CriticalCid

I see that you have dropped the game notes in the CoverFlow + Details view for the logo and I can’t say that I like that idea. Would it be possible to add an option in which I can choose if I would rather have the Clear Logo or the notes? If I have to choose between the two I would definitely prefer the notes over the logo. The fade to black effect for the backgrounds in the details + CoverFlow view is really nice. Any chance we will see that for the normal CoverFlow view before 6.0 comes out? I also noticed that I can change the view only one time when I’m in a filter which isn’t platforms. After that the change button stops working in all filters except for platforms.

As long the filenames are matching in some way to the names of the games (unlike HyperSpin it doesn’t need to match to 100%) you should be fine by just moving the wheels into the Clear Logo folder.

A new MAME version always comes out on the last Wednesday of the month

Just found a strange bug in the new Wheel/Clear Logo view. Sometimes when I jump between the letters with the alpha-numeric navigation some logos are falling up or down on the left side of the screen. I recorded a video of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBVEn4k1FsY

Firstly big thanks for the platform background support for the games. It really looks much better now when I go through my games in BigBox :) It seems that the VLC engine doesn’t like playlists. I have some .m3u playlists which contain the EmuMovies gameplay video and some old TV commercials and they work totally fine with the WMP engine, but with VLC I only get an empty space where the video should be. The problem is in LaunchBox and BigBox. Also when I have selected a game with a playlist in LaunchBox (with activated VLC engine) and switch to BigBox I get this error message. With WMP that error doesn't show up either.

Best news of the day :)

Nice, the CoverFlow + details view is the view I'm most anticipated for! I love that kind of view since I discovered it through Kodi years ago. :) I would like to take the chance to address the backgrounds a bit, because as I said I really want that view but I also like the fanarts and it would be a bummer for me if it wouldn’t support that like the current CoverFlow view. 1. I know that you tried the backgrounds for CoverFlow in a Live Developer Session and it looked horrible with the cover reflections. A solution for this would be to fade the bottom of the background to black. Here’s a picture of Kodi using that method: 2. Also something what bugs me since a long time is that currently games without their own fanart just have a lame plain black background. It would be awesome if you could add the option that a game would just use the same backgrounds as the platform it's assigned to if it doesn’t have its own fanart, instead of simply just being black. I think that would improve the look and feel of BigBox a lot.

There are actually 2 different banners and logos for the TurboGrafx-CD already existing: https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/features/the-image-thread-platform-images-clearlogos-box-templates-and-more/page-5#p13213 and https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/features/new-launchbox-platform-image-collection-thread/page-6#p8984 Maybe the official platform images should be updated with the missing ones? @SentaiBrad

As far as I know do the the update packs only contain new dumped ROMs files. But a new MAME update doesn’t only add a few more files. Things get renamed, reorganized, etc. all the time.

SentaiBrad said Merged means that as many games as possible are merged as to not break the game functionality, split leaves no games combined. Merged is a little smaller but is a lot harder to upgrade, you need software like CLRMAMEPro to update properly. A split pack isn't exactly like a regular normal pack (or maybe it is @CriticalCid can correct me), but it can be upgraded a lot easier and it doesn't house everything still. With a Split pack, if you download an Update pack it should just work to drop the update in to the split pack directory and it should work. From my CLRmamepro tutorial: Non-Merged: Each set has ALL files it needs. This is normally a waste of disk space because even clone sets have the parentsets included. Split: Parent sets only have the parent files and a clone sets consists of the clone files only. Merged Sets: Full merged sets are parentsets only, which also include all clone files. So you will have every version of the game in just one file. For the most compatibility with FrontEnds I highly suggest Split Sets. But I honestly don't know how LaunchBox exactly imports MAME games so a Merged Set could work as well but I didn‘t test it. And just drag and drop isn’t a proper way for updating a MAME set. Nonetheless if it is a split or merged set. Sure you will definitely break way more less if you do this on a split set rather on a merged one but you should always update only with tools like CLRmamepro. SentaiBrad said I just read your PM back, in terms of Software vs Roms, Roms I know to be the games. Software I am unsure exactly all that it entails, but it doesn't have everything properly if it even has games at all. Again, maybe @CriticalCid can provide more concrete descriptions and correct me. A MAME ROM Set only includes all the arcade games for MAME. Software Lists are containing the games for all other systems like consoles and handhelds which can be emulated through MAME since they've merged with MESS.

