OS X OpenEmu Doesn't Work -- At least as far as I can tell

[marshzd]

I am on a 2011 Macbook Pro, I've put dual SSD drives in it (removed the CD ROM drive). I'm running Mavericks with all the latest updates, and recently updated Final Cut X to the newest version. If you need more details to help me solve, let me know.

OpenEmu opens but it won't accept any game I attempt to add to it. When I try to play a game straight from the menu, it crashes the program. So all I can do is look at the list of systems...And create an empty custom list since I can't add any games. Has anyone else seen this problem? I tried looking on their site, didn't see anything. Maybe I'm just screwed.

Anyways, thanks in advance.

 

[Laucian Nailor]

The release version 1.0 appeared to work fine for me and I tried SNES and Genesis games that seemed fine, however...
I played FF2 on SNES for about an hour and a half. Every time you stop emulation it saves the game state. Went back to it later on the day and it resumed from much earlier and so I tried to load my ingame save which had also vanished. So, maybe good for say sonic on genesis but I'd be worried about investing a lot of time in an RPG if your progress is lost so easily. I also tried to download the beta version to try out PS1 emulation, but trying to add FF7 disk 1to the library or run it always just crashed the programme.
The above was on mavericks on an iMac.

It definitely has promise, but I'd like to be convinced on reliability before I invest too much time using it,

 

[Nickwell24]

I also have a 2011 Macbook Pro, mine is the 15" 2.2 Quad Core running Mavericks. I used OpenEMU this week and all the games I threw at it ran well except 1 which refused to load, Joe Montana NFL 95 for SEGA. You might try a reinstall to see if it fixes your issue.

 

[FrankR1981]

Open Emu not working on my MBA 2012 either

I've only been able to install two NES games Super Mario Bros 1 and 3

when I try adding Zelda LTTP to SNES it doesn't even install.

whats weird is that on my iMac 2011 it works fine but I did have to add the file name .smc for it to load correctly. I've since loaded about 5 others no problem.. the problem lies in the MBA I guess??

 

[FrankR1981]

I may have figured out the problem

when I went into OpenEmu preferences the library was pointing to the default library, only that folder didn't exist (weird because its the app installed library) so I went into Library>Application Support and added the folder "OpenEmu" and inside that created "Game Library" just like its listed under preferences.. and whooolla it started accepting my games.

Hope that helps.

 

[n198ua]

"OenEmu" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.......anyone else getting this error ? I just downloaded it.

 

[ahall52]

"OenEmu" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.......anyone else getting this error ? I just downloaded it.

You're okay. Assuming that you trust the download AND are trying to open the program from your downloads stack, you will want to do the following:

- Click your downloads stack.
- Click the [Open in Finder] or [x More in Finder] option at the top of the stack.
- Right-click the OpenEmu icon / application in the Finder window.
- Click [Open] on the "Do you trust this application" window. (Again, assuming you trust your download.)

After you do so, you'll probably want to drag the application into your Applications folder for quick access in the future. Once you authorize a specific application on your Mac, you don't have to go through these steps for it again.

 

[FrankR1981]

"OenEmu" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.......anyone else getting this error ? I just downloaded it.

you will have to go into security settings and enable the following


Allow Apps downloaded from:

Anywhere that is if you trust OpenEmu... you can always change it back when you're done installing.

 

[hyunlee89]

can't play at all

On my 2012 rMBP (with Mavericks), I have installed Openemu but can't seem to play any of the games loaded. Even the games (ROM) starter pack from openemu.org can't be played. I have tried almost everything: restarting my mac, deleting (all associated files) and reinstalling openemu... and none of them seems to be helping.
Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

 

[FrankR1981]

Can't play? Elaborate please. Not loading when clicked?

 

[star-affinity]

you will have to go into security settings and enable the following


Allow Apps downloaded from:

Anywhere that is if you trust OpenEmu... you can always change it back when you're done installing.

You can also right/control-click on the app and then choose ”Open” to get a dialog box where you allow the app to open despite your security settings in System Preferences.

 

[hyunlee89]

yep. Basically I can load the game to openemu just fine but when I click 'play', it doesn't do anything. This is applied to all the games that I have loaded.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

How are you supposed to import games? I drag Atari roms into the program where it says "drop here" and it immediately comes up with "Game Scanner: Resolve Issues" and when I click on it, I see my list of roms (that all work in Stella by itself) and then what? If I click a checkmark next to one and then manually select Atari 2600 it will add to the library, but I have HUNDREDS of games. I am NOT going to add them one at a freaking time and despite "Edit" having a "select all" option, it's ghosted out so there is no way that I can see to select all of them and tell OpenEmu they are Atari 2600 games. I mean what else would they be? I added them to the Atari 2600 drop box. It's ridiculous. I looked on their site for help and there's NOTHING about installing any games or anything helpful at all. Why the hell do I have to click on them to approve them? It's absurd. This would take HOURS to manually set up. I thought this was supposed to make things easier? With Stella, you just point it to the damn rom directory for Atari 2600 games and BAM you're done! WTF is this making life difficult?

