a really beginner level question

[BloodyMando]

well....this is my first ever post here.... so first i would like to say hi to all the people on the board

just to put things straight...... i havent started using ANY kind of emulator for arcade games before today but Neorage X

fact is.... i didnt even know other emulators existed.

to cut a long story short..... usually all i just did was just get the roms from a friend of mine and the emulator (neo rage X)

my friend now lives in another country.... so i guess i have to depend on myself to get the latest stuff

most of my roms.... (mainly KOF roms) work fine on neo rage from kof 96 to kof 2001.

starting from kof2002 i get problems,the game works but controls are messed up.... also..i want to play kof2003 too.... and i cant find any working kof 2003 roms for neo rage so....

i finally decided to switch to MAME.

now what i wanna know is this..... i see people talking on this forum about compiling mame to make it work with new games (correct me if i am wrong or not knowing what i am talking about please..) and people talking about DAT files and posting looooong lines of text that look like code that i dont understand what the hell they mean or what to do with them even.

can someone be kind enough as to explain what i should do to make new games work??? and what do i do with all that DAT file code.

also....considering the KOF 2002 controls issue.... does that go away when u play it using mame or is there some kind of patch to fix it (i read something about a patch for it somewhere)

your help would be greatly appreciated... thanks

[Gryph]

Before you switch emulators and all, what version of NeoRage X are you using? We may be able to bypass this switch if you are using an old version of NeoRage X.

 

I'll try to answer the rest of your questions to the best of my ability.

 

First, you don't have to compile MAME if you already have a good version with the latest stuff. I recommend Clone MAME which is made by James who is a super moderator here and our resident MAME wiz: http://s6.invisionfree.com/emu_inferno/ind...hp?showforum=30

 

I don't know much about MAME so I'll let someone else answer that.

 

But those DAT files are for two other emulators (with loaders which let you add new games), WinKawaks and Nebula. The DATs are placed in either ASR.DAT for Kawaks or NEOGEO.DAT for Nebula. By adding them, they will show up in the ROM selection area.

 

Hmm...I don't think that was a very good explanation.

[Agozer]

I'll maybe repeat a few things and Mr. G there already told you, but bare with me.

 

What kind of control issues do you have? Controls are not responding or what? I've had no control problems in any of the Neo games that i have (on any emulator for that matter)...

 

 

Those lines of code that you usually see in the MAME section are drivers for certain games. Basically, you add those to the MAME source code and then compile it --> Custom MAME that supports the game of your choice.

 

For the DATs, those are lines of loading code for Nebula and Kawaks that that add support for a certain game. However, the authors of these two emulators have locked newer games, so you need to get either a kawaks Loader or Nebula Loader to bypass the lockouts.

 

Simply add a DAT to the Neogeo.dat (Nebula) or to Asr.dat (Kawaks) and save the file. Now hopefully, the Loader supports your newly added game.

 

One of the main reasons in getting newer games to work in NeoRAGEx is the fact that these games have encryptions that NRX can't emulate. So, you need to find hacked roms for it that have the protections removed. MAME, Kawaks, Nebula and FBA support the encryption routines, so it's a bit easier to work with those. (But just a bit, since you have to take the possible protection into account when writing drivers or DATs for them).

 

If you still want to play around with NeoRAGEx, you need to remember one thing: When you downlod some of the newer romsets from the net, you'll notice that the files in the sets are usually in a format like xxx-xx.vbin (the first 3 x's are the cartridge ID and the last two identify what rom is in question)

 

NRX can't load those, so you'll have to extract the files from the archive to a temp directory and manually rename the fileslike this: Let's pretend that the file you have is 271-p1.bin (KOF2003 program rom), you rename it to xxxx_p1.rom (xxxx can be anything you like).

 

One more thing: Since NRX doesn't support encrypted sets, you need to know the difference between encrypted and decrypted sets. Simply look at the archive size; if it's 70+, it's encrypted. If it's 30 something, it's decrypted. Also, encrypted ROM images do not compress so good as decrypted ones, so check the compression ratio too. You can also check it from the archive name as well in some cases, like kof2k2nd is the decrypted set of KOF2002.

 

I'm out of breath...

[James]

I compile my own Mame To explain in great detail will take alot of typing Which i am not fond of doing.Now if your PC has good specs then I suggest Mame. If you have a older PC then stay with nrx But take this into account NRX does not emulate true MVS games As all games made after 1998 were encrypted NRX needs decrypted and also the roms themselves need to be patched to run on NRX.

 

Encrypted sets = around 70+ mb zipped

Decrypted sets = around 30+ mb zipped

[alexis]

this topic is a mess, so let's get started again, what is your goal, i mean which are the roms you wanna get emulated, tell us this and we will tell you the best way to do it