How to Trim Arcade ROMsets with LaunchBox! (MAME, FBAlpha, FBNeo)
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- čas přidán 11. 07. 2024
- This guide will show you how to reduce arcade romset file sizes significantly with the help of LaunchBox -- from 34GB down to 8GB! This method will work with any full non-merged romset, and works beautifully with your favorite arcade emulator and handheld devices like the RG350, RG351P, and Retroid Pocket 2. This method is demonstrated on the RG351P in this video.
Read the full guide here: retrogamecorps.com/2020/11/14...
Retro handheld buyer's guide: retrogamecorps.com/shop/
Timestamps:
00:00 introduction
00:45 different types of romsets and files
04:16 install LaunchBox
04:53 import your arcade romset
06:53 export your arcade romset
07:52 add media (optional)
10:58 performance test and conclusion
If you’d like to support my channel, please consider becoming a Patron: / retrogamecorps
Intro theme song sampled from "Hexadecimal Genome" by Bit Shifter:
bit-shifter.bandcamp.com/albu...
#MAME #FBNeo #Arcade #LaunchBox - Hry
I've actually been watching a ton of videos regarding Mame and Launchbox setup, and I just need to come forward and thank you for making this detailed and extremely informative video on the subject. Your dialogue is clearly spoken and neatly scripted, and the video is to-the-point without missing important points of the setup process or rambling on about something that is probably obvious for most Arcade game enthusiasts who are new to Launchbox setups. Sincerely, you've done a fantastic job here!
Some other questions bouncing around my head on the subject that you may consider for future videos are; what are the differences between versions of romset over the years, are there advantages going with an older romset over a newer one, and why they aren't backward compatible, is it possible to convert a split romset to full-non-merged, is Retroarch worth a look and if so, how to set up RetroArch for Mame or FBNeo, are FBneo romsets different from Mame sets?
Setting up an arcade or console emulation computer or mobile device is trickier than I initially imagined, and I greatly appreciate your efforts to help me explore these topics with your videos.
Probably one of the best explanation ever heard about romsets differences (merged...).
Thx for that!!!
I’m new to mame as well and this really helped me out. Thanks for the great guide!
FINALLY, thank you! Straight to the point, no insignificant information. I wish more videos chose the same delivery as you here. Big thanks.
Subbed and liked.
T|his is amazing have used bigbox on all my arcade machines for a while now so my arcade files were so streamlined never thought to do this just exported them all to my 351p now you make my life so much better!
Subrscribed to you for your Steam Deck coverage with the Emudeck and went down a rabbit hole which led me to MAME. Thank you so much for this! I downloaded the ENTIRE MAME library (so far) and noticed that majority of the games were BS. Thank you for this tutorial for noobs like me.
Thank you russ, I finally manage to do something I've been trying for ages with this method.
You are doing the lords work my friend
Brilliant guide thanks mate 👍
If you can believe what I tried to do lol. I was trying go through a full non-merged romset and manually pick out the working parent files one-by-one. I completed #-B, which took about 1 hour, before I gave up. I knew it would take me about 2-3 full days just to get the roms I needed. But then I came across your video which showed that all I had to do was trim the set and export them via Launchbox. It took only 1 minute. You saved me days of work. Thanks.
I believe it. I was about to do the same thing as you. I got tired of seeing like 7 different version of 1941 on my device. Looks ridiculous and fluffs up the total game count. I know some companies in China love that, but I don't.
This guide is so helpful
life saving tutorial, I am very thankful
Very nice guide! Might have been worth mentioning the All Killer No Filler batch files that can be downloaded from the arcade controls forum. These batch files allow you to pair down any MAME ROM set down to around 650 of the 'best' games, which is still more than enough games!
Hi, good point, I just added that as an option to my written guide.
Studioviper...do you have the link of set rom? Thanks very much!
@@tebin there isn't a link to these specific ROMs, but you can easily do it yourself. Just download an appropriate MAME ROM set (they're all available on the internet archive) and then run the AKNF batch files against the ROMs. Download the batch files from here - forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=149708.0
@@studioviper3016 wow thanks for this. much better in the end - for my needs anyway
Excellent video!👏👏👏
Thank you so much for making this video
I've recently downloaded the entire MAME 0.246 ROM and CHD sets and I know I'm not gonna be playing all of them on my Steam Deck. This video is sooo useful for cutting down which games I'm gonna import into my SD card!
