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    Cherry (Level 1)
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    Default Why does MAME suck so bad?

    Half of the games don't work, or have problems, or I have to download a different version of MAME, or an older version, or a different set of ROMs, or multiple copies of what seems to be the same ROM, or I have to configure each game separately, and so forth. I've never understood it. I know it's trying to emulate many different machines, and it's the work of many different people, but I'm convinced it's just a shitty emulator. I mean, look at that .exe file. It's like 40 megabytes.

    So is there another emulator that's better for arcade stuff? I'm mainly interested in the 80s.

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    MAME is the best arcade emulator, especially for 80s arcade games. There are different versions of MAME that have varying degrees of simplicity, but they are all basically operate about the same. Maybe there's a way to transfer configuration files or something, but going through each game seems like the way to do it. Maybe with time you'll get adjusted to MAME; however, I was never happy about setting everything up.

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    Nah I've been using it for 10+ years and it hasn't gotten any better.

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    Cherry (Level 1)
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    Why is it command-line? Command-line is worse. We've had mice since like 1985. Every other emulator has nice, easy-to-use menus, which you can also access during the game rather than trying to remember to hit the Tilde key to change the volume (wtf?!)

    Menus are nice. Nesticle was DOS and that had a menu. It had mouse support. That was 1997.

    Did you know that the year is 2011 right now?!?!

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    It's taken 10 years for you to look for an alternative?

    This thread is going places, I can tell.

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    Cherry (Level 1)
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    It's not going anywhere. I just want to know why this emulator is so hard to use and is such a mess. So what is the better emulator?

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    Banana (Level 7) Zing's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by stalepie View Post
    Why is it command-line? Command-line is worse. We've had mice since like 1985. Every other emulator has nice, easy-to-use menus, which you can also access during the game rather than trying to remember to hit the Tilde key to change the volume (wtf?!)

    Menus are nice. Nesticle was DOS and that had a menu. It had mouse support. That was 1997.

    Did you know that the year is 2011 right now?!?!
    The people behind the project are a wild pack of engineers working on very intricate code in an attempt to emulate hundreds of different types and levels of hardware. Any GUI produced by them would likely look like shit.

    Nesticle was DOS. Just DOS. Nothing else. That makes it pretty damn easy to code a native GUI. MAME is multiplatform. Unfortunately, one of the trade-off to cross-platform is difficulty in making a decent GUI. Cross-platform GUIs tend to look like pure ass and not conform to platform standards in usability or look.

    MAME has well documented and complete support for front-ends. There are many out there for you to try. The easiest is probably "mameui".

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    Default MAME is great

    MAME is great, I can play classic arcade games and it brings back fond memories. Initially is was tough to use back in the day, but I find it pretty easy to use these days. I remember the MAME v34 days when it was all command line driven. I still use command line since it's mainly faster when I run a game that maxes out the comp. It's free so you really can't complain too much plus it is pretty complex. It's not the easiest emulator to use but not the toughest to use either. Try messing around with a Sharp X68000 emulator or WinUAE which I think are harder to use than MAME. The only thing with MAME is that with each release you have to update your rom set. Go to newsgroups for those.

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    I tried to use MAME once, back when I first got into emulation, but I could never get the thing to work right.

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    Step back and put MAME in perspective. The fact that a single emulator can play games spanning several decades and several circuit boards is absolutely amazing. Sure, many games don't work BUT just as many games do. If interface issues are a problem try using a MAME rebuild like MAMEUIFX. You get a GUI interface up to the point of playing the game which is MUCH better than running everything via command line. In-game commands don't change but it doesn't take long to learn those. With a little homework I am now able to play APB with my digital game pad and Point Blank with my mouse. I'm now working on playing driving games with my Wiimote. The fact that you can do all this in MAME should result in encouraging the programmers and not yelling at them.
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    It sounds like you just need to read up and learn how it works. Not knowing the different ways you can make it run doesn't help. Look into front end programs (I use Mala) they make it much easier. All you do is enter the paths of where your emulator is and the roms and that's about it. There's a few other things to set up like button configuration. If you read up and learn how to configure everything it only takes a few minutes to get everything running.
    In the beginning I thought the same thing, but once I learned how to use a frontend everything became simple. I turn on my computer, the frontend menu starts and all I have to do is select a game from the list and hit start and that's it.