When the scanner checks your ROMset you can see in an extra window what’s exactly missing. If you have a complete ROMset (and Samples if you check your samples as well) it will only show you the missing CHD files.

Like Brad said they have their own update packs and you can update the ROMs without the updated CHDs or a complete CHD set. For the latter be aware that the scanner will of course tell you that you’re missing some CHDs and sets. I also cover CHDs on Step 34. If you want to update the CHDs you can just move all the CHDs from your CHD update packs after you already scanned and rebuild your entire romset. That's because the rebuilder of CLRmame doesn’t copy any new CHDs into your romfolder. Only the scanner renames/removes old ones (if you have CHDs checked in the options). I would suggest you to do that in order of the versions. So first copy/move the updated CHDs for 0.162, than the ones from 0.163 etc. If it asks you at any point if you want to overwrite old files I would suggest you to decline that and do another scan so CLRmame can fix the CHD names from the older update packs. After that you just move the remaining CHDs from the update pack which wanted to overwrite old CHD files and than simply continue with the other update packs. If you've finished updating the CHDs I would suggest to do one last final scan. Btw. thanks for pointing that out. I guess I will add these information’s to the tutorial as well any time soon. EDIT: Just updated Step 12, 34 and 36 with some new information's :)

I saw that yesterday. Looks really awesome! By the way the video is from the same guy who did that awesome Star Wars fan-anime a few months ago.

You can add all update packs at once. No need to repeat this entire process for every single update pack :)

I can’t believe how fast your little MAME import alternative for LaunchBox has grown to such a huge monster and maybe the ultimate tool for importing MAME games for every mentionable frontend out there. Kudos to you! Can’t wait to test it in all its glory when it’s finished.

Please don’t just overwrite your 0.161 set with the update files! You will only break your whole romset and make things worse. If you want to update you have to use programs like Clrmamepro. As I said it would be easier for you if you use just a 0.161 version of MAME. There’s no reason to upgrade to the newest version if you just want to play some games. Almost every popular game should be able to be played with 0.161 without any problems.

SentaiBrad said CriticalCid said Here’s the link to my tutorial for Clrmamepro: https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/emulation/best-practice-for-keeping-mame-roms-up-to-date/page-2#p11536 Make sure you have a complete unchanged MAME Romset before you start. And I hope you didn’t already just replaced older ROMfiles with the ones from the update packs, that’s one of the main mistakes new users tend to do. @SentaiBrad I think my tutorial is quite buried in the thread in which I posted it in and even I have to search for it every time in my post history to find it. Maybe I should open a new thread only for the tutorial and you could pin it so that new users can find it very easily? What are your thoughts on that? Please do. Just did it. Maybe you can pin it up so new users could find it easier? https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/emulation/how-to-update-your-mame-romset-to-a-newer-version-with-clrmamepro @Gizmo: You should use Clrmamepro only for a complete MAME Romset. It isn’t made for just checking single games. I also think that lormonkus is right and you should just ignore Clrmamepro, Romlister, etc since they require way too much knowledge of MAME which you apparently don’t have yet. Like SentaiBrad said you should just grab a complete split ROMset and a MAME version which fits the ROM version. It’s roughly 50+GB in size. Even if you just want a few games for it you will need the full set for BIOS and other files which many games need to work.