Any advice for obtaining the full rom-set? I know this can be a touchy subject, and I don't want to use any torrents.
@@ShootingSportz OH! And when you use JDownloader2, disable the Archive Extractor immediately! It automatically unzips the file it downloads, essentially doubling/tripling the space being used for every game. We don't want that lol
EDIT: My first comment keeps getting automoderated. If you can reach me elsewhere I can guide you through it.
Woooooow, you are a life saver!! Thanks dude!
awesome video!
Very well done video
I was wondering what the difference in romsets were just yesterday. Very good video, never knew this was possible. Love it. I've learned a lot about mame roms today
Days ago I was after a set of mame roms but got intimidated by all the terms and acronyms and gave up almost instantly lol
But now I think I'll give another try. And I would love a LaunchBox guide from you, it is also another intimidating corner of the emulation world.
Its worth noting that Launchbox imports its MAME games based off of several sources that are combined to create the working games list. This list is much more current then the games from say a MAME2003 romset. So Launchbox will show some games that you dont actually have and wont be imported. Just a heads up for people using MAME2003 sets.
This is an awesome guide, what do you suggest I use to trim other emulators' romsets? I'm currently using a no-intro romset (for the quality), but there's way too many roms for my 64 gig SD. I'm currently messing with launchbox to try to do this, but it's really tiresome
Thanks for all the video's you do, they have helped me immensely set op my RG350M. Just struggling at the moment with exporting my tidied 2003 Plus romset from the 12.7 version of Launchbox, after importing the romset and tidying it it says there are no files to copy to my new destination...any idea's ?
Thanks for videos! I bought an RG351p and I’ve been watching your videos for setting it up. One question I have is with the mame emulator. For some reason I cannot play any of the roms on mame because ‘select’ is not ‘inserting coins.’ Any information would be great!
Excellent video as always. Question about what to do with all the scraped media that is now on my SD. How can I import this media into retroid pocket 3+ daijisho or other front end?
Nice video, very informative ! Can we trim a ROMs collection by Systems ? I'd like to have only say CPS1 and 2 ROMs ? Thanks
This is great! Do you have any advice for those of us who download the FB Neo romsets? This process of getting launchbox to import those seems to be not straightforward with those.
If I am correct, you can do the same thing with FB Neo romsets, but you have to enable a special option when importing those roms.
I wonder if you can make a video on how to run MAME games on the Retro FW 2. The Mame4All emulator just doesn't want to find any of the games, pretty sure I am using the right rom sets, but I also tried many many different ones.
Can you use the same system to remove duplicates on other systems too? Or is it just for MAME?
Im complety New to mame games. Would love to see a video with your favourites like a top 20 or something
I would say a top 50. There are way too many to not miss.
I just rewatched your video and you are having the same issue I am with trimming down the set. You selected 2799 games and hit export but it shows you only got 2081 games exported? Any thoughts? The reason I care so much is that i know I've lose several good games when it cut down the list by that much. Thanks in advance!
...a popcorn ad just rickrolled me
How do you select all the games for export?
hi, when I import the FBneo roms it asks me for the MAME ful set version, what should I do? Thanks and congratulations for the video.
How does this affect Retroarch? Will it get upset if we re import that slimmed list and the content doesn’t match the core? Or will it be ok because the merged rom set?
Can you please make a video for FBNeo full non merged romset? With the latest Launchbox if you can.
@Retro Game Corps
How do I do this with FBNeo romset
any idea how to take a merged set into a non merged set? I'm trying to curate a folder for fbneo on my rg351v
This video's a bit old, but i'm trying to scrape my roms which is a merged set w/ the chd's in folders now because thats a thing and skraper is only checking a folder that doesn't exist for some reason and is completing it's task in 3 seconds.
I only want to download one game (NFL Blitz). I download the .zip and chd, but when I go to import it into Launchbox, I get an error saying "The folder does not contain a full MAME ROM set"
So, what files besides the NFL Blitz zip and chd do I also need to download in order for LaunchBox to recognize them?
Or, should I import the games into Launchbox a different way instead of doing the import "Mame Arcade Full Set"
Nice video ,i can get killer instinct mame rom + chd to run but its very slow and sound stutters ,how can this be fixed cheers
So ive been able to trim my rom set down to a more managable number as you describe here but when I export 2000 games to a folder it actually only exports 1600? It says its going to export the full 2k but only 1600 ever show up as exported. I've been looking on the forum to see if anyone else has had this issue. Thanks!
