Raging Dragon -- MAME front end

This is a list of frequently asked questions, some useful, some not so useful. Please read this faq and the readme file before you send me any questions out the Raging Dragon. I am happy to help though, so if you have a new question/comment please send it to me at howard_1@charter.net and I’ll see what I can do.

#1 “My name is Bubba and I’m from backwoods Kentucky… Zeek told me about your vido-game thing-a-ma-bob so I gave it a look see. I clicked on that pac man and I didn’t get no pacman. Where’s my wacka-wacka? I want my wacka-wacka!!”

Wacka-wacka huh? Sounds like a personal problem to me. Anyway, kidding aside, the RD is a front-end, so it has to have an emulator to actually run the games. RD also has one master list of roms, so it doesn’t actually know if the emulator you have set up supports it, it only knows it’s a rom.

#2 “It’s Bubba again. Al-ight I got them there emulabob’s setup. Now how shud I split up these here roms and folders and what-not?”

Good job Bubba, maybe next time I can teach you to “ought” and “sypher”!! No seriously, this is a good question. Put your roms you’ll be using for mame wherever since you can set those directories. Your impact/modeler/u64/u64_2 roms should be where the exe’s for those emulators are located and contained in a folder called “roms.” (how clever of me J) Visual pinball roms, again can be put wherever you want, but the tables themselves must be put in the “tables” (man im smart J) folder within the visual pinball folder. Be sure to set-up all the options for your emulators as well. Rd only launches the game, so you need to go into mame separately and setup your default options and do the same for any other emulater you wish to use. This includes screen resolutions, controller configurations and any other features the emulator supports. In the case of u64 be sure to point all of those roms and the hard drive image in the right direction, since RD won’t do that for you.

#3 “I ran your bat file as instructed and I still get a dll/ocx missing error.”

I hate the registry, I really do. It’s almost enough to make a person switch to coding in linux. (Notice I said almost.) Ok first off lets go down the checklist. Are you running win 95 rev B or higher? Do you have vb 6.0 runtimes installed? You can get the vb runtimes from the downloads page. If you still have trouble, send me an email with the exact name of the file missing and I’ll fix it for you.

Well run it silly. ;-) Oh, and you should send it to us to so we can post it on the skins page. Zip it up, folder and all, and send it to us. Be sure to give us some info so we can give you credit too. And no pornographic skins either. So if you send a skin of a pig making sweet love to an elephant don’t expect it to be posted the next day. (Because that one’s going in my private collection.)

All flyers should be in their appropriate directories in the mame directory. All mame.exe’s should be in one single directory together. (It makes things easier for me and you, trust me.) Impact and any other supported, non-mame emulator can be put where ever you want, and it’s flyers/screenshots/ect should be put in the appropriate directory (flyers/snap/cabinets/marquees) in the directory where the emulator is. Zip support for artwork isn’t supported, so you’ll have to extract your artwork. They must also be in png format.

First See #6. There are two known bugs with the artwork browsing system. When in any “non-list” mode, RD can only show one piece of artwork at a time while in the “u64” or “Extras” lists. I will get around to fixing this eventually.

#8 ”Can I launch PC games, Mp3 players, Special case roms, ect, from the RD?”

You sure can! Anything that you can launch via a command prompt you should be able to launch in Rd. There’s a special “Extras” list that you can add anything to, but you have to do it manually. There’s a sample file included with RD that should show you how to make it. Add the files the way you want and rename this file to “extra.lst” Now when you refresh your roms this new list will appear with all of your entries. You can put artwork to go with these files as well. Just make some “mame style” folders and put them where the exe is kept. Your artwork should be in png format and have the same name as the exe.

Go into the configuration and make sure your directories are correct. After you’ve saved and went back to the main screen press the refresh key. It will scan the directories and populate your lists for you.

Check the readme file and make sure everything is setup proper. If it is send me an email with the nature of the problem, a screenshot of the error occurring if possible, and basic specs about he machine (Os, and sound/video cards are the most important.) I’ll do my best, but please keep in mind this is still in development and It might be some time before it runs completely bug free.

Yes this is because Rd doesn’t verify rom sets like other front-ends do. I did this to speed up the scanning time, which makes a dramatic improvement, believe me. There’s a very easy, onetime fix to this. Simply download your favorite rom management tool, like romcenter, download the latest dat file for it, and add all of your roms. Now under the preferences for that emulator (in this case mame) check the split rom sets and then tell it to “fix” all of your roms. Now all of your variants will have their own zip, with Rd will have no trouble finding. Roms downloaded from mame.dk are ready to go, so stick to their conventions from now on.

This is a known bug and I’m working very hard to correct it. If you exit RD and re-enter the problem will be fixed. This should be fixed very soon.

Well you provide the music. No, wait, quit with the arm-pit noises. I didn’t mean in a literal sense. If you notice, there’s a default.m3u file in the RD folder. Open this file and add the full path to any music you wish to play each on a separate line. Now the screen saver will play those songs when it activates. You can also add videos and other media to your play-lists. Be warned that play-lists aren’t dynamic though, so if you move/rename some of your mp3s then you’ll have to re-make this play-list.

Use you navigation keys to control playback and the refresh key to switch between random and standard. Use the select key to pause.

Don’t hold your breath. Until I get out of the beta releases, I wouldn’t even think of porting the thing. After that, we’ll see. Once a release a truly stable version. I’ll release the source code with it, and it will be everyone’s problem.

#15 “When will the RD have support for (insert your favorite emulator here)?”

It depends on my personal opinion of the emulator in question. If it’s a reasonable request and command-line compatible, then maybe as early as the next release. If not, then it could be quite some time.

That’s Oscar’s department. Every part of this site save the actual emulator and skins is his. Send the comments to him.

Well of course, we’ll take it off your hands for you. ;-) But the only thing we really would use it for is the mirroring of downloads. Contact Oscar or myself to make arrangements.

#18 “My name is Candy and I’m a upcoming supermodel. I think you emulation guys are really sexy. Would you please let me come and worship you?”

You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been asked that. (Come on give me the benefit of the doubt for once.) Well Candy, I wish you the best of luck, but I’m not really into the worshipping thing. However stop by for some Cheezy-Poofs and Snapple sometime.

#19 “Hi it’s me, Candy, again. Me and my contortionist friend, Bunny were wondering if we could come over for some Cheezy-Poofs. Can we come visit? Pleeese!!”