the case in any of mame.inis rompaths....

hopefully one of those options works? I'll look at the code itself asap

[sekelje]

One thing I didn't try was to use absolute path for first rompath in mame.ini and that did the trick, games are now starting .
File path generation is also turned on, romdata.dat shows full paths.
Your second option led to solution. I actually first tried absolute paths for both rompaths and it worked, but it works with only first being absolute.

Thank you for your help

[sekelje]

One thing I just noticed:


For majority of games, path is set correctly to full path, but for some path is set to './qp.exe' .
As you said, qp.exe exists so everything works, just to point out.

[butter100fly]

Good glad you got it sorted, i'll fix this for the next version.

There are a number of mame games that have no corresponding ROM file, the game itself is contained either in the bios or is fully contained in other rom files and has no dedicated file of its own. That is one reason why some MAME games currently will always have ./qp.exe as their zipname. Its one of the reasons why the MAME printing now works as it does in QuickPlay: I wanted to get away from users scanning their own rom collections for MAME games, since there's no way to ever get these roms if you do it that way. Instead, we look at the XML that MAME itself uses.

[edit] you're probably also just seeing the effects of not having set SOME paths in your mame.ini, if you've set paths for ROMS and CHDS but not for Software List ROMS and Software List CHDs, then then path for those last two will not be set when QuickPlay prints

[sekelje]

Hi again,

I decided to give MAME Softlists a try, but can't get them to print, this error pops out in console:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OOMRS ... bUwIVc6Ea6

All 5k+ MAME Softlist emulators are imported through EFind.
Also, paths in console are not detected if they don't end with "\roms', '\chds', '\software list roms' and '\software list chds' for corresponding set in mame.ini.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JQr2R ... Ill16IENgq

[butter100fly]

Oh dear, that sounds like something completely different: could you tell me what version of QuickPlay and what version of MAME you are using? It would also help if you could point me to the download link of the mame.xml you used to scan with in QuickPlay, just so I know I have exactly the same input files that you do when I try to recreate the problem

Also, paths in console are not detected if they don't end with "\roms', '\chds', '\software list roms' and '\software list chds' for corresponding set in mame.ini.

That is by design - I put it in the instructions for using Mame File paths: We need to know which type of rom is in each path - the list of MAME filepaths in mame.ini isn't enough to give us that, since each path is not tagged with which of the 4 romtypes it contains. So this functionality asks for convention over configuration here - you need to make sure your folders ARE named as you say, see the wiki page: http://quickplay.sourceforge.net/wiki/i ... eFilePaths in the section: Using mame.ini's rompath variable. Perhaps I need to link to this Wiki page from the main MAME setup instructions wiki page?

[sekelje]

Yes, I see it now, must have missed it somehow, sorry about that.
As you suggested, it would probably be helpful if you link it from the main MAME instructions page.

I'm using latest QuickPlay 4.7.4, latest MAME 0.220 and mame.xml is generated from MAME executable with -listxml option.
If needed I will upload mame.xml to my google drive and share link here.