View Full Version : Mamesaver
Hey Guys, I've just made available my pet project and would like to know what everyone thinks. If you're into emulators and MAME, please check it out at http://mamesaver.sourceforge.net/
does it support mame32plus? that's where most of my arcade roms are played.
edit - does it use the "roms" directory in the mame folder? if so will it be possible to select rom folders in the future since i use multiple arcade emulators.
Hey JJXB,
I'm not sure about Mame32Plus, but I would love it if you could try and let me know. I don't see why not though.
About the ROMS, if the MAME is working ok stand alone, then I don't think it should be a problem. Basically the screen saver uses the Mame executable to list the ROMS available, so if Mame can see them, then it should be ok.
Edit 1: One note there though is that the version of Mame must support the same command line arguments. Especially -verifyroms, -listxml and sending the game name on the command line.
Edit 2: I've been trying to download Mame32Plus but it seems Rapidshare does not want to work for me.
tried here? (http://www5.emu-zone.org/host/mameplus/) (that's where i downloaded the latest version) i think you need a fileplanet account though (not sure though)
Thanks JJXB - Will try and let you know...
I tried Mamesaver with MamePlus and it worked brilliantly. (I recommend using the mamepgui.exe file as the executable file in Mamesaver as the other one keeps opening a cmd box.
As far as I can see MamePlus is pretty much the same as Mame. Is there any specific reason you're using it instead?
hardware acceleration. plus it allows more games to be played (e.g. tekken)
Cool. I will have to give it a bigger try then. Otherwise please let me know if you try Mamesaver and how it works for you.
it's working fine. took a little while to get the roms listed but that's my only gripe.
Yeah, it's an unfortunate side-effect of using the MAME through the command line.
The problem is that first I have to use the -listxml option which extracts an XML which is something like 28MB! Then I have to use the -verifysets option to get a listing of all the ROMs you have and which ones are working well. Then I have to "merge" one with the other in a sense as I need the full info for only the working ROMs.
I will be looking into speeding it up somehow, but I don't see it as a show-stopper as it's only done once in a while really.
If you do have any more comments, please let me know.
Oh yeah, and if you have anybody who has multiple screens, could you maybe get them to test it and let me know how it works? I don't have and would like to know if it works properly or not.
i'd test multiple screens if my computer could handle it
079vsa5j2xfar
14-06-2007, 01:38 PM
Very nice work, I like my new Punisher screensaver.
I'm glad you're enjoying it :)
Ioncannon
06-07-2007, 01:44 PM
Just a question, what are screen savers? Are they executables with a different extension, or are they some kind of file windows reads?
Well on Windows they are really just exe files (although with an scr extension) which respond to certain command line arguments.
You can find articles on creating screensavers on code project (http://www.codeproject.com/) and msdn (http://msdn.microsoft.com/).
Burger Meister
07-07-2007, 02:39 AM
Man this is genious, kudos to you my friend. Now I can have sunset riders and knights of the round for my screensaver !
EDIT: Since you guys seem to know a lot of mame and it's stuff. I came by Simpson's Bowling and they have this at the arcade in the bowling alley in my city. Question is, why is it when I obtain it, it's about 4kb and it doesn't work. It's a 3d game so I was expecting it to be 15mb+. Is this because the game is too new and can't be given out?
Hey B-Meister,
Sorry, I only noticed this reply now - don't know why I didn't get the notification...
Anyway...
If you check Simpson Bowling (http://www.mameworld.net/maws/romset/simpbowl) at MAWS (http://www.mameworld.net/maws/), you will notice that the game requires CHD (http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu/mameguide/mamechd.htm) files (hard drive files) which can be quite large to download. If you can find the files you should be able to play, although the emulation is set at "imperfect" so I'm not sure how it will play.
Good luck. And thanks for the compliment ;)
Morrin
09-08-2007, 09:37 AM
Hmm.. could someone specify what this MAME is about? And how do these screensavers work then?
Thanks!
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAME
"MAME is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software, with the intent of preserving gaming history and preventing vintage games from being lost or forgotten. The name is an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator."
Mamesaver really just runs selected games as screensavers. Looks really cool - you should try it out...
Wow this is such a great idea! I've got to try this soon!
TheChosen
07-09-2007, 06:41 AM
EDIT: Nevermind, It was off-topic
Burger Meister
05-10-2007, 01:01 AM
Why is it that some of my games don't run with mame saver but I can open them with my MAME emulator. I use MAME32 and have tried MAMEPlus. One game that comes to mind is Sunset Riders. It doesn't show up in the list to check off for mame saver, but it's in my game list for the emulator and I can play it fine.
This happens because Mamesaver verifies all ROM's on rebuilding the list. If a ROM does not verify properly (ie if MAME does not have a "WORKING" label for that ROM), then Mamesaver ignores it. This is done because MAME asks you to type OK whenever you start a non-working the game.
As far as I know there is no way to turn off the OK question when starting a non-working game. If you know a way around this then please let me know ;)
EDIT: If you check at MAWS (http://www.mameworld.net/maws/romset/ssriders) you'll see that the driver for Sunset Riders is "imperfect" which means MAME would ask you to type OK whenever starting the game.
Burger Meister
07-10-2007, 04:51 PM
No not the ok question problem. It's just that the romset doesn't even appear in the list of mame saver's cycle of roms. I have about 20 roms and I can run them all in the same emulator I use for mamesaver... but mamesaver only detects and uses about 10 of them. They aren't in the check list for usable or not.
Mamesaver totally ignores the ROMS (non "working" ones) when rebuilding the list.
Burger Meister
07-10-2007, 10:54 PM
Is there a tweak that can change this?
Thraka
16-01-2008, 02:46 AM
Here is a little tip for you all.. The core mame engine (which every mame32 build is based off of) supports save states. you can create a save state for a game by pushing SHIFT-F7 then the slot # (which i think is 1-9 or 1-0) and a file will be created in the default sta sub directory. When you're in the game you can load it by pushing F7 then the slot #. You can also auto do this on the command line by using the switch -state <slot #> :nuts:
So you can go into the games you want to be on the screensaver, save a slot at the beginning of the attract sequence, and have them auto load when the rom is loaded.
Then just modify the command line in the screensaver config to always use a specific slot # like so:
-skip_gameinfo -nowindow -noswitchres -sleep -triplebuffer -nosound -state 8
I had forgotten that I had posted this here. This was probably the first place I ever "advertised" mamesaver hah
If anybody is interested it got a bit more interest in the last year or two and a very kind guy from New Zealand updated it with some awesome features - work great!
It's also moved to github https://github.com/mika76/mamesaver
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