Emulating the Arcade (MAME) - LaunchBox Tutorials

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if you were a child of the 80s or the 90s then you've probably visited an arcade in your lifetime I remember an arcade in my childhood in my middle school years every Tuesday you would pay 10 bucks and you would get free unlimited reign over the arcade 15 bucks got you unlimited arcade and goat carts and that was that was my absolute best arcade memories is going to this place meeting people and just being able to play unlimited arcade games and in the summer when there was no school the place would be open to like 10:00 or 11:00 it would be fantastic so with all that nostalgia in one system and really these games not being accurately represented anymore nowadays maimie has certainly become one of the more sought-after emulation solutions for most users looking to play or relive or find for the first time arcade classics hi my name is Brad and today man Oh broken software studio tutorials I'll show you how to get MAME up and running okay in launch box first things first let's go to tools import rom files we're going to click Next we're going to add folder you're going to navigate to where you have your main roms downloaded now you're going to have to do some sleuthing on your own to find the roms and the BIOS for MAME but if you've got a giant pack of roms just navigate to where you have it installed click on the folder and then click ok launch box will add to the path into the import screen here we're going to click Next here we're going to click the drop down and we're going to go down to arcade we're going to click Next so the default emulator that we have set up is for me personally but you can also set up retroarch and I'll show you how to do that also today if meme or nothing shows up here you're going to click Add then either type in the name MAME navigate to where you have the main install.exe currently name is on 0.172 be main gets updated constantly and whenever MAME updates you also have to update your set of roms or get the update packs that sort of thing so when MAME updates you also got to update your roms or you know on the choose emulators screen if you have a retroarch selected go to edit' associated platforms your going to scroll all the way down to the bottom where you have an empty space and you're going to double click here you're going to type in arcade and then up here you may notice that my default command line parameter is for the maimie 2014 underscore libreta dot d ll now MAME is kind of ever-evolving and mess has integrated with MAME so there are going to be some things probably that are going to change when it comes to retroarch now there is also a name underscore labraccio dll that drops the year there's also a 2010 and I believe a 2013 core as well I would try the name underscore labret ro DLL and if that doesn't work or you have some compatibility issues go ahead and change that to just the the main Munder score lib retro DLL there's a couple for you to play with but really as long as you keep them updated through the online update in retroarch you should be up-to-date and good to go on the next screen we're going to check use the files in their current location we're going to allow scraping from launchbox games database and Wikipedia we're gonna let emu movies parse and log us in when it's done parsing we're going to go ahead and select all we're going to have it download every piece of a metadata and image that it can find for us and then we're going to click Next now here this is when normally you would have actually a couple of extra options here one of them being the checkbox to force using name metadata or to use the main import process when you use the the platform name arcade it should automatically pop up for you however if you are importing an arcade specific system like the Sega model one or the Sega model 2 and you name the platform that make sure that you check that box if you are just importing a general giant main Lissette like I am right now then just go ahead and name it arcade and leave it as is if you want to separate things later you're more than welcome to also do that and separate things into other platforms if you want I'm going to click Next and on this screen this is new to the tutorials this is the maimie import filters the the the screen it's kind of hard to explain but it is more or less all of your options available to you now when a box is checked launch box will not import that type of game so personally I like rhythm games I like beatmania I like Dance Dance Revolution so I'm gonna personally uncheck the Skip rhythm games box and I also kind of like mahjong games so I'm gonna also go ahead and uncheck the skip mahjong games box but this is something that you can customize and personalize and do with what you want you can either leave it at default or you can uncheck skip casino games and in prototype games if you want you can really import a wide range of games now there are a lot of MAME roms and not all of them are needed but it's not like other systems where one ROM file equals one game or even you know two files a cue sheet in an ISO file equal one game sometimes one game can have 5 10 20 zip files associated with it mean it's a little confusing in that regard hence the need for the custom name importer here at the top you can also skip clones and prioritize this region North America Europe Japan world that sort of thing now if a game only came out in Europe or Japan or worldwide then it's going to also still import for those three other regions but if a game did come out in Japan and North America it's going to prioritize the North American release for import in your system you can also import all original games so you may get duplicates but you won't get clones but this option will give you single games for North America Japan Europe the world Asia even if they are duplicates it will give you one entry for each of those regions this option here import all clones all selected roms regardless of duplication it will pretty much import everything now these three checkboxes will still only import based on here so if you leave the checkbox for unplayable games checked even if you import all the