MAME's search path for a set is the set and every ancestor
(src/emu/driver.cpp:31-38, src/emu/romload.cpp:67-84 at mame0289), so
a clone reads the ROMs it shares with its parent from the parent's
archive. games/arcade/<profile>.json now records, under parents, each
parent game set with ROMs and the clones whose romof chain reaches it
before any BIOS set, and rom_search_sets adds them to what a command
reads. The installer's index leaves them out, as it does the sources.
arcade_parent_importer --all is re-run: every profile gains parents,
and mame0258, mame0278, mame2010, mame2015, mame2016 and fbneo also
gain the sources their committed files lacked.
Manifests, EmuDeck and RetroDECK only: videopac.zip reaches
roms/odyssey2 beside i8244.zip, electron.zip roms/electron, and the 35 parent
sets the profile holds (a7800, apple2e, intv, videopac and others)
reach arcade, consolearcade and mame, the folders whose command starts
any machine. verify --all keeps its severity and status counts.
ES-DE starts standalone MAME with -rompath %GAMEDIR%\;%ROMPATH%/<system>
in 78 live commands across 54 systems (resources/systems/linux/
es_systems.xml at retrodeck-main-20261103-162710, 15e1b236; two more
are commented out). The command line outranks mame.ini, so RetroDECK's
MAME reads its sets in the roms folder each command names and in no
BIOS folder. The ES-DE rom folders parser now records, per folder, the
folders a standalone command passes as its ROM search path and the
machines it starts, or that the game is the machine (%BASENAME%).
Rescraped at the pinned revisions: retrodeck, emudeck and
emudeck-windows gain these records and nothing else.
A command reads the sets its machines load: the machine's own set, the
BIOS sets on its romof chain and the device sets with ROMs it
instantiates, from games/arcade/mame.json (mame0289 -listxml). That
index now also lists the game and device sets of each driver source
file, so a %BASENAME% folder reads for its board: neogeo and stv by
their BIOS root, cps1-3 and model2 by source file, daphne and laserdisc
by the laserdisc player devices, gameandwatch and lcdgames by the
handheld sources, any other (arcade, mame, consolearcade) for every
machine. The published installer copy of the index leaves the sources
out.
Manifests: RetroDECK gains 1399 files, 378.2 MB, below roms/. Of the 219
sets named as read outside the BIOS folder, 58 reach 146 files (25.9 MB),
161 stay named, no command's machine reading them. 441 sets RetroDECK's
list also declares at bios/ reach 1253 files (352.3 MB), 429 each in
arcade and mame and 480 in consolearcade. No other platform changes.
game_dat_importer and arcade_parent_importer each kept an exact-text
copy of write_if_changed, so a redump refresh rewrote every catalog for
its fetched date alone. Both now use artifacts.write_if_changed, which
treats fetched as a timestamp. A No-Intro rebuild still rewrites its
catalogs, since asset_updated_at moves with it, so check_freshness keeps
reading a fetched date no older than the pack.
The games importers wrote through fixed .part names, the new options had
no help text, and romfolders stopped on the first setup the offline cache
lacked. RetroArch's rom folder map is regenerated from its source spec
(path null, as the schema says). The installer's Python 3.8 job imports
the games tests without pyyaml, so the region rules load lazily.
mame2000, mame2003 and mame2003-plus carry a DAT their code moved past. Their parents and BIOS sets now come from src/driver.c and src/drivers/ at the pin, named by the src tree sha. The DAT is still read to report gaps. FBNeo DATs are read one namespace each, console sets keyed by driver. A BIOS with no dumped ROM is no longer listed.
The games index now names, per arcade core, the game sets that load no
BIOS set and every BIOS set, so a set on a card the DAT does not know is
told apart from one that needs nothing. Each board default core of a rom
folder gets its own fallback set, and index.json maps every folder name
a setup uses to its systems, for a games folder on a computer.
Abdessamad Derraz