MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119 Compatibility Issues

[Hierophant]

MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119 Compatibility Issues



This thread is for discussing any compatibility issues that may arise in MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119. Please stay on topic.

To avoid incurring an official warning against your profile, DO NOT ask for or provide any rom related links! Rom sites can be mentioned here by name only and Google can easily take care of the rest.

I normally recommend romnation as a starting point for a good compatibility match with MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119. This is not necessarily a perfect solution though, but it does help get a lot of newbies off to a flying start.

That's a good thing!



For those using a rom manager like clrmamepro this thread is probably irrelevant. Since, at the time of writing, I've never come across any discussion related to rom managing tools here on the MA boards though, I'm guessing most people either don't know about such things, or don't have the time, energy or inclination to figure out a program like clrmamepro. I haven't bothered with it either so I'm hopeful that the info presented here can help people.

Cheers
Hiero

[Hierophant]

METAL SLUG 4 IN MAME32 PLUS! PLUS! 0.119

Firstly, thanks to Seraph for pointing out this particular problem to me.

Now, normally in MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119 most roms from romnation will be compatible, and if not then rom-world is a good fallback. As Seraph informed me though, and I was then able to confirm, the problem here is that Metal Slug 4 (MS4) from either romnation or rom-world won't work in MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119. Well, at least not at first...

Here are the results of the failed audits for each site's version of MS4:

romnation MS4 audit:

mslug4 : 263-m1.bin (131072 bytes) - INCORRECT LENGTH: 65536 bytes
mslug4 : 263-m1_decrypted.bin (131072 bytes) - INCORRECT LENGTH: 65536 bytes


rom-world MS4 audit:
mslug4 : sm1.sm1 (131072 bytes) - INCORRECT CHECKSUM:
EXPECTED: CRC(97cf998b) SHA1(977387a7c76ef9b21d0b01fa698​30e949a9a9626)
FOUND: CRC(94416d67)

Now, what I do in a case like this is easily done, but kinda tricky to explain, so please bear with me if you want MS4 to work in MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119. Keep in mind that you also need a MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119 compatible version of the bios file, neogeo.zip, in the roms folder for this to work. The romnation one will do fine.

Take note of the names of the two files that failed audit in the romnation version of MS4: they are 263-m1.bin and 263-m1_decrypted.bin. See how they don't show up in the rom-world version of MS4's audit, which has an sm1.sm1 checksum error instead. That means the 263-m1.bin and 263-m1_decrypted.bin files in the rom-world MS4 must be good. Maybe now you can start to see where I'm going with this. What we want to do is take the good 263-m1.bin and 263-m1_decrypted.bin files from the rom-world MS4 and use them to replace the bad versions of the same files in the romnation MS4.

To do that, either rename the rom-world MS4 from mslug4 to something else like mslug4rw, or make some temporary folders to keep the two versions separate. Either way, unzip both files (right click>Extract All), then copy/paste 263-m1.bin and 263-m1_decrypted.bin from the rom-world MS4 into the romnation MS4. Rezip the newly repaired romnation MS4 (right click>Send To>Compressed (zipped) Folder) and put it in the MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119 roms folder. Throw out all the left over files/folders to save disk space if you wish. Open MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119 and press F5 to refresh and MS4 will show up in Available.

Success!

[Seraph]

For those that are still unsuccessful please read what I have typed below!

Wow! You read my mind so ignore the PM Hiero and you even added screenshots... amazing! To add to Hiero's thread this is the current status of my project.

I have every parent rom including almost every clone that I could want to work on MAME 119 which means that for the most part if you follow his advise, you will get ALMOST ALL of your roms to work for online play. Parent rom explanation is at the bottom of my post. Only one single clone is left to complete my full collection, so the odds that you can get your rom to work is in your favor. If his advise is too complex for you or it does not work for your rom then try this.

1. Sorry if #1 and #2 is unhelpful to you but please read on. Make sure that the rom you are trying to fix is not on the "Not Working" list. Click on the "Not Working" folder in the folders list on the left. Look and see if your rom is on that list before you try to fix it.

2. Also, look in 'T' at the rom site you go to and see if your game is not there either. For example, on your MAME list you may see "Punisher, The", but on a rom site you may see the game as "The Punisher" under 'T'.