Tutorial: How to update your MAME ROMset to a newer version with CLRmamepro Note #1: This tutorial will show you only how to update your ROMset. If you are completely new to MAME you will probably want to read the noob-friendly MAME guide from @lordmonkus first. Note #2: This tutorial assumes that you already have a complete ROMset from a previous MAME version. If you don’t have a complete ROMset than I would suggest to just grab a complete set for the current MAME version and return to this tutorial if you want to update it in the future. I'm not covering SoftwareLists for the MESS side of MAME in this Tutorial, only the arcade games. Also I'm not an expert for MAME, I just know my way around the things I need from it. If you find any errors or wrong facts in my tutorial, please let me know! I’m always eager to learn more. Why update the ROMs?: MAME is very sensitive about its ROM versions. You can get an older version of a ROMset to work with a newer MAME version but you should be aware that you can run in many errors and missing files. In the best case your ROMset version matches exactly the MAME version you are using. The MAME developers are updating MAME every last Wednesday of the month, so if you download a complete ROMset today it won’t work perfectly fine with the newest MAME version by the end of next month. If all the games you want to play are all there and working perfectly fine you probably won’t care about new updates, but if you want to get all the new emulation improvements and newly added ROMs you should keep track of them. Now is a complete ROMset with all CHDs roughly 400GB in size, so you probably don’t want to download that amount of data every month. It’s faster to just download all new added ROMs, CHDs and Samples and update the ROMset you already have. And with the program CLRmamero you can do this. If you want more information about why MAME is so sensitive about the ROM versions and mandatory file names I highly recommend this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/MAME/comments/3gh78n/probably_a_silly_question_but_why_are_ROM_packs/ Step 1: Groundwork 1. First of all you should know what ROMset version you have. I don’t know if there’s a comfortable way to find out what version you have. Normally your ROMset version should be the same as the MAME version you are currently using but I can’t guarantee that this is the case for you. So if you have absolutely no idea what ROM version you have I would suggest what I wrote at the beginning of this tutorial. Download a complete set of the current version and write down what version that is, so you can update that set in the future. 2. Download all ROM update packs beginning from the version you have until to the current version. With all I mean all and not just the latest. For example if your ROMset is on version 0.168 and you want to update to version 0.171 you will need the update packs: 0.168 to 0.169, 0.169 to .170 and 0.170 to 0.171! 3. Download CLRmamepro at http://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/ and install/extract it. You will also need to install/update to a version of MAME which matches the version you want to update your ROMset to. In this tutorial I show you how I update my 0.170 ROMset to version 0.171. I use for that MAMEUIFX64 0.171. 4. Optional: If you use a branch of MAME which supports some extra games (like MAMEUIFX) you would probably want these games too. Normally they are not included in an official complete MAME ROMset so you have to download them separately. Use Google to find out if your MAME version supports additional games and then download them. If you use MAMEUIFX like myself you can legally get the additional games in their official forum: http://mame32fx.altervista.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4 Just download all ROMs and Samples and keep in mind to create separate folders for ROMs and Samples. Step 2: Setting up the profile and paths 5. Open the “cmpro64.exe” and you will be greeted with a messagebox. Click okay and you will automatically be in the profiler menu. 6. Here you have different options to include a database for Clrmamepro to work with. The easiest and in my opinion the best way is to use the database which comes directly with MAME itself. So click on the create button and a new window will open. As filename search for the .exe file of your MAME version. As description I recommend you name it after the MAME branch and version you are using. In my case I name it MAMEUIFX64 0.171. Keep MAME as the emulator. Click on “Create Profile” and a new window opens in which can organize your profiles. For now just click on OK. 7. Now your newly created profile should show up in the profilelist. Double-click on your new profile. 8. Now Clrmamepro wants to extract the database from your MAME .exe file. Click on OK. After a short scan it may ask you if you want to import SoftwareLists. If you don’t use MESS within MAME you won’t need that. I don’t use MESS or want to update a MESS romset so I say “NO” to the SoftwareLists. Now some error messages are popping up. That’s totally normal. Just confirm every message with “OK TO ALL”. 9. Now you’re in the main menu of CLRmamepro. At first we have to set up our rom paths. Click on "Settings" for that. 10. In the left upper corner you can select for what kind of files you want to set up the paths. We want to add our ROM-Paths so we select “ROM-Paths”. You can either click on “Add” to add your paths or just drag-and-drop them into the window. So add the path to your current romset you want to update. (NOT the paths which are containing your updates!) 11. Every file CLRmamepro finds within the ROM- and Sample-Paths which don’t fit to the current MAME version will automatically be moved into the Backup folder. The standard setting for this is a folder called “backup” within CLRmamepro folder. If your CLRmamepro installation is on the same drive as your MAME romset than you can leave it as it is. If CLRmamepro and your ROMset are on different drives I highly recommend changing the backup folder path into an empty folder which sits on the same drive as your ROMs. It will highly increase the speed. Leave the rest as it is. 12. Change the path type to “Add-Paths”. Here you need to add every path you want the program to look for updates or new ROMs you want to add. If you have more than one update pack you can add all update packs at once in order to update your ROMset to the current version. No need to repeat this entire updating process for every single update pack. IMPORTANT: You have to add the backup path too! In my case I want to update from 0.170 to 0.171 and add the extra games for MAMEUIFX. 