how to use xmame..??
 

hello.. well, I'm pretty much disappointed coz cannot get xmame working..
simply don't understand it..
I've downloaded and installed xmame097.tgz (for slackware) and the frontend gxmame..
I've linked gxmame to the xmame.SDL binary, so, gxmame show a huge list of games..all of its
unavaiable.. I began then searching those games by hand..
the /usr/lib/games/xmame/ directory doesn't exist.. (that's the path where gxmame is looking for
roms and all that stuff).
So, I thought the installer put such directory in other place.. I made find -iname xmame* ..
but no /xmame/roms nowhere...
I made a tar -ztf xmame.tgz to see it contains.. and there's no single rom file... :confused:
I "imported" (from the fat partition) all the roms directory from the mame folder in win, and trigger xmame from this new copy within my ~/ directory.. not work..
I've downloaded 1 rom called '005.zip' (I read somewhere it's a shure-thing-this-game-works..
don't even know which game is it) ..and guess what: it doesn't work.
maybe it's a stupid detail I'm missing, maybe I'm not understanding the installation/startup procedure...but it cannot be SO difficult...! I don't know what to think...
:cry:
please, PLEASE.. can anybody give me some help with it?
thanks in advance.

well .. there's some progress in here..
I get it working using the ported roms from 'the dark side of the machine' (actually, I run just one game, but it's enough to know it works.)
feel things are gonna be easier to solve now..
one thing I still wanna know: it's usual the emulator by itself come with no-single-rom in the package, or the 'missing roms' should be somewhere in my filesystem??
:scratch:

Its normal. Rom distribution is illegal as they are all copyrighted.
I dont know how to use the gui. in fact I've been using mame on windows for years and never bothered with guis. They are just too slow to load because of the huge amount of supported games. On linux the roms should be on /usr/share/xmame/roms. They should all be in zip format. Actually finding them is a major pain these days. You might have more luck with torrents or IRC bots.
If you want to play any neogeo games like metal slug or King of fighters you'll also need the file neogeo.zip to be in the roms dir. Its the BIOS of that arcade machine. Many other games have their BIOS's in a separate file. Others have an entire hard drive image (like killer instinct) on a file with a chd extention.