3. I use the "All Games" tab on the left and look for versions of the game that did not work. Right-click one of those and click "Audit". Now look at the properties section of Hiero's Screenshot. See that the rom name has a alphanumeric code "mslug4"?

4. Go to google and type "mslug4.zip". If you include the "..." parenthesis in your search it will give you all searches for that specific file that you want. The quotes in your google searches is a nice trick for you to use in all searches you do if you didn't know. Now, download the rom and if you still don't get it to work you have to try again. At this point it's a trial-and-error game, but keep in mind that all my games work except only one clone which I am still working on.

5. If a chd is what you are looking for, keep in mind that these are rare. After a few limited websites out there you MUST resort to torrents. It took me over 10 bad chd files inside of torrents before my Killer Instinct games were working. Just use my search technique and you should be able to resolve your problem.

I hope this helps you all and I will attach a link later to the list of games I was successful in getting to work on Mame 119 to give you hope.

A parent rom for those that don't know are the dark green chip looking icons in the list of their available roms. They are usually the best versions to play with since they usually represent the "cleanest" versions of the actual arcade game.

A clone rom is an alternate version of the same game. Depending on the version of the game you play you might get bonuses such as additional characters. For example, on NBA Jam you can use codes to get Mortal Kombat characters, but I'm not sure if that is the case on MAME. It's just the best example I had at the time. This is a situation where you may want to get a clone to work on your rom collection.

[Hierophant]

Although it's not really a major compatibility issue, this seems like a good place to mention that the romnation version of Street Fighter III 3rd Strike won't work in MAME32 Plus!Plus! 0.119. Save time and go straight to rom-world and get this instead:

Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future (Japan, 990512, NO CD) 63.12 MB popular

That is what's used for playing one of the most popular online MAME games via Kaillera. More info about that in the Online MAME thread.

EDIT: If you experience any download problems at rom-world for SFIII3S Japan NO CD, then get it from coolrom instead. Thanks to Mydriasis for finding that alternative.

[zebratangozebra]

Hiero & Seraph
Great stuff....
Appreciate your taking the time to write this up.
Gave me a lot of insight into getting certain ROMS to work.
I couldn't find Mslug4 on Rom World so I just Googled Mslug4 and found versions on Rom Hustler and Doperoms.
The one on Doperoms worked right out of the box so I didn't need to try swapping files around anyway.
But I got the idea of how to do it for next time.

[Seraph]

I am so glad we could help you on that. Real soon I hope to confirm on this thread that every parent and clone on the my recommended games thread is fully compatible with the instructions I gave. That is with the exception of games that are not 119 compatible. My own personal recommendations link is below if anyone needs ideas on what games to try.

http://www.mameaddicts.com/phpBB3/viewt ... ?f=3&t=503

If you want a taste of what everyone has recommended at Mame Addicts, then try the link below.

http://www.mameaddicts.com/phpBB3/viewt ... &sk=t&sd=a

[Hierophant]

Thanks ztz! That's good info about the doperoms version of MS4, too. Love it!

Cheers

[Hierophant]

Thanks to treyhoov3 for bringing this next problem to my attention.

Playing G.I. Joe in 0.119 works fine until after you defeat the 2nd boss. Around that point the game will completely crash and exit back to the GUI.

I tested romnation, romworld and even doperoms versions of the game and they all crash out after the 2nd boss fight when you step inside the elevator. I did some research and found out at MAME Testers that there was a critical MAME bug around that time which causes this error. The bug has since been resolved but I don't think it's going to be possible to fully play G.I. Joe in 0.119.

I do know that G.I. Joe works properly in more recent versions MAME though because I played it through at least once a while back.

[razgriz21]

This thread is for any compatibility issues that may arise in MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119. Please stay on topic.

Normally I recommend romnation then rom-world as good matches for MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119. This is not necessarily a perfect solution though, but it does help get a lot of newbies off to a flying start. That's a good thing!

Cheers
Hiero

How do you match?

[Hierophant]

Get MAME32 + + 119 from the link and setup as normal. Google search romnation mame roms to get roms for 119. If you come across any that don't work from romnation then try rom-world. That may still not solve every single problem (eg. Metal Slug 4) which is why I made this thread. Two solutions have been offered for MS4; file swapping to rebuild the rom and pass 119 audit, or just get it from doperoms as ztz later pointed out.

Find anymore like that, post 'em here and we'll see what we can do.