Ok, I see it wants the .a26 extension rather than .bin. So now I have to rename all the files instead? At least I can automate that (Stella doesn't care either way).

 

[Janichsan]

How are you supposed to import games? I drag Atari roms into the program where it says "drop here" and it immediately comes up with "Game Scanner: Resolve Issues" and when I click on it, I see my list of roms (that all work in Stella by itself) and then what? If I click a checkmark next to one and then manually select Atari 2600 it will add to the library, but I have HUNDREDS of games. I am NOT going to add them one at a freaking time and despite "Edit" having a "select all" option, it's ghosted out so there is no way that I can see to select all of them and tell OpenEmu they are Atari 2600 games. I mean what else would they be? I added them to the Atari 2600 drop box. It's ridiculous. I looked on their site for help and there's NOTHING about installing any games or anything helpful at all. Why the hell do I have to click on them to approve them? It's absurd. This would take HOURS to manually set up. I thought this was supposed to make things easier? With Stella, you just point it to the damn rom directory for Atari 2600 games and BAM you're done! WTF is this making life difficult?

Ok, I see it wants the .a26 extension rather than .bin. So now I have to rename all the files instead? At least I can automate that (Stella doesn't care either way).

".bin" is probably the least descriptive file extension conceivable. OpenEmu supports two dozen different emulated platforms, and for most of these there is a supported file format with the extension ".bin" – and that's in addition to all the other file types that could have this extension. OpenEmu can do a lot, and you'll notice that it narrows down the available choice of platforms as much as possible, but there is only so much it can do to decide which is ultimately the correct one.

And, by the way: ⌘+? opens the built-in help as in almost every other Mac application.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

".bin" is probably the least descriptive file extension conceivable. OpenEmu supports two dozen different emulated platforms, and for most of these there is a supported file format with the extension ".bin" – and that's in addition to all the other file types that could have this extension. OpenEmu can do a lot, and you'll notice that it narrows down the available choice of platforms as much as possible, but there is only so much it can do to decide which is ultimately the correct one.

And, by the way: ⌘+? opens the built-in help as in almost every other Mac application.

Well, up to now I've only used emulators with their own given roms in their own folders so it's never been an issue. Here, it would help if you could just "Select All" for the checkmark part and that would solve the issue for most ROMs. I've renamed the Atari 2600 roms .a26 since Stella uses that as well as .bin, but it would also be helpful if the help files for OpenEMU had a page showing all the preferred .extensions. I didn't see such a page online. I found .a26 from an unrelated emulator page.

 

[Les Kern]

can't play at all

On my 2012 rMBP (with Mavericks), I have installed Openemu but can't seem to play any of the games loaded. Even the games (ROM) starter pack from openemu.org can't be played. I have tried almost everything: restarting my mac, deleting (all associated files) and reinstalling openemu... and none of them seems to be helping.
Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

I gave up on Emu and went with Mame64. You have to start from command line but everything runs.

 

[kaioshade]

The experimental 2.0.1 version seems to work significantly better for me. Their mame core seems to be very hit or miss. Something is definitely off with it. For now i am using SDLMAME. OpenEmu is also missing a lot of shaders that i use.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I don't see MAME even listed as an option in OpenEMU. Where do you set up arcade games? Or do you mean the new combined Mame/Mess that runs console games via the MESS system integration?

For arcade games, I still stick with Mame OS X as it has a very nice GUI built-in. SDLMame is command line only and the only front-end I've found for it wouldn't even run here on El Capitain. MAME also has/had a bad habit of screwing with ROM formatting requirements over and over and over again and I know I got freaking sick of it (first used it in 1999). Once they covered the games I liked, I pretty much froze my setup anyway for Mame32 so I could actually just play the games instead of playing ROM manager.... I had to update some for OS X, but it's not been updated since 2009 either (SDL crappy no GUI version excepted). We had Mame32 on Windows for over 15 years. Why in all this time no one could be bothered to port that superior GUI to OS X and maintain it over that horrible idea of a command-line only SDL is beyond me, especially on a Mac that has been based on a usable GUI from DAY ONE. WTF wants to run command line games on a Mac? I like UNIX and I still don't. There are too many similar rom names to be bothered starting more than a small rom collection that way.