Nicely done - excellent and very clever. I just don't understand how when you were explaining the different type of romsets, you didn't mention merged sets. One guy says merged non-merged, split; you say full non-merged, non-merged, split and another says all of them - full non-merged, non-merged, split and merged. No wonder it's so confusing. We're not all on the same page.
is their a way to get chd games to run on the rg351p? I've tried everything
can i do this with fbneo rom set ?
i have already sorted mame romset thanks for this one 💕💕
I would like to trim my 34gb fbneo romset. But I run linux and launchbox seems to be a windows only option. Any ideas?
Incredible video, I mess around with a lot of assorted emulation, but have always steered clear of MAME since I didn't really know how to reduce the games to just what I want to play.
Big game libraries look impressive, but I try to limit my launchbox to my top games from that console (usually 10-20 games) and then a bunch of fan favorites and maybe a couple obscure ones I want to try out
Happy to be of help! I didn't use it in this video but also consider using the "playlists" function when first adding your games. Then you can sort by genre, system, etc.
launchbox now asks for full set version on the wizard and i don't know what to use. i got the mame 2003 plus reference set 2018 (non-merged full)
Can you help me understand how to do with FBNeo?
Do you have a link to the rom set you downloaded as I don’t know what a good one would be due to the large amount of choice. Thanks for the video!
Hi, I recommend checking out archive.org
What should I select as the import method if I'm using the Final Burn Neo set? It's not the same as MAME and FBNeo isn't an option in Launchbox. The title of the video seemed to suggest you'd explain the method for final burn too, unless I missed something.
Sorry if I wasn't clear in the video, but you will still go through the MAME process even for FBN, even though the romsets are different. The filenames themselves ("xmcota.zip", etc.) are still the same, so you'll still get about 95% accuracy when trimming down FBN with this method. It's definitely not perfect, but much faster than the alternatives. Hope this helps!
@@RetroGameCorps thanks for the replies, both problems solved!
for some reason when I try to export to a file it cant find the roms, I have tried to point mame to the roms, use different versions of mame, but no luck
Hi, I try to get run Ruffle in fullscreen with scale=showAll and forceScale=true.
Here is my default line parameters command in launchbox: --fullscreen --scale=showAll --forceScale=true
Like this Ruffle won't launch at all, if remove command line than emu is running without any issue but no parameters apply....
Really need help on this one please.
What is this handheld console you have?
SO i got a splitset from pleasuredome and launchbox says it's not a full set... i tried manual installation of the mame emulator but nothing is working.
This video needs an update. Launchbox wants a full legit MAME set version (which 2003-Plus is not) and then even if you do pick a version, it wants to install MAME for you and selecting prefer 2 player doesn't work. I did everything in this video and ended with 4 player versions of every game that had that option :(
Curious, I followed your launchbox and media scraping instructions for an nes romset, but when I put the roms back on my RG351 it doesn't seem to see the media. No box art and no videos. I looked at the file paths and noticed the other sets I scraped from the device itself didn't have a media folder for the images and videos, so I changed that but it didn't help.
It looks like I made an error (or maybe that's how it was read on the stock firmware of the RG351 at the time of making the video), you want to remove the word "media" from the output folder setting in the Media tab (around 08:45 in the video). Run the skraper again and now it'll update the gamelist.xml file, and you should be good to go. Sorry about that, thanks for the catch.
Thanks for this guide. Works perfectly with MAME. But how to do it for FBA or FBN?
stuck on this myself too.
Do you know why this method would delete '3 on 3 Dunk Madness' from a Non merged FinalburnNeo set? I've tried different variations but no idea why it would get rid of that game as it then makes me wonder what else it gets rid of. Only now LB asks for what MAME version you have (even with FinalBurn sets) so maybe its to do with that.
Any ideas?
Thanks for the vids mate been a really big help.
ever figure this out
Yes and no lol. I re made my MAME set and I think I came to the conclusion anything that was being deleted was classed as a Bootleg or copy of the original/master game/rom.
If I still find I want to play that game I can always bring it back in. Just make sure your rom sets are non merged and you can pick and choose what ever game you want to delete or keep.
does it work with xbox 360 jtag mame roms?
