ClRMAMEPRO Tutorial For Noobs.

[Fromlostdays]

If, like myself, you were wondering what all this DAT stuff was, this is for you. (I assume most of you all don't need to read on except for a laugh). Ultra-noob here: I tried CLRMAMEPRO a few weeks ago using the DOCS tutorial and couldn't wrap my mind around it. I finally sat down with it again today and just touched shit until I got it working. So, here's a very simplistic tutorial for noobs.

1:First off, don't let the name freak you out. Say it like this = C.L.R. MAME PRO. Voila. One hurdle down.

2:Ok, the first thing you need to do is download DAT files. I suggest dling a DAT for all systems you have. In order to complete this mission, all you need to know is HYPERLIST and DAT-O-MATIC. Hyperlist is on the tab above and heres a link to DAT-O: http://datomatic.no-intro.org/. Make a folder on desktop or put them in an easy to get to one, and download away. (It will be worth it)

3: Download C L R MAME PRO. You can google it, and I think there is a link in the DOCS section for dl. Download the zip, if you want my advice, so you can just extract it rather than go through the installation process. Make a folder named CLRMAMEPRO and extract there.

4: Inside your CLRMAMEPRO folder you should have a cmpro64.exe along with some other folders. Look for the one that named "datfiles". You guessed it, transfer all your previously downloaded dats into that folder. (Note: if they are zipped, unzip them. They have to have the .dat extension)

5: Now, hit the cmpro64.exe to open the program. I'm not sure, but if you have a different version and the exe is named something different, don't panic. This will work. The first time you open it some shit comes up, just get through it. You're looking for a box that says >Profiler< at the top.

6: at the top left hand corner you will see a folder named [NEW DATFILES] mouse click it and you'll see all your dats listed in the right hand screen. Click one of your dats. Immediately a box should pop up saying "No Settings Found". This is good. Just make sure you click the box that says "Default"

7: What the shit just happened? Its normal. You should have seen some flashing shit and now the big box (profiler) is gone and a little box appeared. When you clicked your dat file, you set up a PROFILE for whatever system/dat file you clicked. Because step by steps confuse me if I don't know whats going on, I'm going to give you a brief overview of what you should be looking at.

A small rectangular box with six boxes in it.

Starting from the right

About box- tells you about shit

Profiler box- lets you reopen the profiler to load another dat

Settings box - !Important! This is where you're going to set your rom path!

Merger box- I have no idea what this does yet as I haven't needed it

Rebuilder box- This is a handy. This box is going to allow you to take your romset and make a duplicate set (and you can even have the program auto zip your roms.)

Scanner Box- Also cool. This box will let you scan your romsets for missing roms (it makes a txt document for you)

So lets recap. We've loaded up a dat file from the profiler. That dat file had all the information for the roms inside it (magic). Now what can we do with all this?

1: click the settings box. Don't get freaked out, you only need to worry about two buttons here. Click the ADD button and find your rom folder. Click it, and now you'll see the path to it in the big white box. click the path, and then click the Save As Def button on the bottom right.

Congrats. All the hard work is done.

The only point I can see in rebuilding romsets is that you can have this program put them into individual zip files, and (WOOHOO) it automatically renames the files to that rom (usa) type hyperspin likes so much. Just click the rebuilder box, set your souce rom folder, and if I were you I'd make another folder called Newset or something and have that as your destination. I've done this multiple times today and I've always wound up with two sets (my original) and the (rebuild set). In other words the program never touched my original roms, but make a backup of them all if you want.

Once you have your newset, switch them out for the old. Simple as that.

The other cool thing you can do now is click the Scanner Box. (This will only work if you've gone into the Settings Box and set up your Rompath as explained earlier) On the bottom left after you click the Scanner box, you should see buttons called Miss List, and Have List. Awesome. If you click Miss List the program will scan your rom directory and create a text file admonishing you for all the roms you don't have. (Its actually sort of amazing how many I was missing, I felt admonished). I personally created a folder in my CLR MAME PRO directory called "Missing" and saved all my texts there so I can breeze through them and see which roms I'm missing.

Now, when you're done with all that, click profiler box. Add another dat file, click it open from the profiler and repeat.

Ok, I'm sure this program can do a lot of other shit, but I don't know how, so thats the end of this tutorial. I'll update as I learn more, but basically rebuilding the romsets and finding which roms I was missing was all I needed so far. If this is completely obnoxious, I apologize, but I do hope it helps someone.

I forgot to mention that some systems NES in particular will give you an error when you try to load the dat file. I'm not 100 percent on this, but if you go into the headers folder into the clrmamepro directory, there are a few xmls. one is "nes". If you rename that file exactly like this "no-intro_nes" you can get around that error message. Another box pops up and I just clicked yes. I haven't had any problems, but don't quote me on this. You might want to do a little more research before you start messing with the headers. Maybe someone else can flesh that one out.

One last thing... I'm not positive on this, but it seems like the scanner will only scan for missing roms if your roms are zipped... so rebuild to zips, then scan.

Goodluck!

Walter.

[KesMonkey]

I was stuck in step 6, until I spotted your mistake.

6: at the top left hand corner you will see a folder named [NEW DATFILES] mouse click it and you'll see all your dats listed in the right hand screen. Click one of your dats. Immediately a box should pop up saying "No Settings Found". This is good. Just make sure you click the box that says "Default"

That emboldened line should read "Double-click one of your dats".

Cheers!

[knewlife]

One question... When I scan to check just for roms and sets as I don't have the chds... I get missing roms 0 of 33$$%%, and missing sets 138 of 56&(()&$. Why I have those missing sets... Is because of the chds I don't have?