 

[Janichsan]

I don't see MAME even listed as an option in OpenEMU.

You need the experimental version of OpenEmu. There's a pop-up menu on the OpenEmu webpage to the right of the "Download" button.

 

[kaioshade]

I don't see MAME even listed as an option in OpenEMU. Where do you set up arcade games? Or do you mean the new combined Mame/Mess that runs console games via the MESS system integration?

For arcade games, I still stick with Mame OS X as it has a very nice GUI built-in. SDLMame is command line only and the only front-end I've found for it wouldn't even run here on El Capitain. MAME also has/had a bad habit of screwing with ROM formatting requirements over and over and over again and I know I got freaking sick of it (first used it in 1999). Once they covered the games I liked, I pretty much froze my setup anyway for Mame32 so I could actually just play the games instead of playing ROM manager.... I had to update some for OS X, but it's not been updated since 2009 either (SDL crappy no GUI version excepted). We had Mame32 on Windows for over 15 years. Why in all this time no one could be bothered to port that superior GUI to OS X and maintain it over that horrible idea of a command-line only SDL is beyond me, especially on a Mac that has been based on a usable GUI from DAY ONE. WTF wants to run command line games on a Mac? I like UNIX and I still don't. There are too many similar rom names to be bothered starting more than a small rom collection that way.

Mame OS X is extremely outdated. Also, SDLMame has a GUI. It is simple, but it does what it needs to do, list games and run them. Also command line is still useful for discerning between rom variations and sets.

Also, I took a look at the source. OpenEmu is still using Mame .149 as its core, so a lot of the romsets are outdated. For Arcade, i am going to stick with SDLMame.

At least i got more shaders working with OpenEmu. 2XBR+Hylian CRT is bliss.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Mame OS X is extremely outdated.

Outdated how? If it plays the games I want to play, then it's still relevant to me, at least. More importantly, I don't feel like playing "chase the romset" anymore. The MAME teams regularly FRACK with the roms and rom names and make Mame refuse to run the game even when the rom isn't actually USED in the emulation. So unless they have a rom checker that will automatically find the roms for you, I'll skip it. I've got thousands of ROMs and I don't want to update tons of them. In fact, just to get Mame OS X running, I made a list of games I'd actually play and only updates the roms that needed it from that list (couple hundred at most). I used to chase that "got to have them all" collector routine back in the early 2000s and realized it was STUPID when I'll never play 99.9% of them.

Really, it would be nice if someone would take over the Mame OS X project. It had a pretty decent front-end. Yes, it could be improved (Mame32 was where it was at on Windows), but when you've got a Mac you can't always be picky. I still have a Windows machine and can run Window virtually, but I hate doing if I don't have to.

Also, SDLMame has a GUI. It is simple, but it does what it needs to do, list games and run them.

To me, that's a poor excuse in 2015. Mame32 was AWESOME back in 2000 even! The fact that a decade and a half later there's some half-baked version of Mame still floating around due to nothing but laziness (i.e. no will to make a good frontend built-in) on the part of the Mame developers...well screw them. Yeah, I can say that now because I don't care anymore. Everyone was always so careful to kiss their butts lest they get upset and not finish their Mortal Kombat 4 emulation or whatever crap. These guys never had any interest in playing the games, just playing collector. That's why they got perverse pleasure out of changing the rom set names every single version, just to screw with people!

Also command line is still useful for discerning between rom variations and sets.

Yeah and Linux is a real desktop operating system. That's why I'm using OS X....

Also, I took a look at the source. OpenEmu is still using Mame .149 as its core, so a lot of the romsets are outdated. For Arcade, i am going to stick with SDLMame.

Yeah and what new games or improvements have their been that those romsets are "outdated"? Don't you think after 15-20 years, the rom sets should be pretty damn stable by now? I'd sure as hell think so. No, I always believed that they changed them just to screw with people 85% of the time (I mean just changing the NAMES of the roms that don't even have names for real!) That's what freeloaders/leeches get in their minds.