Hello. I have a question, i have the latest LB and BB and i have fullromset 2003 non merged. When i try the "import an arcade full set" so i can do all those steps to trim down my roms it asks for the specific romset. But it goes from 0.162 all the way up to 0.259. How can i import the full romset if it does not have the 0.78 (i think that is the 2003 plus)? in your video it does not ask for the version. Can you please help?
Try choosing 178. I think your romset corresponds to that.
thank you my friend i will try that. @@slipstream182
The new one, 13.15, is NOT the same as what's shown here which is V11.7.
Does this work for daijisho?
Does this work the same using a FBNeo rom set? I'm always having a hard time getting roms to run on different setups. I love these games but it's all very frustrating!
You could use it with FBNeo, it won't be quite as accurate but it should be fine as long as you use non-merged roms.
@@RetroGameCorps why won't it be as accurate?
Is there any good linux alternative to do this?
this doesn't seem to work with an FBNeo romset. :(
and where do i download the full romset non merged? i can only find merged ones
Try using your trusted search engine with "Pleasure dome mame"
Hey, I keep running into the same problem around 6:55 everytime I try to explore the roms I get hit with this message “No ROM files were found to copy to the destination folder.” I am very confused and don't know how to fix this everythingone going great up until this point please help!
I have the same problem ...
@@alucardhimitsu5147 The mame set i downloaded had several subfolders under the main folder including a roms folder. When doing the import, if I pointed to the main folder, it would import but I got the same error on export. If instead, when you import, if you point directly to the roms subfolder, I was able to export properly.
The "region to prioritize option" doesn't work for the games. I select "North America" but launchbox keeps choosing European games over American games. I'm starting to believe the it only works for the media.
So you selected 2799 games and it saved 2081 zip files. Can you explain what games got lost here or are you just going to make guesses like you did before? Basically this is a poor method and you dont know what happened to those files.
i went from a 8k fbneo romset to a excellent 2.7k romset full of goodstuff
Is it only me, or is this method not actually usable for Final Burn?
How to create separate CPS1,CPS2 etc sets for the RG351P?
So you'll want to place those files in folders named cps1, cps2, and cps3 within the roms folder on your SD card. The OS will then detect the different collections and make them for you. If you want to actually create those collections, you can do that in LaunchBox with the playlist function that I briefly mentioned when importing your MAME set.
@@RetroGameCorps how to know what game is for what system? Is there a way to separate roms for example CPS1 in its own folder
This works perfectly for me until I got to export the roms. Launchbox is saying I don't have any roms to export, but I'm looking right at them. How do I fix this?
Same for me
FINAL EDIT!: it worked! So I never had mame or LaunchBox installed on my windows computer, because I go to my moms house to use hers: I use linux and Mac. Once I installed both MAME, Launch Box, AND set the rom path in mame to the folder with the full non-merged roms, then went ahead with the super well detailed and awesome instructions on this vid. Leaving this all here in case someone else runs into this!!!!!
So this isn’t working for me!!!! I’ve gotten to the point where it’s time to export the roms, but I’m getting an error after I select what folder to export it to “No ROM files were found to copy to the destination folder.” And this is after it already supposedly removed duplicates. Any help would be great! Edit: I notice you have a licensed version of launchbox. Maybe you can’t do this in the free version?
Edit 2: I installed launch box just to do this. So I also had to install the mame emulator as well, and was told make sure that the rom path of mame was the same as the path you’re importing from. It seems to be working differently this time. Let’s hope for a positive result!
Thanks for the tip about installing MAME, glad to hear it worked for you!
I dont fully understand why but it worked for me, thanks !
I am still very confused I am stuck at the same “No ROM files were found to copy to the destination folder.” part that you were stuck on what do I have to do next to make the error message go away
@@petersunnerberg2778 same error for me ...
@@petersunnerberg2778 The mame set i downloaded had several subfolders under the main folder including a roms folder. When doing the import, if I pointed to the main folder, it would import but I got the same error on export. If instead, when you import, if you point directly to the roms subfolder, I was able to export properly.
So, you selected 2799 games and it saved 2081 zip files. What happened to those 718 rom files.
they were probably duplicates of different versions of the same game
Does this work for the Retro pocket 2
Yes, this guide will work with any system -- it's more about trimming down the library before you put it on your device.
duse this still werk?
because its telling me i need to select a version of mame
i dont find this work for fbneo
Do you have a video showing where exactly to get this rom sets ?
