Antropus

June 14, 2016

rmilyard said If you could PM me what I should do that would be GREAT! I am pretty new to LB and only used HyperSpin in the past so not 100% sure what doing.

I will write it here, so other users can use the info as well. I will do this tonight, after I put my kids to sleep :) -Kris

June 14, 2016

Drybonz said Tried it again with "run as admin" but no luck. Hard drive space is plenty. My path to roms folder had reset at some point so I fixed that but still no luck. Tried "match roms folder" but didn't work. I'm sure it's something small but I can't seem to figure it out.

Did you try to move the entire folder to another location? If you got another HDD, try moving the folder to the root. I used your exact setup in my computer, except that I changed the mame.exe location to my local K:\MAME\EMULATOR\mame64.exe Another choice is to re-download the entire program. It comes with a file called ListXMLOptimized.xml in it. Close Lightspeed, copy this file and rename the copy to listxml.xml, keeping both files in the SupportFiles folder. I'm positive this will work, but we still need to figure out what's going on with your setup! -Kris

June 14, 2016

You can do just that, but since you don't have any local artwork, after using Lightspeed to import everything into Launchbox you will need to select all games imported and then import the artwork for it (you don't need to import ANY metadata, as Lightspeed already does that for you, from history.dat and other sources). Just tell Launchbox that this is part of a MAME set, so all the artwork can be found in their database. It's pretty straight forward but I can write a step-by-step if you are in trouble.

June 13, 2016

Oh, Lightspeed is especially developed to use your local images and roms if you already have a collection! If you are trying to use Launchbox to gather the images for those other platforms, this is still possible, but you will need to tell Launchbox that each platform is a MAME collection (in the options when you are importing the metadata). Importing the metadata with Launchbox will get you the latest they have in their database, that according to some reports, is not as complete as importing everything with Lightspeed, because the info comes from History.dat, which is more complete. You have many options to do it though, but the most optimal way would be to download all the artwork packs, extract them locally, point Lightspeed to those folders and let it do its thing. You should get all games filtered, all metadata parsed and all artwork ready to go when you open Launchbox next time (unless you are using the latest beta, but in that case I will release a new version tonight that should fix that a well). -Kris

June 13, 2016

rmilyard said So what is best way to use program to split my roms into arcade, neo geo, and what else should I? All CPS systems into one platform or 3? Not sure what others are doing. Then when do how do you get all the media? Will it scrape right when split like this?

It's a matter of personal taste. I prefer everything split, like 3 different CPS platforms, but you could name the 3 of them CPS and go with a single one. The program will indeed parse all media correctly, no matter if it is split or all combined under "Arcade". The thing about the image folders is that the latest LaunchBox beta broke it, as many new folders were added. My working version will address that, so things will not break if you are using the latest beta (and will still work with older versions). I should release this version tonight, together with some other improvements :) -Kris

June 13, 2016

Glad things worked, Cid! Yeah, this Naomi thing kind bothers me as well. I mean, I don't even know if would be possible to break it in naomi and naomi2. Not sure if those drivers are separated. Also the GD-ROM version. Maybe I can try to split it up a bit, but I need to dig into those xml files to see what's under the hood. I really appreciate all your feedback guys. That's what pushes me to make it a better tool. Cheers, -Kris

June 13, 2016

By all means, keep the questions coming until we figure this thing out! :) I just downloaded the old Mame 0.173 and set it up as my emulator using your folder as a base. It generated the files fine, so I'm ruling that out. If I had to guess, I would say that's either permission or disk space related. Here's my test:

Check for disk space first and if you do have enough to accommodate about 220mb, then try running Lightspeed as Administrator. -Kris

June 13, 2016

Easy fix! Drybonz, for some reason you got two corrupted files in your setup. I just opened the very zip file you sent me and noticed this:

Look at the sizes. Those two files are corrupted, don't ask me how :) Solution: 1) go to the SupportFiles folder and simply delete them 2) Re-open Lightspeed and you will get a popup message saying that the xml wasn't found and telling you how to proceed, which is, go to the options tab and click "MAME -listxml" This will take about 50 seconds to complete and will re-create those files for you again. As soon as it's finished, you will notice a number on the side of this button, which should be the MAME version that you are using. The files sizes should now look like this:

Go straight to the export tab and click "filter" again. Your list should now populate correctly using the exact same filters you've set. Try it and let me know! :) -Kris

June 13, 2016

CriticalCid said Just tested the new version. I can’t confirm the “All Killer” issue. Everything works as expected on my side. @Drybonz have you checked that the path for your ROM files is right? The filter didn’t work for me either until I’ve realized that the path for my ROM files was wrong.

I tried to remove the ROMS path all together and it still worked for me. Then I tried to make Launchbox main folder as the ROMS folder and it still worked, so I'm not sure what's going on. I would really like to get my hands on a zip file containing all contents of your Lightspeed folder, if you can, Drybonz.

CriticalCid said The “couldn’t find ECD” error is still there. This time I also tried to open the .zip files with WinRAR and 7zip, both programs showed me an error that they can’t open the files. So I tried to compress an empty .txt file so that I have a valid .zip file and it worked. No more errors :) You should definitely use this as method for creating dummy files.

That's exactly the method that I'm using, so I'm pretty sure it's still happening on your side because those are the old files created with a previous version of Lightspeed. Try to sort by size and look at the dates, so you can spot the old files more easily. If you double click any of them and you still get an error, that means they are the old files. If you remove them and let Lightspeed re-create them your problem should be gone.