clones and you import everything it will still filter out games that are unplayable by mames standards so keep all of that in mind you may also notice a link here at the bottom we will go over that in just a second but then we're going to click Next and now it's going to start parsing through all of your MAME games this process can take a while there are a lot of main games if you've got your zip files and your CHD files which are custom hard drive files then those will get parsed through and added to launch box as you can see here in the back but like I said it can take a while MAME main main has a lot of roms associated with it one thing to note that I don't have currently set up in my folder but I did mention CHD files now sometimes there they are required for certain roms to run now they will be in their own specific folder there will be a folder in here that will let's take for example three b1 not that this has a CHD file associated with it necessarily but as an example let's say that this does have a CHD file so in here will also be a folder labeled of three b1 and then inside of that will be a CH d file probably also labeled 3 B 1 and when launching the zip file it automatically knows to look in here in the folder and load its CHD file as needed some games do need them to run so please keep that in mind a CH Deepak can run you over 350 gigabytes while all these roms run me personally about 53 gigabytes now if you are a little bit more of a power user I did show you that link at the bottom of the main import process that was a link to our forums and a link to download a program that a user on the forums created now this piece of software pretty much already does what our main importer does but like I said if you're more of a power user or you want a little bit more information this would be something for you to maybe give a try in this box click the Browse button here to help this box where your main txe is located and in this box tell it where your Launch Box XML file is located your Launch Box XML file is located in the same folder that you have launch box installed so if you see the big box Exe the Launch Box Exe in this folder is also the Launch Box XML file so that is where you point this box towards so this is what the program looks like with all of the values plugged in it'll automatically plug these paths in based on your main folder but if you have them located in a different folder then you can go ahead and browse to them manually down here these boxes are used for importing multiple systems instead of just importing them all as arcade which is totally fine but you may have metadata scraping issues personally i unchecked all of these boxes when i tested this software a couple of days ago and i imported them all as MAME I then went in to where they imported into launchbox I clicked a game control aid to highlight all of them I right clicked and edited one of the games to bring up the bulk edit wizard I then chose platform and change that to arcade so that it would scrape properly personally I kind of do like all of the extra information that Lightspeed provides here on the left that the main importer in launch box may also receive it at a future date down here is also a similar check box system to the one that we have in launch box as well so with boxes checked down here it will exclude those games from being imported so if you want rhythm games like DDR and beat mania uncheck the rhythm box I'm going to uncheck the Mazon box as well once you have everything set up the way that you like it go ahead and press the Go button once that is done we're going to go ahead and reopen launch box to see the fruit of our labor since I already have all of my games imported it didn't import any games into launch box for me but normally it would have a name option here on the left and then when clicking on a game there would be some extra information here on the right that Lightspeed provides for you now if you do want all your systems to be separated by type of arcade board like the CPS one then I would go ahead and uncheck all of the other boxes and only check the box that you want to import at that time the system that you want import so in this case only leave the cps one box checked import all of those games into launch box and then on the left click your cps one platform pull up the bulk edit wizard like i just showed you rename those two arcade then click a game press ctrl-a to highlight them all or if they're already highlighted just go to tools download metadata and images run through this process with your C ps1 games in the arcade platform once you've downloaded all of your metadata your images and your music or video with them still highlighted open back up the bulk edit wizard and then edit them back in to the cps one platform do note that I showed you earlier with retroarch with the associated platforms to add the arcade system now if you have a specific system like this C ps1 you're going to go down and double-click an empty space you're going to name it whatever the platform was here on the left so in this case would be the C ps1 then you're going to point the cps one associated platform to the specific c ps1 emulator core in retroarch there are specific emulators and cores out there that are designed to only emulate specific systems like C ps1 CPS you see a ps3 Naomi etc of course main works for pretty much everything but if a specific game of yours isn't quite working the way you want it to or you want to make sure that you get the best possible emulation choosing one of these alternative emulators may be a solution for you with that done let's right-click a game open retroarch we're gonna go down to online updater core updater then we're going to go down to the MS like I was saying earlier download name underscore labret wrote DLL and MAME 2014 underscore labret wrote DLL I also spoke earlier its main 2000 and MAME 2010 you don't particularly need these and even the 2014 may be outdated a little bit so maybe just the name but you would pick but you can also download these other ones if they work better with a specific game your mileage may vary severely with using the specific cores up here you'll also notice FB underscore alpha underscore CPS