The MESSUI Place

How to setup MESSUI or MAMEUI

Getting the latest version

Please note that this guide was originally written for MESSUI. To set up MAMEUI, just substitute MAMEUI wherever you see MESSUI, and substitute mame.ini/mameui.ini wherever you see mess.ini/messui.ini.
If you already have a MESS installation, simply place messui.exe into the same folder as mess.exe is in, then go to "Setting up messui.ini".
Otherwise, you must be new to MESS, so follow these steps:

Adjust your Windows system to display extensions of all files, and show hidden files.
Select a place for your MESS install. Recommend c:\mess (or whatever drive you use for your apps)
From the MESSUI download page, download the binary suitable for your system (32 or 64 bit).
Unzip this into your new MESS folder.

Setting up MESS.INI

Open a command prompt (In the Windows start menu, click Run, type in cmd, press enter).
Change to the drive where MESS is installed: c:
Change to the folder where MESS is installed: cd \mess
Type in: mess -cc
In Windows Explorer (the file manager), open mess.ini
Check these settings are as below:
- readconfig 1
- writeconfig 1
- inipath ini
- menu 1
- filter 0
- hlsl_enable 0
Make any changes you like to rompath, hashpath, etc if required.
Save the changes (if any), and close the file.
Make sure the ini folder exists (e.g. c:\mess\ini), and copy mess.ini into it.
Make sure you have some bios roms for a system, zipped up as the system name, placed into the roms folder.
Go back to the command prompt (it's still open from before), and enter: mess system. The system should start. Click File, Exit to quit.
Close the command prompt: exit
We cannot help you find roms or software for MESS. You'll need to search the net.

Setting up MESSUI.INI

Double-click on messui.exe. In a few seconds it should start. Now, close it.

Very quick guide to MESSUI options
MESSUI has a huge amount of options, here is how to set up the most important ones:

Press F5, this will scan your roms so that MESSUI will know which systems can be run.
Click on View, Customize fields... - you can choose which columns to display in the list of systems
Click on View, and make sure the first 5 choices are ticked/checked.
Click on View, Show Pictures and choose which things you would like to see on the righthand side.
Click on Options, Directories and for each item in the list, choose where it is located. The list is somewhat daunting, so for now do nothing, it can be fine-tuned later.
Click on Options, Background Image... - navigate to a folder containing PNG files, then choose a nice-looking one.
Now, the system list might be hard to read, so click on Options, System List Font, and choose another colour. Note this changes ALL text in MESSUI.
Click on Options, System List Clone Color - if you want clones to be another colour, choose it here. You can't choose a different font.
Click on Options, Default System Options - this should be the same as you had set up in MESS.INI earlier, but you can change it here. It only applies to systems you have never run.
Now, exit MESSUI so we can save our settings. If MESSUI crashes, any changed settings are lost.

Getting Ready to Run a System
This needs to be done for any system you wish to use:

Find the system in the list and right-click it, choose Properties. These are the same as the Default properties, but can be customised per-system. The most important thing to do is set up the location of your software.
Click the Software tab, click Browse, find your software for this particular system, and save it.
Your software will appear in the SW Files tab. Clicking something will load it. Double-clicking either the software or the system will launch it, with that software loaded.
Now, at last, you are playing a system or console.

Systems that Require software
Some consoles will present a screen saying This driver requires images to be loaded in the following device(s)
Just use the newui Media menu to load some software as normal, then click on Reset in the middle of the screen.

More Information

MAME Users Guide