MAME CHD Info and How to

CHD files are often a source of great confusion for MAME newbies. Find out what CHDs are and how to set them up properly with my quick tutorial.

One good compatibility solution that I can recommend is to match MAMEUI - http://www.mameui.info/ - with emuparadise (no rom site links, use Google please).

Some other important things to realise about MAME CHD games. Many of them are still in preliminary emulation status and even though you may be able to download them somewhere, there is no way for them work in MAME until the emulation is more complete. The best way to check the emulation status of any game is at MAWS, the ultimate MAME database:

http://maws.mameworld.info/maws/ (Sorry, MAWS is down at the moment. Alternative: Open current MAMEUI and click the CHD folder in the left field to view all CHD games, then click a game to view status near bottom right).

To call up a list of all the MAME parent roms that require a CHD, use the MAWS 'deluxe search' option. Then under 'resource type' select 'parents', and under 'CHD required' select 'yes'. Then hit 'search' to get the results. Look at 'driver status', 'colour emulation', and 'sound emulation' for 'preliminary', 'imperfect', or 'good' status indicators. Blank or garbled screenshots are also an indication of preliminary emulation status.

Even so, once you have an idea of which games may or may not be worth downloading there aren't always any guarantees that a particular game will run properly on your system. Some games, such as Gauntlet Dark Legacy, would require an extremely powerful system to run at full original performance. Others, like Street Fighter III 3rd Strike, will generally run fine, even on an old P4, in spite of the cps3.c driver status still being classified as imperfect at the time of writing.

Need help with MAME? MameAddicts! Getting you back to the classics. ;-)

Category:

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• chd
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• III
• 3rd
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• mameaddicts

[eliaskementse]

Nice video mate. This is exactly how it SHOULD be explained. I have done this in the past thanks to MA. Speaking of MA how is Blue's Journey going? Did you hit 40K pts yet?

[thunderhawk11]

Good. Very precise explanations, finally i understand how it all works. Tops man

[neckshredder1]

@RejectedManiac No problem. I guess you're talking about MAME32 Plus! Plus! (double plus) coz that's right; afaik it hasn't been updated properly since 0.119. Normal MAMEPlus! does get updated regularly though, which is what I used to test the game.

[neckshredder1]

@MrThunderwing OK, thanks for the info. Like you said, so long as it's still working properly then there's no worries.

[RejectedManiac]

@neckshredder1 Thanks a lot man. Apparently it was MAME32 Plus! that was the problem. It seems that it hasn't been updated for quite some time so I just tried it on regular MAME and it works fine. Sorry for the hassle and I posted this just in case someone else has the same problem they know what it is.

Thanks again!

[MrThunderwing]

@neckshredder1 Not that I've noticed so far, all seems to be good. I should probably add I've got other CHDs working exactly as you described - it's only SF3 that I had to add the extra file to.

[neckshredder1]

@MrThunderwing Yeah, there's something weird going on there then. The thing is though, is it working as good as it should? Do you notice any performance issues in-game (press F11), or anything else odd, like taking an extra long time to quit the game?

[MrThunderwing]

@neckshredder1 Hmm, I wonder if I've got this working in a bit of a strange way then as sfiii3_usa.29f400.u2 is definitely in the same folder, as the CHD image and not my roms folder. if I right click the zipped sfiii3 parent rom the sfiii3_usa.29f400.u2 file is indeed contained in it, but unless I have the sfiii3_usa.29f400.u2 file I downloaded separately in the sfiii3 CHD folder, I get a message saying it's missing. I wonder if I downloaded a corrupt parent rom? Still, it works, so I'm happy.

[neckshredder1]

@MrThunderwing Thanks mate. Yeah, if you right click>explore a normal sfiii3.zip parent rom then sfiii3_usa.29f400.u2 is the name of the rom file inside the zip. You said you added it to the chd folder. I'm guessing you meant the roms folder? It's best to have the directory structure as per the vid or this directory example:

C:\MAME\roms\sfiii3.zip\sfiii3­­\cap-33s-2.chd

That means MAME looks in roms, sees sfiii3.zip parent rom, then looks in sfiii3 and sees cap-33s-2.chd.

[MrThunderwing]

Great tutorial mate, this really breaks the whole CHD thing down into a nice bite sized chunk. Just a little FYI though for anyone having trouble getting SF3 to run, I needed to add another file (sfiii3_usa.29f400.u2) to the folder I had the CHD in before it would work. Just to confuse things, in it's original downloaded form the file was named sf33usa.bin - I just had to change the name (don't keep the .bin extension) to the one I mentioned above and all was groovy.

[neckshredder1]

@RejectedManiac No worries. OK, I checked KI2 and it runs perfectly. I got the game files from emuparadise and used MAMEPlus! 0.145 from sourceforge:

mameplus_bin_x86-0.145r4981-20­120209

[RejectedManiac]

@neckshredder1 Thanks a lot! Been trying to figure it out for the longest time. I tried Killer Instinct 2 v1.4 and when I do a audit this is what it says. "kinst2 : kinst2 - NOT FOUND" When I go to run the game it says this "kinst2.chd UNSUPPORTED CHD VERSION

ERROR: required files are missing, the game cannot be run."

Thanks!