fails to find roms
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#2 fails to find roms
Hi Mathew,
thanks for all the cool evo work b.t.w.
I tried gome-video-arcade it does not seem to find any roms on my system. I have some in:
/usr/share/xmame/roms
There is no feedback from the ''building game database'
stage, nor any clue how to change the default directory.
Any suggestions?
Bill
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Better handling of corner cases like not finding any ROMs or dealing with a missing or malfunctioning MAME program is something I hope to address in the next release.
First thing I'd suggest is, before attempting to use the front-end further, make sure "xmame" (I assume you're using xmame) successfully starts a game from the command-line. A working and properly configured MAME program is a prerequisite for GNOME Video Arcade. If you're using a packaged MAME program from your Linux distro or a 3rd party repo, then it's really up to the maintainer of that package to provide that. So try running something like "xmame pacman" (your choice of game) from a terminal and see if that works.
Assuming xmame is working, GVA provides a few command-line options to help you run some basic sanity checks.
The first is "--which-emulator" or "-w". This reports which emulator program GVA is trying to use.
e.g. $ gnome-video-arcade --which-emulator
/usr/bin/xmame
The second is "--inspect=[config-key]" or "-i [config-key]". This prints the value of a MAME configuration key as reported by the emulator program GVA is using. So the result you see is exactly what GVA is using internally.
The first config-key to check is "rompath", which is the list of directories in which MAME is looking for ROMs.
e.g. $ gnome-video-arcade --inspect rompath
/usr/share/xmame/roms
If this result doesn't make sense, the next value to check is "inipath", which is the list of directories in which MAME is looking for additional configuration files beyond the standard /etc/xmame/xmamerc file.
e.g. $ gnome-video-arcade --inspect inipath
$HOME/.mame;.;ini
Beyond this it's just a matter of digging through xmame's configuration to figure out what's broken. If xmame turns out to be in working order, I can help debug GNOME Video Arcade further.
Hope this helps.
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OK, thanks,
I had not understood what
" -i, --inspect=NAME Inspect an emulator setting"
could do from the help page.
I was using a locally compiled xmame, /usr/local/bin/xmame.x11
but with roms in the system directory /usr/share/xmame
I fixed that now with a soft-link.
However, what I learnt was that an X hang which gxmame suffers on startup
really comes from xmame, so this code has the same problem. Something about my
fglrx drivers I think.
Oh well, thank you!
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Leaving this bug open for now as a reminder to make GVA more helpful in situations like this.
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GNOME Video Arcade 0.5.6 addresses this by presenting a helpful dialog on startup if no ROMs are found. The Help button on the dialog opens a new Troubleshooting section in the user documentation with instructions similar to below.
Closing as Fixed.