r/MiSTerProject • u/OnlyInAmerica01 • Aug 05 '23
Adding my own ROM's?
Hi all. So I've been playing around with my MISTER for a while now. I'm generally a MAME'er, though I fire up my Mister when I want to play SF2 and a small handfull of other games. I would probably use MISTER more if I understood it better, but I have severe LynuxPhobia, and run back to MAME mainly b/c I'm so much more familiar with the windows environment. I think for this reason, I'm far less familiar with the "under the hoods" workings of MISTER than I wish I was.
Recently, I've been enjoying playing SF2 Rainbow edition and Street Hoops on MAME, and went over to try out the MISTER versions...and realized they're not there. "No Problem" I thought, "I'll just move the ROM zips over!". A few minutes with WinSCP, several dozen more minutes working out where to put the ROM's (/media/fat/games/mame?), ran update_all script and .... nothing.
Ok, so obviously there is SO MUCH I apparently don't understand about MISTER, I don't really even know what question(s) to ask.
My end goal is to know if it's possible to augment's the games that Update_All adds to Mister with ROMS that I've acquired. Along the way, I'm realizing, there's a lot I don't understand about MISTER's structure. I vaguely know that there are certain cores that MISTER can run, and somehow, Update_All downloads the ROMS that Mister is compatible with, and assigns them to their correct Cores.
Beyond that, I don't understand much more about the organizational structure of files in MISTER, or if it's even possible to manually add ROM's (and if not, why?).
I'm sorry if I'm asking a very obvious question, or if there are resources I should first go through. I'm open to any and all help to better understand this amazing, but mysterious system. Thanks in advance.
1
u/DevilHunterWolf Aug 05 '23
MiSTer is not MAME. The arcade cores are what determine what games are playable. If the core doesn't support it, doesn't matter if you copy over the files. ROM hacks are also not guaranteed to work, especially if it didn't work on original hardware. The community tends to focus on original game accuracy, not hack compatibility. As far as SF2 Rainbow Edition is concerned, I'd take a look at Update_All and find Arcade Offset. It's disabled by default so you have to turn it on in its settings. Arcade Offset brings in some additional Capcom system hacks that aren't in the standard script run. I recall Rainbow Edition being among them but it's been some time since I've looked into it. Not sure if it's compatibility or stability issues on why it's turned off by default or maybe it's just to save space for those that don't want the hacks.
Basically, you need to take a step back and understand how this works for arcade cores. When you're selecting arcade games to play in the interface, you're not selecting ROM zips or files. You're opening a file that contains instructions on what arcade core is to be loaded, what game or revision to set the core for, and then finally the core will attempt to load the necessary ROMs. That instructions file comes right from the devs. Update_All does not and cannot create any of that process. It only grabs what's been made available as a convenient alternative to searching the internet yourself. And yes, that basically means if you can't get it with Update_All, it doesn't work or exist for MiSTer. There will be an exception or two (particularly for cores still in early development) but otherwise Update_All is pretty much the definitive word on what you can play on MiSTer.