Hacking Is there a way to remove the 150 game limit on Wii MAME?

[duffmmann]

Hello, I'm using the latest version of MAME Wii found here: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/MAME_Wii and I realized when booting it up that it still has the 150 game limit. Which is a shame as I have much more than 150 MAME games. Does anyone know how to remove the limit? I would greatly appreciate any help.

 

[portugeek]

I'm also having this problem. I've checked the .cfg files and there's nothing. I've also checked to see if maybe there was a line I could add to the .cfg to remove the limit, and found nothing. I wanna say it's a fixed limit that's been implemented for increased compatibility with the Wii. Because when I looked at the changelog of the different releases, under v0.4 it said.. "Game list now shows up to 150 ROMs instead of just 15." I would imagine it's something that can't be changed short of modifying the boot.dol.

I even thought of just creating multiple rom folders, but I couldn't find anywhere in the UI that would allow me to quickly change the rom path. And having to back out to change the mame.cfg every time I wanted a different rom path would be a pain in the ass.

 

[DinohScene]

Do you really ever play all of those 150 games?

 

[duffmmann]

Do you really ever play all of those 150 games?

I like having the option to play whatever game I like to.

Unfortunately with this limit on, I barely get out of the games starting with A, meaning I can't even get to classic games like Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, The Simpsons, Pac Man, Metal Slug, Megaman, etc. etc.

Plus, while I don't know much about programming, I imagine that this has to be an easy fix.

 

[portugeek]

Do you really ever play all of those 150 games?

That's not the point. Besides, with mame games they don't work the same way that rom files work for other emulators. With roms on other emulators, the entire contents of one game is packed within that one rom. But with Mame roms, there are parent and clone files.

So what ends up happening is that sometimes the game you want to play is a US "clone" of it's JP "parent." And for that US rom to work, you also need the JP rom of that same game included in your roms folder. Then when Mame loads up, it recognizes and shows both roms, which count against your 150 rom limit. Not to mention that some games require bits from more than one parent/clone.

It starts to add up and count against your 150 count real quick.

 

[DarkMatterCore]

Just modify the value of the "VISIBLE_GAMES_IN_LIST" constant and recompile the emulator. You can find it in uimenu.c @ line 36, assuming you already downloaded the source code.

 

[duffmmann]

Just modify the value of the "VISIBLE_GAMES_IN_LIST" constant and recompile the emulator. You can find it in uimenu.c @ line 36, assuming you already downloaded the source code.

I can see this file and the line to edit on the google code source page: https://code.google.com/p/sdl-mame-wii/source/browse/Release_1.0/src/emu/uimenu.c

However, I can not figure out how to download the entire source.
Furthermore I'm unsure how to recompile once I do change this value. (I'm sorry I'm a big ole noob at this stuff), I am trying to do it myself, but I'm just not figuring it out, if you could tell me what I'm missing in this process, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Edit: I was able to download the source, but I'm not sure I can figure out how to compile it after I've made my edit. Any help?

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

Can you not separate roms into folders and just select from folders or is it hard coded to only read from one certain directory?

 

[duffmmann]

Can you not separate roms into folders and just select from folders or is it hard coded to only read from one certain directory?

hard coded.

But thats ok, I've changed the one thing I need in the source, I just need to figure out how to compile the source.

EDIT: after some research, I think I figured out how to properly code it. I'm going to test it here in a moment and if it works I'll report and post it.

Second EDIT: After what I thought was compiling it, I was not left with a boot .dol or .elf file, I don't know what I did wrong, but if I have more free time tomorrow, I'll try again then.

 

[DarkMatterCore]

Here you go: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6957349/powerpc-eabi-mamemini.rar. The limit now is 500 files. Is that OK for you? I can recompile the DOL file a second time if you need a higher value.

I can't test it because I don't have any MAME ROMs, but I guess it should work fine.

 

[duffmmann]

Here you go: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6957349/powerpc-eabi-mamemini.rar. The limit now is 500 files. Is that OK for you? I can recompile the DOL file a second time if you need a higher value.

I can't test it because I don't have any MAME ROMs, but I guess it should work fine.

Could you just make it an absurdly large number like 10000 files? 500 might be a little low, and I may currently be downloading a torrent filled with games. But thank you greatly for this!

 

[portugeek]

Here you go: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6957349/powerpc-eabi-mamemini.rar. The limit now is 500 files. Is that OK for you? I can recompile the DOL file a second time if you need a higher value.

I can't test it because I don't have any MAME ROMs, but I guess it should work fine.

In case you're curious, I tested it and it's recognizing more than 150 roms. So as far as rom count it seems to be working.

I'm not sure if the 150 rom limit was originally placed to maintain some kind of stability though. I tried a few random games and some didn't work, but Wii MAME is pretty picky with which games it allows to run. I guess the only way to really test it would be to run the same games on both dol's. But I was primarily concerned with testing the 150 rom list limit.

 

[DarkMatterCore]

Yeah, that's definitely true. After all, the emulator uses SDL to manage its resources, and it really can take up a lot of memory (which is the main reason the project was designed to be compiled with a modified libSDL ). The limit was certainly added to avoid memory conflicts.

