UCE files not working on ALP

[elj4176]

I have a couple of mame roms from my arcade cabinet that I want to play on my ALP. Found your project and was able to make the UCE files with the cook_batch.sh but they do not open in the ALP. It says 'Loading' and then just goes back to the menu. I am going into the BYOG/AddOn menu and the games show up there. I have tried 3 different mame cores (mame_libretro, mame2010_libretro and the default 2003) when building the UCE files. Any ideas of what I could be doing wrong? Thanks for making a linux tool for this.

[slutzo]

Are you using the correct ROM version for the core you're using? If you're using a 2003 core, you need the ROM as it was when MAME 0.78 was released, and if you're using 2010, you should have the ROM version as of MAME 0.139.

Also, I'm not sure that mame_libretro and the default 2003 work at all. mame2003_plus_libretro.so (or its custom cousin, mame2003_plus_libretro_alu_1.0.0.so) and mame2010_libretro.so (or mame2010_libretro_samplesandsaves.so) all should work, though.

[elj4176]

I'm not sure which version the roms are from. I'm on linux if that matters. When I run mame the version is 0.249 and I can run all of the roms there. When I open RetroArch and scan the folder it puts them in Mame2010 although not all of them show up. I have them all working on Batocera in my cabinet so I guess I can just check to see which core it is using for each one and then create the UCE accordingly. I only want a few games on there so it won't take long.
I thought this might have something to do with the latest firmware on the ALP but I guess this is user error. Should I just close this issue?

[slutzo]

I'd never discount the possibility of an AtGames firmware release breaking everything, but I'm unaware of any issues with the most recent firmware, at least on the ALU. I don't have an ALP to play around with so I have no way to test that, but my understanding is that AddOn works the same way on both.

Yeah, my guess is that you have a ROM version incompatibility. The ROMs change over time to keep up with changes in MAME, and usually when they do, they no longer work with older versions of MAME. MAME 2003 and MAME 2010 are snapshots of specific versions of MAME (0.78 and 0.139 respectively) that were fairly stable and capable of running well on a mid-range PC of the era. MAME 2003-Plus is MAME 2003 with performance enhancements and fixes and I believe support for a few additional games that vanilla 2003 can't do.

Most likely your Batocera is using something much more recent. Some of your ROMs may not have changed since MAME 2010, but probably most of them have. Fortunately, since MAME 2003 and MAME 2010 are well-known snapshot releases, it's not difficult to find appropriate versions of your legally-owned ROMs to run with them.

Apologies if you already know all this and I'm MAMEsplaining here.

I do think this is probably user error, but if you want to keep this open until you're sure, I'm fine with that.

[elj4176]

I know some of it. Been using MAME for awhile. Just new to the ALP and saUCE stuff. I tried again with multiple cores and still no luck. I grabbed the latest WOPR and my idea is to just pick out the UCE files that I want on ALP and see if those work. I don't really want to use CoinOPSX and I don't think I need all the stuff WOPR comes with. I hit you up on reddit the other day too once I realized you were on there. I'll keep at it until something works lol. thanks!

[slutzo]

Good luck! If you find a UCE that's bundled with a mame2010 or mame2003-plus core, you should be able to extract the ROM and try building your own UCE with that, just to see if it works. If you have 7-zip, you can open a UCE file with it just like a zip and poke around.

By the way, you're just trying to use AddOn, correct? Not AddOnX?