The only interest I have in a newer Mame version is that Mess is now a part of it. I haven't looked at MESS in some time, but it wasn't making a lot of useful progress compared to separate emulators for all those years I followed that stuff. I mean why use a half-baked Mess version of a C64 emulation if VICE works almost 100%? Mess never really had any good front-ends made for it either. I had a Mame32 based one that worked well for some things (cartridges), but it was kind of messy for discs, etc. but still better than nothing (i.e. command line). I have no idea if it's improved any overall or what systems work on it, etc. but I have separate emulations for the ones I care about (i.e. Amiga, C64, Atari 800) and OpenEmu seems pretty good for a Mac now for the game consoles, overall (Atari/Intellivsion/Coleco/NES stuff all works great and most of the newer stuff as well as far as I can tell). Most of it is just nostalgia for me anyway. I'm not really oging to play games I never got around to playing or something. I just like to crank out a game of AD&D, Adventure or WarRoom once in awhile.

 

[kaioshade]

Fair enough. If a previous version of Mame does what you need, by all means use it. For me, Cave SH3 emulation did not come into play until .150, and .155 only properly emulated slowdown in most of the games. I have the 360 versions of most of the Cave collection, but the "pure" experience can only be had in Mame. (although Mushihimesama has an amazing PC port now, with Deathsmiles coming 2016)

I also think you are being a bit hyperbolic with the renaming of romsets. As more board variations are known and dumped, yes some of them can change. But i highly doubt the Mame devs are doing it just for giggles and to screw with the userbase. its trivial to do ./mame64 -verifyroms and get the right romset in the case of a revision. Proper preservation is key. If changing a romset name will give me more accurate emulation in a game, i will gladly change.

I cannot comment about mess, as i never messed with it too much.

Also, what are you looking for in a front end? Just curious.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Cave SH3 seems long beyond my arcade time. Most arcades died by 2000 around here and I played mostly pinball in the 1990s anyway. Most of the games I emulate are from the early to mid 1980s and a few late '80s and maybe an early 90s game here and there.

It's EASY to "CHECK" Roms. I always found it a royal PITA to go find and fetch updated ROMS every single Mame revision (especially back when I was following Mame in the early 2000s when new verisons came out constantly, often with new games I'd want, but also making me update my ROM sets again and again). No one wanted to make it easy to auto-update ROMs since the official MAME position was you should only run roms you own and that shouldn't be more than a dozen or so in most cases so WTF are people doing "collecting" them? At least that was the type of line I remember reading 15 years ago. To me, it was mostly nostalgia. It turns out that unlimited access to games I could only dream of playing for longer periods as a poor kid with limited quarters isn't so "great" after all. I mean today's games are way more fun and aren't designed just to eat quarters. Still, I got quite good at some games and they're still fun to play (e.g. I was always good Gyruss and Dig Dug).

Personally, I liked the Mame32 front-end. The Mame OS X one is OK too. I used other ones 15 years ago as things came out (remember RAINE? Or DOS-only front-ends designed for cabinets?) I think Arcade@Home was the first I ever tried back then. Really, I don't care as long as it's easy to scroll through lists, sort by list and view artwork, cabinets, etc. It's as much as nostalgic experience to look at the historical information of a game and see photos of the cabinet etc. for me as playing it (i.e. I spent a lot of time walking through arcades LOOKING at games I couldn't afford to play very often. It was still neat to see what was coming down the pike as home systems ultimately got better and better and even the C64 did a pretty good job with ports. I plalyed more "arcade" games on the Colecovision back then than the real arcade, although this one place had a deal of around 60 tokens for $5 for a couple of years so I did get to play a couple of dozen games quite a bit there (their selection didn't vary as much as larger arcades, though, but it was a much better deal).

Hell, I still tell people today that i learned to drive a stick shift playing Hard Drivin' at the arcade back in the day (it's true; I drove my first stick home from 25 miles away. The clutch took a bit of practice to get it smooth, but I certainly had the basic motions down and could drive it home with few issues other than occasionally stalling it).

 

[kaioshade]

Ah ok, makes perfect sense. Getting the marquee art, cab artwork and the history of each game is something regular SDLMame obviously does not provide. Since i own most of the Cave stuff, having those things doesnt bother me too much, my main intention is to play them properly emulated.

Our goals with Mame are definitely different and i can definitely respect that. Maybe someone will make a better (and current) front end for Mame for OS X. While im fine with command line, i wouldnt mind using something like that either. Now i wish i could program, i would definitely love to make something like that.

Thanks for clarifying.

 

[VoR]

It works fine for me but with one huge caveat....

Input lag... I've only tried snes games using the snes9x core but there's awful input lag.
I'm saying it's awful, it's only very slight but it makes many games almost unplayable. I've tried using an xbox360 wired controller and the keyboard, same issues with both.

If I run the games in snes9x directly the issue goes away. Googling seems to show that this is a known problem with no real solution. Lots of people complaining, lots of people that don't seem to notice it (or it doesn't effect them).