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    Never mind. I'll just be happy with what i got. I don't care about most of those old arcade games anyway.

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    To me, the interface is the main problem. The menu layout is hard to use compared to modern emulators, not to mention that updated menu systems would make the console ports less of a hassle. And, yes, I agree on mouse support, along with pausing emulation when the menu's opened. Also, not having the game attempt to fill an entire 1080p screen every time a game is opened would be a plus.

    Still, it's been 10+ years, and now we're getting to talking about this? This should've been discussed three years ago.

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    So I suppose hitting P to pause the game before going into the menu is too much trouble?

    Having the game not fill the screen can be done with the proper ini configuration. Set the ini to Maximize 0, Window 1 and the game will start up at the lowest minimum resolution which you can then adjust to your own liking by resizing the window. (keepaspect 1 will help with scaling.)

    Really, the emulator isn't that bad. I've been using it for ten years too, and I've never had any issues other than my computer sucking. The fact that they added a game selection screen on startup so people wouldn't have to deal with command lines to load a game should tell you something. And if it's too much trouble then just use a frontend or something.
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    Uh, it's free. And there are people who have put an immense amount of work into it. Sure, I have my issues with it too, but we're really in no place to complain. If you don't like it, don't use it. Otherwise, put up with it how it is and be grateful that it exists at all.

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    MAME works fine. The only problem I've noticed when using the newest version was that it lists every game in the database rather than just the ones you have downloaded.
    Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.

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    I haven't had the problems you discuss. It's been about a year since I used MAME, but I was once a regular user. I kept a "complete" set until they started adding the CHD games, then I saw how pointless it was and only kept the games I enjoyed.

    You don't need to constantly update MAME. So that should eliminate some of your problems.

    It also sounds like your source for ROMs is pretty crappy. As I said, it's been a while, but I used usenet to get mine. Or a bittorrent package, properly labelled with its version.

    As for needing to configure every game, this is not true in my experience. There is a global configuration, which can be accessed while in-game. It was rare that I had to tinker with the settings. Usually it would be for games with non-standard layouts like Mortal Kombat.

    The official distribution is only 11MB in size. I seem to recall that they once used a compression method on the official binaries, so maybe a personally compiled binary would be 40MB.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zing View Post
    It also sounds like your source for ROMs is pretty crappy. As I said, it's been a while, but I used usenet to get mine. Or a bittorrent package, properly labelled with its version.
    I just got into MAME about two weeks ago. I found a bittorrent and just downloaded the most popular version with matching ROMS.

    It wasn't hard to install and I had it running in a few minutes. I don't know what I am doing so I have to set up the controllers for each game but otherwise it's great.

    The vast majority of the games work. The interface is easy to use for even a moron like myself.

    I have it running on a very basic and barebones netbook computer (one of those with the Atom processor, not much RAM, and a crappy GPU) and it runs everything pretty smoothly up until Model 1 and PSX-based arcade hardware.


    Stalepie, maybe u you should just start over from scratch.

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    Quote Originally Posted by stalepie View Post
    Why does MAME suck so bad?
    MAME doesn't suck...you suck.
    Don't go away mad....just go away!

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    Quote Originally Posted by stalepie View Post
    Half of the games don't work, or have problems, or I have to download a different version of MAME, or an older version, or a different set of ROMs, or multiple copies of what seems to be the same ROM, or I have to configure each game separately, and so forth.
    The solution is to just stop downloading updated versions of mame. Just download it once, get all the games you're interested in playing and then just stop updating.

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