13. Optional: If you want to scan/fix/update your Sample files too, choose “Sample-Paths” and add the folder for it as well. A small explanation what sample files are (thanks Google): Samples go in a folder called 'samples' in your main Mame directory. They are used in conjunction with games that either doesn't have emulated sound or used external sound samples via another device (like a Tape). Mame will automatically use the correct ones with the game if they are present in the samples folder. 14. Close the window. All settings are being saved automatically. Step 3: The Scanner 15. After we have set up all paths we want that CLRmamepro scans our current romset and fix/remove every outdated ROM, CHD and Sample file. For that we click on "Scanner". 16. The “You want to scan” section is self-explanatory. In the “You prefer” section you have to select the option which matches to your ROMset. So if you have a split set select “Split Sets”, etc. If you don’t know what kind of set you have just go with “Split Sets”. 17. “Prompts” you can leave it as it is. 18. In the check/fix section we want to check and fix everything. Click on “All” and every checkbox should be checked now. 19. Ignore the “Advanced” and “LogFile” button and click on “Systems”. A new window opens up. Here click first on “All” and then on “Auto-Assign”. It will automatically set the paths for all systems into the ROM-Path you chose earlier. At the end of this tutorial I will say something more to this but for now just close the window. 20. Click on the “Hash & CHD” button. In the new window check both options at the bottom “Run Analysis” and “Fix file (If Possible)". These options will decrease the scanning speed but if you have corrupted ROM files it will try to repair them automatically. Leave the rest at is and close the window. 21. Ignore “Statistics”. Now we have configured the scanner and it should hopefully look like this: 22. Click on “New Scan” and wait. The scanner will tell you if it finds something which needs to be fixed. Confirm every message with “Yes To All”. In the “Scan Results” window you can see exactly what is currently wrong with your romset. You don’t have to worry about that. 23. When the scan is finished a window pops up that’s giving you information about the current status of your ROMset. Click on “OK” and close the scanner. Step 4: The Rebuilder 24. Our ROMset is cleaned and fixed now. At next we have to update it to the new version. For that click in “Rebuilder”. 25. Check the box “Use Add-Paths” and CLRmamepro will use all the paths for the updates that we already set up. 26. At "destination" you have to check the box “Use System Default Paths”. 27. In the Merge option you can choose how you want to have your ROMset to be constructed. For the best compatibility with LaunchBox I highly recommend a split or non-merged set! Here are the differences between the different set options: Non-Merged: Each set has ALL files it needs. This is normally a waste of disk space because even clone sets have the parentsets included. Split: Parent sets only have the parent files and a clone sets consists of the clone files only. Merged Sets: Full merged sets are parentsets only, which also include all clone files. So you will have every version of the game in just on file. I don’t want to waste disc space so I go with a split set in this tutorial. IMPORTANT: If you change the way of how your ROMset is currently constructed prepare for long waiting times because your whole set will be extracted and completely new rebuild. 28. At “Compress Files” you have to choose which file format you want for your ROMS. I prefer .7z because it saves more space on the hard drive as .zip. IMPORTANT #1: If you change the file format to a different format as your ROMs are already zipped it will take very long to rebuild your ROMset, because all your ROMs will be extracted and compressed again. So if you have all your ROMs in .zip files and you want it to change to .7z prepare for a long waiting time until everything is done. IMPORTANT #2: If you want to use .7z you will have to need 7-Zip installed on your PC. If you want to use .rar you will have to need WinRAR installed on your PC. 29. Check “Recompress Files”, “Show Statistics” and “Remove Matched Sourcefiles”. 30. Ignore “Systems” and “Advanced” and click on “Rebuild”. 31. Optional: If you get an error relating to a .7z file it helps to copy the “7z.exe” and “7z.dll” from your 7-Zip folder into your “CLRmamepro” folder. 32. Now the rebuilding starts. Depending on your ROMset and your options it could take quite a while. When the rebuilding is finished you get a status report. 33. Click on ok and close the rebuilder. Now we are almost finished. 34. If you want to update your CHDs now is the time to do this. But be aware that CHDs have their own update packs and you’ll have to download them separately. To update them just move the folders which are containing the CHD files from your CHD update folders into your ROM folder. You have to do that manually because the rebuilder of CLRmamepro doesn’t copy any new CHDs into your ROM folder. Only the scanner renames/removes old ones (if you have CHDs checked in the options). I also would highly suggest you to do that in order of the versions. For example if you want to update from 0.171 to 0.173 first move the updated CHDs from the 0.171 to 0.172 pack, than the ones from 0.72 to 01.73 etc. If Windows asks you if you want to integrate the files in the already existing folders confirm that with "Yes". BUT if it asks you at any point if you want to overwrite old files I would suggest you to decline that and do another scan so that the scanner of CLRmamepro can fix the CHD names from the older update packs. To speed up the scan you can uncheck "ROMs" and "Samples" in the scanner options first before you start the scan. After the finished scan you just have to move the remaining CHDs from the update pack which wanted to overwrite old CHD files into your ROM folder and then simply continue with the other update packs. Repeat that if Windows asks you again if you want to overwrite some files. 35. Do the same with your Sample files if you want to add or update them. Just keep in my mind to move them in your samples and not into your ROM folder. 36. Go back to the “Scanner” and click on “New Scan”. If you have unchecked “ROMs” and “Samples” in order to update your CHDs check those two again before you start the final scan. 37. If everything worked the new scan result screen should look like this: I only miss a sample file for one game which I couldn’t track down yet. Everything else is complete and now up to date. 38. Now you can delete all your update folders. I hope this tutorial was understandable and useful for some of you. If you have questions feel free to ask.

