Mamewah Setup

Requirements

Mamewah requires the following in order to function properly:

Windows Operating System (95/98/ME/2K/XP)
DirectX 8 or higher
These System Files
Mamewah Program Files
Installed Emulators

Installation

The first thing you will need to do is install the required System Files from the link above. To do so, download the file, and unzip it to a temporary location. Once unzipped, double-click on the setup.bat to install. You should see the confirmation of this as shown to the left.

Next you will need to install the Mamewah Program Files. This can be installed into any location on your hard drive. Once you have done this, you can run Mamewah. However, since no emulators are configured yet, it is not ready to use.

Configuring Emulators

Configuration for running emulators through MAMEWAH is done via .ini files. You must have an ini file per emulator, which contains all emulator-specific settings. For more specifics on the various ini files used in MAMEWAH, see the ini files section.

MAME

We'll start with the default MAME .ini file. If you take a look in your \ini folder, you should see mame.ini - open this file in notepad or similar text editing application. While this file is pre-configured as much as possible, filenames and paths will need to be altered, along with any other personal settings you may wish to adjust.

NOTE: do not confuse mame.ini with the mame-0.ini or mame-1.ini. These are list specific ini files which we will talk about later.

The important sections to modify here are the 'rom_path' and 'emulator_executable'. rom_path is the location of your rom files, while emulator_executable is the full path to your emulator .exe(in this case, MAME).

Once you have done this, you can now run Mamewah again. Once started, press 2 to access the Options menu, goto 'Games List Options' and press 1 to select it. Then goto 'Generate List' and press 1 again to select it. This will generate a list based on the roms found in the folder provided.

At this point you should be able to run the games by pressing 1.

Additional Emulators

For additional emulator configurations, you will need to create a seperate .ini file, just like the mame.ini. The easiest way to do this is to make a copy of mame.ini and rename it to something like 'nes.ini' or 'nintendo.ini', or whatever you prefer. Optionally, you can create an empty text file named and such, and then run Mamewah. It will then automatically populate all the information.

You will then need to go back and modify this new .ini file, just as we did with MAME, to provide the rom path and executable location.

Some emulators require specific settings in order to work properly. See the Mamewah Setup Page for details on these settings.

Controls

By default, only the keyboard is configured to work in Mamewah. The following keys are used to navigate the frontend.

Main Menu

Key	Action
UP	Move up one game
DOWN	Move down one game
LEFT	Move up one letter
RIGHT	Move down one letter
1	Launch Game
2	Menu Show
3	Next Game List
4	Next Emulator
5	Previous Game List
6	Previous Emulator
R	Move up one page
F	Move down one page
ESCAPE	Exit to Windows

Main Menu (Additional Keys)

Key	Action
TAB	Find Game
Left SHIFT	Random Game
Z	Select Emulator
X	Select Game List
A	Add to Game List
S	Remove from Game List
Left ALT & 2	Menu Lock
Left CTRL & 1	Launch Game with Options 1
Left ALT & 1	Launch Game with Options 2
C	Launch App 1

Options Menu

Key	Action
UP	Up one option
DOWN	Down one option
LEFT	Up one option page
RIGHT	Down one option page
1	Menu Select
2	Menu Back / Close

Screen Saver

Key	Action
2	Show Track Name
1	Find and Select Game

Anywhere

Key	Action
Left ALT	Previous Track
SPACE	Next Track
Q	Rewind Track
W	Fast Forward Track

If you want to configure a joystick or mouse to work, you will need to edit the default.ini file in the \ctrlr folder. Also note that you may need to activate them to work in your emulator as well, for instance, in MAME, you must edit the mame.ini file.

Further Tweaking

Layouts

The default layout for MAMEWAH is very generic. On the plus side, however, you have the ability to download additional layouts created by other MAMEWAH users, as well as creating your own layouts.

See the section on Using and Creating Layouts

Media

You can increase the visual appeal of the frontend by using Screens, Titles & Extras that are associated with the available games. To do this, you will need to edit the appropriate lines in the ini files for the emulator.