There are 2799 games in your library but after your export there are 2081 rom files only. Why is that?
Good question. So I think because the LaunchBox's MAME import function uses a combination of various MAME versions, I think the missing 718 games probably didn't actually exist in my library in the first place, and LaunchBox incorrectly thought they did. It's also possible that when it scanned a certain .zip file, it made some sort of assumption that it was two games (the parent and the clone)? Either way I don't think 718 games disappeared from my system, it's just an import error.
@@RetroGameCorps Well I had the same problem so today I tried to import only one rom with the same settings and it still shows ~2800 roms in the library and exports only one rom. So I guess it shows it's own database of mame roms matching the filters we set.
@@RetroGameCorps Launchbox doesnt scan your roms folder when using the MAME fulset importer. As i said in another comment here it has its own list of actual working games, this list is currently up to date on MAME 0.226. Launchbox just adds all the working games to your platform as it is assumed you are in fact using a current full MAME romset. In your case you were using a 2003 romset, so any games marked working on MAME since 2003 were added in Launchbox, but as you were not using a actual current romset those files do not actually exist in your romset so are therefore not there to export in the first place.
launchbox with mame has changed a lot, it asks for more things now, and it gave error messages several times and froze my pc.... this guide does not work anymore, sorry
Does this still work with Launchbox 12.11?
Ctrl + A: Select all items in a window
Unfortunately that keyboard shortcut isn't set up in LaunchBox.
@@RetroGameCorps It worked for me I listed it because I did not see how you selected all the games I have windows 10 so it works that way any window selected.
@@damarlboromans Thank you, maybe I'm just a bit tech illiterate but this comment could do with pinning as there seems to be a few more commenters ike me trying to figure this out.
damn bro i just wanna delete the multiple language versions out of all my no-intro sets... shit is so frustrating! i literally spent all yesterday doing this and still have A LOT to go. I've been using the windows explorer to search a folder with like "USA" or "Japan" but its not very precise and I worried, in fact sure that there are exclusives I'm deleting when i clear out hundreds of files at a time bc there are certain ones that are japanese but play in english also. But im so fed up with it all im just doing it and really only keeping the USA versions. certain sets are an extra pain in the ass though bc they dont use "USA or JAPAN or EUROPE" and instead use just (J) and that doesnt work just putting in J in the search, or even (J). bc while it shows it, it also shows anything with a j in it. I'm just so tired of this man... like why on earth arent these rom sets split into language???
This method seems to work pretty good, but certainly isn't foolproof. Using this method, Rush'n Attack gets excluded from my set, and I'm not sure why. It was a North American title that doesn't seem to fall under any of the excluded categories. This makes me wonder how many other legitimate titles get left out of a "perfect" set.
Does your set still have the rom Green Beret? Because that is what it is known as to some countries around the world. I know it doesn't make sense why it didn't keep Rush n Attack if you selected US as your region?
Yeah this doesn't work unless you have all the emulators set up in launchbox first. This was a pain.
You shouldn't need to set up the MAME emulators at all, just import the content through the MAME menu setting. I didn't load anything.
@@RetroGameCorps it wouldn't until I did. It says that you're missing a xml file if you don't. Say thanks for the video's on the RG351. You have been a lot of help setting this up. Being a kid of the 80s this hand held is something I always dreamed of. Best one so far and is going to be hard to beat for awhile.
First, good guide. Well presented.
Small correction. It has 4863 zip files. (Approx). Not roms. The roms are in the zip files and there are many times more than 5000 ROMs. It could confuse some people if you call the zip files roms.
Whomever decided the naming conventions of split/merged romsets should be shot by the way. Split, merged, non-merged, summersalt, peachesncream, all nonsense
Good point, there are definitely more roms than just what the zip files might suggest -- thanks for the correction.
Can't get any FBNeo roms to work on Launchbox. Pisses me off. I pay $75 for this and it works fine on every free frontend I have ever used. Paying that type of money should work outside of the box guaranteed.
What's the point of getting a full rom set? Maybe just when you want to play a game get the game and then play the game. Don't get a thousand freaking games that you're never going to play lol.
The 8 people who disliked this video. I hope your sd cards get corrupted...
When I try this, none of the bios files transfer over. Example is neogeo.zip.
Cheers! I was in the middle of doing it manually when I gave up and thought I'd search CZcams. Super easy to follow 😀