wallmachine

Just to note if you have anything in brackets () it will move that text to the version field.

I think you nailed it. That fast speed was due to me using a brandnew install of LaunchBox on the SSD with no platforms/games because I didn't have enough space for my original LaunchBox folder. For a test I then made some room moved original LaunchBox software folder to SSD, this setup has 60k games (the games stayed on 10TB) and the import took around 2 hours. So the more platform/games I have in the collection the longer it will take to import even without metadata. I don't have anymore systems to import so MAME is the only constant that is always updated, so I deleted an already imported 'small' platform and it too also took some time... how come the size of the collection affects the import speed? Can anything be done about this as its just reading the location of the file? @ci2own how many platforms/games do you have imported?

These games are apart of the 'MAME 0.221 ROMs (non-merged)' set and using the MAME Arcade Full Set Importer and un-checking Skip non-arcade they fall under the Genre Handheld / Electronic Game. To separate these games maybe an option to just select non-arcade games? as when skipping everything except non-arcade it still imports arcade games. See an outdated list of the games below.

How do you convert it into a manually-populated playlist? Is that just to un-check the auto-populate list again?

Can I request the Radiance theme be done next, some things I want to replicate in the editor but can't figure it out

@Jason Carr Just took over 2 hours this time, is this normal? Also just like the auto scroll to platform in pane when lb opens again, should when adding a platform it highlight that platform that just added too? I believe I narrowed it down for you, see my trials of today: (is this some type of scanning that can't fully utilise HDDs?) 10TB HDD - This is the HDD the LaunchBox software and MAME games are located. I then re-imported and it took roughly 2 hours 4TB HDD - Moved the LaunchBox software to this HDD and the MAME games stayed on the 10TB HDD, then re-imported and this took roughly 2 hours 4TB HDD - Moved the LaunchBox software to this HDD and the MAME games stayed on the 10TB HDD, then re-imported and this took roughly 2 hours 4TB HDD - Moved the LaunchBox software to this HDD and the MAME games stayed on the 10TB HDD, then re-imported and this took roughly 2 hours 128GB SSD - Moved the LaunchBox software to this SSD and the MAME games stayed on the 10TB HDD, then re-imported and this took roughly 30 seconds 10TB HDD 2 hour import time: MAME.mp4

I think a while back they mentioned something about placing ,The in front or end of game with an option, thought this could help but can't find an option so maybe hasn't been implemented yet.

Thats what i thought as im not grabbing anything and should just be reading the game location and what games are in it.

That usb unplugging and replugging noise are you using a docking station or a hp monitor?

Im not 100% but lb always gives you a prompt if you are deleting games so i doubt the import process is removing currently imported games? From the notes going in here seems to be delete the platform and reimport again, see above what to uncheck and leave checked.

Okay ill try without unchecking that shortly, i would do a video but dont think i have enough space for a 4hr vid of recording

I think doing it this way lb doesnt removes games already imported that are now not playable in the current db?

Not sure im understanding correctly. See the below process i take to reimport and to try and reduce import time but takes me about 4hrs to reimport. Should i be doing it another way? 1) remove platform 2) reimport via MAME fullset importer 3) uncheck lb db metadata, uncheck lb media, uncheck emumovies media

when opening LaunchBox should the Platform in the left pane be auto scrolled to where the scroll was before close as scrolling the Platform list down to the Plaftorm that was selected on close 'greys' out the images section like its trying to find it or something. Also what does that 'Text' checkbox do at the bottom right? platform.mp4

Thanks for that, just don't know what to do because I'm not 100% on how the process in LB works for MAME completely (some documentation would be good) and I want to be able to update it when the LB team update it and really don't want to always have the 4 hr import time without any scraping of media (import times might be different time for others). But like you said it might leave a game that is now "unplayable" or whatever game it is in the platform and doesn't check your current import and prompt to delete if its not in the new database. I don't know tbh.

Hey mate, I had 4247 games under the MAME platform I followed your steps above and after the import it said 'imported 4273 games' however the actual amount under the platform is 4319 games I then deleted the entire platform and re-imported and it imported 4273 games and under the platform it shows 4273 games Don't know where I went wrong and really don't want to delete it the platform each time as I think I started the re-import around 10am and now its 2PM almost... (No metadata scraping from LB DB and no image/video scraping)

sorry, not sure what else you can do.

@mcfilmmakers its been updated the games should appear now.

Guess it just looks like its loading the 'Old Default' from the black fade in, sorry.

As we rely on the team to update the database for us it would be nice to be notified with some type of notification either via email, web page, in side LaunchBox, discord so we aren't left in limbo, yes I understand that some people do not care for the updates, but MAME has been around for decades and has a huge user-base and people always return to it (just over 1million people have viewed the CatVer page), why not try to capitalise on this. From the amount of threads/posts around here about MAME importing it/versions it seems a lot of people do not even know MAME is updated monthly. As we are talking about MAME here if people are actively notified that a new database has been imported they might be enticed to find out what does this update include? new games? fixes? new hi-score enabled games? oh awesome LaunchBox has a community leader-board for MAME too? what a great feature I might just buy the full version. Yes, having the info in the xml file is useful but notifications send a bigger picture than users randomly guessing when to check this data has been updated and in general if you have to do it manually/guessing when to check you get tired of it. For some time I have really wanted to launch the new Game & Watch/other new handheld titles via LaunchBox, and yes I can run them through MAME directly but then why did I purchase LaunchBox if I can't use LaunchBox/BigBox to play new released/fixed games.

When starting up LaunchBox the the themes change. theme changes.mp4

With all types of importing options, MAME is the only one users can't control. Look forward to a possibility of it changing in the future or why the enhancement is not feasible

Since we've got a MAME dedicated database maybe in the future a HBMAME database?

@sundogak as the LaunchBox team probably use the mame.exe to export a xml file for LaunchBox compatibility I suggested in the thread below they include it as a tool in LaunchBox so that the team do not need to constantly update maybe once every major release and let users decide in between, seems we've got multiple threads about MAME databases going on now.