What is your version of "complete and sufficient" pinmame cabinet setup?

[aldub516]

Hey guys. I frequent the gameex side often for a long time. Ive built a few mame cabinets, and other nifty little projects. In my last pedestal, i installed pinballx and vp fp etc just so my buddy can enjoy some pinball games. The cabinet was geared towards mame, but with two buttons drilled on the sides, it was a cool add on and worked well, but i never got tooo into it. Ive dabbled before, but i now have an empty pinmame cabinet, and im trying to put together the perfect hard drive so i can enjoy the machine, and share it with my friend who has one, and generally just have a good working solid system that i can use over again, like my hyperspin set up. Now, ive come to learn that the pinball world can be confusing. Ive been able to accumulate a very nice, and clean organized table set organized such as vp8 recreated,vp91x,92x etc. Between a few friends harddrives that we all work on, i basically have most of what i need as far as tables, roms, art and all that (mostly). But i also seem to have a mess of stuff as well. So what im asking is for some guidance on how to go about further organizing, and setting up the cleanest set i can. I have a folder for each version of VP as well as subfolders for recreated,flipperless,mods and hacks.. For instance, i have ace high, in my VP8 recreated tables, VP9 recreated tables, VP 91X recreated table and so on. When it comes to mame, the general consensus is, "you should only have x amount of buttons and controls, and x amount of games on one machine".. theres usually a consistent goal. As of right now, im just lost. This is just visual pinball. I also eventually have arcade pinball, fx2, future, etc. Figuring out the actual set up isnt so much my difficultly, its not understanding the roms and theory of directories and work flow for so many pinball systems... It would take forever to see what game is or isnt in one folder, and is or isnt another. Would it make sense to use the latest version of said game and disregard the others? Perhaps i can start merging them into a single folder and overwrite the older ones? Would a game work on vp9 but not vp99x. Im focusing on VP only for now. Im reading up a lot on how to set up multiple VP versions and such, but i want to know what the consensus is in the pinball world, on what a solid pinmame machine is. I will have a backscreen, and ive had good success running a 9 inch lcd hdmi screen for a dmd. What is considered fully rounded system. I only want recreated tables, not custom. As for mods or hacks, is there a beloved modder or hack line that is preferred? I dont know exactly how to direct my questions or thoughts here. Ive done tons of reading and already have setup a nice system before ,but im starting fresh here. Any advice or direction would help.Ive included a screen shot of my current folder setup. I have other folders from old setups, but theres so many scattered files i dont know whats what. back then i used to just dump all the tables into a folder.

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