one underscore libreta dot d ll these FB alpha cores are also cores for emulating certain specific arcade board games so this would be C PS 1 C ps2 NeoGeo that sort of thing so you would also download these and other chords like this for those specific systems with everything set up let's double-click 1943 Kai Midway Kai sin there we go it loaded up 1943 in retro art and like normal you have all of your shader options in retroarch you have all of your input options don't have a controller plugged in but if you have a ps3 ps4 360 and Xbox one controller plugged in it will automatically do all of your controller settings for you which is something that's really lovely with retro arcs specifically you may also want to go over the buttons a little bit because it is a little confusing to get up and running in general with the buttons so to add credit I'm pressing the number 5 key on my keyboard and then to start the game I'm pressing the one button to start a player one game and then retroarch is using the Z and X for the buttons to press because this is only a two button game if I recall in my arrow keys to move around on the screen regular MAME actually uses the ctrl and alt keys so that's what I would be pressing to do these moves here on screen that you're seeing however let's also double check and make sure that everything is working with regular MAME as well here we go it is also working in regular MAME as well 1943 the Battle of Midway so pressing the number 5 key on my keyboard and then press one to start the game if you want to pause in MAME you can press the P button on your keyboard and then press tab in here is the options menu form name so the input general menu is the input options for all of memes so it's not going to filter out anything it's just going to show you all of the available buttons you're also more than likely going to also have to set up your controllers manually so please keep that in mind just press escape to back up and you use ENTER to move around then you also have options for your GUI here that you've seen and then input for this machine means just your input options for just this game this game as you can see is a little bit more simplified than some other games this list can be a lot longer but if you want to edit specific games and have the controls be different than the generalized options you can do that in this menu as well and all of the available buttons for a game that you have loaded will show up in this screen here down here for dip switches in here our options for the game so we can increase or lower the difficulty for this specific game for example we can change the amount of credit and player options we can also tell it that it's a upright or cocktail type cabinet service mode you probably aren't going to need but is available if you need it you can tell it how many credits per coin you get or how many coins for one credit that you're going to need personally I would just probably set this to one coin five credit so that you can press the five button less can turn on or disallow continues and you can turn on or off demo sounds so if you leave the game running it'll probably run through a demo most arcade games did that to attract you to the game you can turn off those sounds if you would like in retroarch some of those options will be here in the core options menu but from what I can tell some of the other more specific options seem to be missing like in the dip switches option menu there I don't know why so you may prefer MAME over retroarch in this instance but retroarch also does give you easy controller support that automatically adjusts and assigns buttons for your games when you automatically plug in control and that's very handy I don't know if more videos will be needed for the future because for the most part you can apply what you learned here to other arcade boards and other systems and that sort of thing so more videos may not be necessary in the future however I completely concede that it MAME is confusing it just is straight up confusing this was made more than 15 years ago so it just it has older sensibilities when it comes to getting these games to work and that's why launchbox we kind of stepped in to try and make it as easy as possible for your games to get imported and up and running as fast as possible I also do want to note that there are a lot of arcade games that are missing artwork like alien invaders here with our database we are working on expanding this to as many images as we possibly can my name is Brad and if this tutorial helped you guys out at all please give us a thumbs up down below subscribe to us for more tutorials in the future as well if that sounds like something you would be interested in watching this episode was probably way more confusing than the other tutorials that I did so more than ever if you need any clarification on anything I covered in this video or you need something explained a little bit better please do not hesitate to use the comment section below leave your question there Jason and myself will happily answer any questions we receive there also our forums are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to main look at us just how many questions have and ask on our forums use the search box our forums search some keywords for your specific query and hopefully your questions will get answered that way as well if you like the sound of my voice I do gaming content on my channel which you can find a link to in the description below if that sounds like your cup of tea I would appreciate a subscribe as well if you like the videos that I make on my personal channel we're fixing geeks to play more games and we'll see you next time have a good day
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Channel: Unbroken Software, LLC
Views: 134,426
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: launchbox, emulator, https, com, arcade, software, launch box, emulation, retroarch, MAME, CPS1, CPS2, Capcom, Sega, Naomi, Atom, Triforce, Emulators, emulate, LB, Software, tutorial, help, walkthrough, launchbox mame
Id: SUQzvbweVgw
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)
Published: Fri Apr 22 2016
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