Adding CPS1 Software list to MAME

[Yoshin]

Been chipping away at a CPS1 SDK for a while now, and while I'm very happy with how it is right now, the thing that I think would really push it over the edge is if there was a build of MAME that let ya define your own games similar to how Neo-Geo devs can (lucky twats! 😂)
Only problem is that MAMEs source is REALLY impenetrable to me.
TLr: Want to know how to add custom CPS1 games via a new CPS1.xml in the hash folder
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated

 

[Hurray Banana]

For dev you can overwrite the roms of another game and launch mame in debug mode to get it to ignore the checksum issues

Otherwise @Robert will know, he does hbmame

 

[Yoshin]

That's what the SDK does actually!
Also ooh I didn't know about that, seems cool! Fingers crossed, with a configurable software list that'd give devs the option to put down whatever they like, can write code so that when ya build a game, it just automatically updates that similar to ChibiAkumas Neo-Geo programming series

 

[Robert]

For CPS1, the implementation of rom loading is different between MAME and HBmame. In MAME, not only are the roms to be loaded, but every game has an entry in another file that describes where the control and protection registers are and various other things. If your game isn't in this table then it defaults to the settings for CPS2. So it becomes incredibly difficult to add your own games to a software list.

In HBmame I did away with all that, and instead there's an 128-byte .key file in the rom definitions that contains everything that's needed. HBmame doesn't support software lists, but by doing this the idea of a software list becomes possible, probably very easy to do.

So, you need to modify MAME's CPS1 code to be like HBmame code, then you need to add the extra line to allow the system to use a software list, then add the code to process the directives in the software-list entries, then you need to actually make the list.

If you're prepared to do all this, then you'll be able to accomplish your aim. But you'll have to do it yourself - nobody's going to do it for you.

 

[Yoshin]

Damn, sounds tricky
But thank you for the illumination, definitely a point on the board now!