Here’s the link to my tutorial for Clrmamepro: https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/emulation/best-practice-for-keeping-mame-roms-up-to-date/page-2#p11536 Make sure you have a complete unchanged MAME Romset before you start. And I hope you didn’t already just replaced older ROMfiles with the ones from the update packs, that’s one of the main mistakes new users tend to do. @SentaiBrad I think my tutorial is quite buried in the thread in which I posted it in and even I have to search for it every time in my post history to find it. Maybe I should open a new thread only for the tutorial and you could pin it so that new users can find it very easily? What are your thoughts on that?

Probably is your MAME wrong configured. If you can get MAME directly running you shouldn’t have any problems with LaunchBox either. Also make sure that the version of MAME matches the version of your ROMs for error minimization. As far as I know uses RocketLauncher its own configuration for each emulator and not necessarily the configuration from the emulators themselves. So it explains why it works with HyperSpin but not in MAME directly.

Awesome to have such a feature but I don’t necessarily want all the lists/genres as different platforms or in a separate platform at all. Would it be possible to add an option that these games in the list just simply get the favorites tag? I still want to import all my 2000+ games with the normal filters so I would rather have all the “Best of” games in their respective platforms like MAME, CPS1, Neo Geo, Model 2, Naomi, etc and just marked them as favorites. So I would still have mostly all playable games in my MAME libarary on my LaunchBox setup but I could easily filter for the games which are considered best.

It looks like that your MAME version doesn’t exactly match the version of your romset. For this game I know it for sure because I know that Bubble Bobble has gotten a new dump a few months (MAME versions) ago. But it’s odd that it still works on another FrontEnd. Does the game start within MAME itself or do you get this error only when you try to start it with LaunchBox?

He attached text(batch-)files with the romnames on the respective posts. I would also find these filter quiet useful too :)

The new views are awesome! I’m really thankful for this! Some thoughts from me: CoverFlow: - My analog sticks and the shoulder buttons of my Xbox 360 gamepad aren’t working in CoverFlow. The enter and back buttons of the pad and keyboard navigation is working fine. - I would like it if it uses fanart as well. At the moment it’s just a boring black background for every game. - I also would like to have more game info in it. At least genre, year, developer and publisher would be nice. Horizontal cover: - The shoulder buttons of my 360 pad are acting weird. If I press RB it goes one entry back and if I press LB it goes one entry forth. I dont know if the one entry jump is on purpose (if yes, it would be nice if you could change that) but the directions are definitely inverted. General: - It would be nice to have the new alpha-numeric navigation in the new views as well - Instead of a general viewtype for everything it would be awesome to change that for every platform individually. - A button to change the viewtype on-the-fly when I’m navigating in a platform would be nice (I’m kinda used to it through Kodi). New views suggestions: - A mix of CoverFlow and the Horizontal viewtype. Similar like the Aeon Skins or the standard view for Rom Collection Browser in Kodi. - As already suggested in THIS THREAD a big video view for recorded HyperSpin themes. Similar like my mockup (for 16:9 themes) and HyperVision (for 4:3 themes). Also see my detailed suggestions in Post #6 in the linked thread.

You’re welcome