MAME - Drivers/BIOS/I'm dumb question

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

First of all, sorry for making a thread about this, but I can't find the answer anywhere on the net, and I for some reason can't browse any older threads besides the ones on page 1.

Anyway, I suck at MAME. I'm trying to get Detana Twinbee to work, but you need the tmnt.c driver.
So I download that, put it in every folder I can think of, but it never works. Same goes for Batsugun.

Same goes for Gradius III. You need a BIOS for that. I download the BIOS, put it in the roms folder, doesn't work, MAMEUI says it's not working, even.

Now, for some reason when I google any MAME problem, the things I find either don't work, or are so complicated I feel like I need a PhD in computing to understand them.

So, I would love to know, how do I get Detana Twinbee and Gradius III to work.
Or better yet, what do I do with the drivers?

[Magma MK-II]

* Get the latest MAME version. Current is 0.157.
* Go to planetemu.net and download the BIOS pack. Extract it on the roms folder.
* Download the last revision of the games you want, also on planetemu.net, and put them on the roms folder as well.
* Play them.

[r0ck3rz]

Have you set a rom directory? Under Options>Directories> make sure the drop box is on ROMS, then click on either the default directory shown or "<end of list>" and click the "Browse..." button. Find and select the folder you put your roms in and click OK. It should then proceed to check your roms. I personally do this a second time(definitely clicking on "<end of list>" the 2nd time) with a separate folder for BIOS files.

Your games, I imagine are .zip files right? Otherwise the only other way they could work is as folders named exactly like the .zip file was.

At the same time, in MAME, under the "All Games" list, find the game you're looking for, scroll the bar at the bottom to the right if you need to, what you want to see is the "ROM name" column. Whatever that says there, is what you want the file to be named. So if it says "detatwin," you want the file to be detatwin.zip.

In my version of MAME (MAMEUIFX 0.154, apparently even I'm a few behind...), "Detana!! Twin Bee" is indented underneath "Bells & Whistles." That means you would need the "Bells and Whistles" rom for "Detana!! Twin Bee" to even run. MAME works with this parent rom/clone rom system. With the parent rom of "Bells & Whistles", you wouldn't even need the "Detana!! Twin Bee" rom, and "Bells & Whistles" is most likely in English, if "Detana!! Twin Bee" wasn't.

To see parent roms and indented clone roms yourself, under "Options," click on "Interface settings," and then check "Enable indentation for clones in list view" at the bottom right, then click the OK button.

Bells and Whistles rom should be "blswhstl.zip"
Gradius III should be named "gradius 3.zip"
Batsugun should be named "batsugun.zip"
^Well, for my version anyway.

None of those need an actual BIOS, so don't pay attention to "Source file" column.

If you're sure you're all set, and the game should run, left click the game in the list, then right click for a menu, and select "Audit." That should tell you if you're missing roms(within the .zip file), which if you are, may mean you need to find a site that's better at keeping up MAME's rom, which can change from version to version.

Hopefully that wasn't confusing, but ask questions if there's something you still don't understand.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

@ Magma Dragoon
Wow, can't believe how easy that was, I feel like an idiot. Then again, MAME is very confusing for me.
All the problematic games work now, thanks!

I'm still kinda confused why I didn't need those drivers after all, but I guess they are included in the BIOS or something.
Well, whatever it works now, so that's the most important part, I guess.

Thanks again!

r0ck3rz
Yeah, I had that stuff figured out. I could get other games to work, and I've used MAME before, so I knew the basics. I just didn't understand the BIOS and driver shit (still don't understand drivers)
I actually find MAME easier to work with than MAMEUI (mostly because with the Audit thingy half of the games don't show up, even those that worked in regular MAME).

And I knew that you need blswhstl for Twinbee, for example, but still, couldn't get it to work.

Thanks for answering anyway!

[Lord Dalek]

Mame frequently changes the names of certain rom sets when new clones are added and become the "default" set (for a while the cores were the World ones, but then they switched to US around .110 in 2006 I think). You need to keep a close eye out for when changes are made and certain sets need
to be updated.

Also only Konami games from Phoenix System on use bios files in MAME. Their 80's-Early 90's ones are just good ol Jamma.