MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: MAME for MAC OS X ???

> > > I know about this but I am not sure if it is in .dmg or like a command prompt nor
> > > terminal:
> > >
> > > http://sdlmame.lngn.net/
> > >
> > > However, I am looking for the latest version that is available in .dmg or gui
> like
> > > MameUI, is there ?
> >
> > Use SDLMAME from http://sdlmame.lngn.net/ and combine it with a frontend like QMC2:
> > http://qmc2.arcadehits.net/wordpress/
> >
> > - Stiletto
>
> That's it! I thank you for it. This is the only one ? I want to compare to another
> one unless it is the only one. I am curious.

There's several Mac frontends, but you must always use something like SDLMAME with it.

One nearly _exactly_ like MAMEUI is one called M+GUI, formerly called MAME Plus GUI. Despite the name it is a standalone frontend, not like MAMEUI with MAME built in, so you still need to use something like SDLMAME (which is just standard MAME compiled for Mac, so you could compile it youself from mamedev.org if you wanted?) or maybe there is also MAMEPlus for Mac?

Anyways it is hard to recommend a download place for M+GUI for Mac, because the official download site (sf.net/projects/mameplus) only offers Windows. Either compile M+GUI yourself from http://mameplus.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mameplus/trunk/mamepgui/?view=tar, or you could try this dmg: http://emulationrealm.net/downloads/file/1350-m-gui-mac

Also in comparison to QMC2, I think it is not as updated and new MAME features on the commandline may not have been added to the UI in M+GUI. It also might be a little unstable. But it is almost exactly like MAMEUI but with MAME not built-in.

For a built-in frontend you would have to go back to a several-years-old version of MAME, such as MAME OSX based on MAME 0.136 or MacMAME for PPC, and you'd be missing out on all the updates over the last many years - so don't do that. Or OpenEmu as you say, but I don't recommend it unless you really like it.

Other Mac MAME frontends (that are very different looking from QMC2 and M+GUI):
AttractMode: http://attractmode.org/
MAME Library: http://www.randomsequence.com/software/mame-library/
MAME Launcher: http://nekocan.sitemix.jp/?page_id=17
AdvanceMenu: http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/menu-readme.html
MAME_Tunes: http://macapps.sakura.ne.jp/mame_tunes/index_en.html
and probably others if you use Google.

My advice: use one that is frequently updated, within the last year or two. That way you can be sure all MAME command-line/terminal options can be accessed and changed by the frontend.

Of the ones I listed, recently updated are QMC2, M+GUI, AttractMode, MAME Launcher. AdvanceMenu is one year outdated, MAME_Tunes and MAME Library are several years outdated. I do not know how old OpenEmu is either, sorry...

Sometimes you can get away with outdated frontends because over MAME's 18-year history, commandline interface does not change too much. But lately there have been many new commandline features so it is important to be up-to-date in 2014-2015. I think the frontend that supports the most commandline features (on Windows/Linux/Mac) is QMC2, and EmuLoader for Windows maybe a close second. AdvanceMenu is guaranteed not to support all the commandline features, and I have my doubts over most of the others mentioned in this post.

QMC2 also has the advantage of supporting MESS as well, which is MAME's computer and console emulator spinoff. There are VERY few OS X MESS frontends! M+GUI claims to, but i have not tested it. QMC2 also combines (platform independent) ROM management features, and there are very few ROM management utilities for OS X.

Also remember: if you don't like any of these frontend choices, you can try running MAME and a Windows frontend through Parallels or something like that to see what the performance is like, but you will get better performance with SDLMAME and a Mac native frontend.

[EDIT] A few others I know nothing about:
GameEx for Mac (really big for some reason, 270MB? I think it uses Wine somehow maybe. Released 05/29/2013): http://www.gameex.com/download-gameex/
EmuLaunch (from 2006): http://www.emulaunch.com/
MacMAMEInfoX (uploaded January 5th 2011): http://download.vastheman.com/macmameinfox.php

- Stiletto

Edited by Stiletto (03/30/15 08:24 PM)