UbuntuMAME - Adding NES and Atari2600

From JTSageWiki

[edit] Adding Other Consoles

AdvanceMESS is the Linux port of MESS (Multiple Emulator Super System). It is an attempt to make one emulator for all home computer - game consoles. Unfortunately due to the fact that development has stopped it can be a little buggy on some of the systems it emulates. There is no plans by anyone right now to continue the development of this program. You can see a list of the systems that AdvanceMESS attempts to support here at the official site. Note you may need to scroll down to find the system you are looking for.

Nintendo's NES and Atari 2600 emulation are provided via AdvanceMESS. Overall, the emulators are good, but again, AdvanceMESS is way behind the official build of MESS (and also may never be updated) - you can see the exact status of the NES and Atari 2600 emulators. You'll need to build and install AdvanceMESS separate from AdvanceMame and AdvanceMenu.

AdvanceMESS Download and Configuration

To install AdvanceMESS you can follow the line by line set of commands listed below.

 mame@mame-machine:~$ cd ~/source
 mame@mame-machine:~$ wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/advancemame/advancemess-0.102.0.1.tar.gz?download
 mame@mame-machine:~$ tar -xvf advancemess-0.102.0.1.tar.gz
 mame@mame-machine:~$ cd advancemess-0.102.0.1 ; ./configure --prefix=/usr

At this point the configuration script will run and check whether the optional libraries are available or not. At end of the process a summary of supported options is displayed. Unless something has gone wrong it should exactly match this - if it does not, please email me, so I can find out what I may have missed.

   == Drivers/Libraries ==
   Video : fb slang ncurses sdl
   Sound : alsa oss sdl
   Keyboard : sdl raw event
   Joystick : sdl raw event
   Mouse : sdl raw event
   Misc : zlib expat pthread freetype2

You can now compile the AdvanceMESS source code:

 mame@mame-machine:~$ make

If the (lengthy) compilation completes successfully, the program and support files can be installed:

 mame@mame-machine:~$ sudo make install

AdvanceMESS Configuration

Next, we need to configure AdvanceMESS. Since we have done most of this, we can cut this one short. Fire up a default config:

 mame@mame-machine:~$ advmess --default

Then, we should add the video modes - possibly set the overlay size to 1024 again as well, you can use advv again, or:

 mame@mame-machine:~$ cat advmame.rc | grep device_video_modeline >> advmess.rc

Integrate with AdvanceMENU

Then, procure your game rom files, and place them into the proper directories listed below. Remember that one folder is considered global while the other that starts with the ~ is considered a local folder. Unless you have multiple users using the emulators on one machine it is best to keep the files local.:

    /usr/share/advance/image/nes OR ~/.advance/image/nes
    /usr/share/advance/image/a2600 OR ~/.advance/image/a2600

Then, edit ~/.advance/advmenu.rc and add:

   emulator "Nintendo" generic "advmess" "nes -cart %f"
   emulator_roms "Nintendo" "/usr/share/advance/image/nes"

   emulator "Atari2600" generic "advmess" "a2600 -cart %f"
   emulator_roms "Atari2600" "/usr/share/advance/image/a2600"

• Note: the way AdvanceMESS starts a game is by asking for the system, the type of media, and then any switches. So if you tried to run AdvanceMESS from the command line you would need to, via the command line, go to the folder with all your game roms in it and run a command that might look similar to this:

    mame@mame-machine:~$ advmess nes -cart smb.zip

The %f is a AdvanceMenu switch that automatically inserts the name of the game rom you have selected.

By going back into the AdvanceMenu system, and pressing F6, your other platforms should be available for play. Note that emulation is less than perfect, I find little issues particularly with the sound on NES, but they are certainly playable.

[edit] Next Step

UbuntuMAME - Adding a Light Gun

[edit] Other Steps

   1.)  UbuntuMAME - Overview
   2.)  UbuntuMAME - Base System Install
   3.)  UbuntuMAME - Video Drivers
   4.)  UbuntuMAME - Clean-Up and Networking
   5.)  UbuntuMAME - Build and Install
   6.)  UbuntuMAME - Initial Configuration and Testing
   7.)  UbuntuMAME - Fine Tune Advance Configurations
   8.)  UbuntuMAME - Auto-Login and Auto-Start
   9.)  UbuntuMAME - Adding NES and Atari2600
   10.) UbuntuMAME - Adding a Light Gun
   11.) UbubtuMAME - Adding a Jukebox System
   12.) UbubtuMAME - Support Files for MAME - MESS