I don't really think it would be safe to establish such a high a limit as 10000 files, but if you guys wanna test it anyway, here's it: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6957349/powerpc-eabi-mamemini_incredibly-absurd-limit.rar. Sorry for no uploading it before, I already had the DOL compiled since yesterday, but I was busy with some university stuff. =I

 

[duffmmann]

Yeah, that's definitely true. After all, the emulator uses SDL to manage its resources, and it really can take up a lot of memory (which is the main reason the project was designed to be compiled with a modified libSDL ). The limit was certainly added to avoid memory conflicts.

I don't really think it would be safe to establish such a high a limit as 10000 files, but if you guys wanna test it anyway, here's it: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6957349/powerpc-eabi-mamemini_incredibly-absurd-limit.rar. Sorry for no uploading it before, I already had the DOL compiled since yesterday, but I was busy with some university stuff. =I

Thank you! This works brilliantly

 

[smf]

So what ends up happening is that sometimes the game you want to play is a US "clone" of it's JP "parent." And for that US rom to work, you also need the JP rom of that same game included in your roms folder. Then when Mame loads up, it recognizes and shows both roms, which count against your 150 rom limit. Not to mention that some games require bits from more than one parent/clone.

The only time a game in MAME has two parents is when one is a BIOS. It never loads roms from a clone or one of it's siblings.

If you only want the clone to show up then put all the roms in the clone zip file, it won't find the parent then. If you just want the parent then don't give it any of the roms from the clone and that shouldn't show up either.

 

[portugeek]

The only time a game in MAME has two parents is when one is a BIOS. It never loads roms from a clone or one of it's siblings.

If you only want the clone to show up then put all the roms in the clone zip file, it won't find the parent then. If you just want the parent then don't give it any of the roms from the clone and that shouldn't show up either.

AWESOME!! And that'll work?! So if it's the clone that I want to play.. I drop all the roms "including parent" into the clone zip? And if I want to play the parent rom, then I take every other clone rom out of the rom folder and the parent rom still works?

 

[duffmmann]

Yeah, that's definitely true. After all, the emulator uses SDL to manage its resources, and it really can take up a lot of memory (which is the main reason the project was designed to be compiled with a modified libSDL ). The limit was certainly added to avoid memory conflicts.

I don't really think it would be safe to establish such a high a limit as 10000 files, but if you guys wanna test it anyway, here's it: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6957349/powerpc-eabi-mamemini_incredibly-absurd-limit.rar. Sorry for no uploading it before, I already had the DOL compiled since yesterday, but I was busy with some university stuff. =I

Now this is a minimal request, I don't know if you would know how to do this or not, but I would greatly appreciate this if you could do it. When viewing the game list, can it be programmed that if you push right or left, the game list moves down or up a page respectively? (like what you see in the gx emulators when viewing roms) The reason I ask, is that with so many games, it takes forever to scroll through when you can only move up and down the list one game at a time.

 

[DarkMatterCore]

Yeah, assuming the emulator uses the same macros from libogc (WPAD_BUTTON_LEFT, WPAD_BUTTON_RIGHT, and so on) for the filelist controls, this should be easy.

EDIT: Well, it took a while, but I *think* I did it. The emulator uses an "input port handler" (src/emu/inptport.h) that works by using its own constants and giving them values that correspond with those used in libogc to handle the controller input. Of course, this works by generically using the same constant names with every type of controller; this reduces greatly the amount of code used (and yes, I was expecting this from the beginning).

I don't really know if it will work properly or not - again, I don't have any MAME ROMs . Give it a try and tell me: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6957349/powerpc-eabi-mamemini_high-limit+filelist-mod.rar. It still has the 10000 files limit.

 

[duffmmann]

Yeah, assuming the emulator uses the same macros from libogc (WPAD_BUTTON_LEFT, WPAD_BUTTON_RIGHT, and so on) for the filelist controls, this should be easy.

EDIT: Well, it took a while, but I *think* I did it. The emulator uses an "input port handler" (src/emu/inptport.h) that works by using its own constants and giving them values that correspond with those used in libogc to handle the controller input. Of course, this works by generically using the same constant names with every type of controller; this reduces greatly the amount of code used (and yes, I was expecting this from the beginning).

I don't really know if it will work properly or not - again, I don't have any MAME ROMs . Give it a try and tell me: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6957349/powerpc-eabi-mamemini_high-limit+filelist-mod.rar. It still has the 10000 files limit.

Dude thank you so much, this works perfectly. All that I wanted done to this emulator to fit my needs were met by you and in incredibly quick time, I could not be more happy. Thank you so very much, you rock!

 

[portugeek]

Now this is a minimal request, I don't know if you would know how to do this or not, but I would greatly appreciate this if you could do it. When viewing the game list, can it be programmed that if you push right or left, the game list moves down or up a page respectively? (like what you see in the gx emulators when viewing roms) The reason I ask, is that with so many games, it takes forever to scroll through when you can only move up and down the list one game at a time.

I'm kinda late to this, but I thought this was already a feature? I remember, when I was going through the menu's, I could make it so that classic pro triggers would scroll UI Page Up and UI Page Down. I figured it also worked on the roms list.