CriticalCid said I also noticed that when I filter the NAOMI games out I get a lot of different versions for the same games in the Output list. From all the drivers I tried out that was the only one which showed duplicates of the same game.

They are not actual duplicates. They are different versions. If you uncheck the options to remove tags you will notice that their names are different. Two things about what you are seeing as a problem: 1) since Naomi is unsupported (or barely supported ) by MAME at this point, a lot of those should be considered clones, I believe, but they are not (open the listxml.xml file and take a look at some of those entries). 2) Some of those entries have two versions, one of them being the GD-ROM version. So the game name should be the same, but they are in fact different, technically speaking. I could add another option to parse only regular, GD-ROM or both, but this is another thing. What Lightspeed is reporting at this point seem correct in relation to MAME xml.

CriticalCid said Also I didn’t notice any “export” notes. Every game I’ve tested had the right notes. Awesome!

Awesome to know! You might find something, but it will be one of those rare cases, I believe. Thanks for testing guys, as usual and please, let me know if there's anything else bugging. I wish I could see what's going on on that side of the island,but since I can't, sending me your files I believe to be the best/fastest way for me to help! Cheers, -Kris

June 13, 2016

The movie is being hammered by the critics, but is doing amazing among viewers. The proof is the mere 27% score on RT, while 83% of all viewers are reporting to have liked it. Also, the USA box office is no longer the measure of a movie's success. The proof is that the movie made a little over 20 million in the US, while it made almost 200 million in China alone, in only 4 days, putting the movie at 287 million as we speak, assuring a sequel! I went with low hopes and I really enjoyed it. 60% to 70% easy. No way a 2.7 out of 10 like RT's "professional" critics are saying. Really unfair score. Besides... I worked on the movie, so go see some of our CG orcs in the big screen! So far, not a lot of critics bashed the CGI, quite the opposite, so go watch for the CGI alone and you will not be disappointed. :) -Kris

June 13, 2016

Before we try that, can you close the program and upload just the ini file so I can test your settings first? Or even copy and paste its contents here, whatever is easier for you.

June 13, 2016

Is it possible for you to zip the entire folder as it is now, including the ini file and all folders/sub-folders and put it somewhere so I can download and test it? That way I should be able to see exactly what you are seeing on your side! -Kris

June 12, 2016

Could you do this: 1) Go to every tab and press "Reset" 2) Under options, uncheck "Prevent Duplicates" 3) Turn on the All Killer filter (only the top one for now) 4) Press "Filter" Let me know if you still don't get any results. I just did this over here and the list is being parsed, containing 602 games. -Kris

June 11, 2016

I went ahead and added the new folders structure. It only took me a few minutes anyway and it should be backwards compatible. It will be in the next release. I removed everything related to consoles at this point (Cart, Disk, Boxes etc) and Kept everything else. In the next release you should be able to create your lists and have all images showing up, independently of using the stable release or the latest betas. -Kris

June 11, 2016

Btw, the latest LaunchBox Beta will mess up all the images, thanks to the recent changes in that area. I would wait until Jason settles on the amount of folders and the naming convention of those, before updating to any new Beta! Once things are settled, I will then update Lightspeed to reflect those (although, I think all those new folders are quite overkill and have the potential to slow things down even more). -Kris

June 11, 2016

Sorry it didn't work for you just yet. It will! Your problem is very similar to what someone posted over Arcade Controls. This was my answer to him and he managed to make it work by extracting the files again, as seem like he forgot to extract the All Killer folder and all necessary files:

As for the All Killer list, it's working on my side. Make sure you have a folder called: .\SupportFiles\All Killer Lists

This folder contains many files named after their list gender. Make sure you got this folder and all files in it! -Kris

June 11, 2016

Latest Version: Beta v0.7i Updated on: 6/10/2016 Self-extract: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B23vaxsfSk1yaV9sZU1CMWFldFk Zip: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B23vaxsfSk1yNlNXT0lhRHVtRUk

Fixed a bug that was causing the number of players to be parsed incorrectly (thanks Milky @ Arcade Controls for discovering and reporting!).

-Kris

June 9, 2016

Latest Version: Beta v0.7h Updated on: 6/9/2016 Self-extract:https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B23vaxsfSk1ydzhZb0NSOHNHMGM Zip: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B23vaxsfSk1yNHZ4VzFXN2tBTkk

Introducing History Reparser, a much better way to extract notes from History.dat. Games marked as “Export version” will now have a much better chance to have their notes extracted from the original games, so, much more complete notes from now on.

Updated all support files to the latest versions available.

Improved controllers metadata. Most games now have a controller associated to them.

Renamed the default platform from “Mame Arcade” to simply “Arcade”

TTL and CHD “dummy” files generated are now true .zip files instead of text files named .zip.

Improved auto-fill when selecting MAME.exe

Improved “reset” functions.

FiltersA, 3rd toggle now ignores “All Killer” filter, since this is a very specific filter that ends up overwriting all others

Removed the game descriptions in the status bar when parsing lists. This sped up the process by a few seconds. The progress bar is still present.

Removed some splash screens. All info related should now be presented at the status bar, which is way faster than splash screens (it's all about speed after all).

Improved attract-mode generated lists.

Enjoy and please report anything funky. Thanks. -Kris

June 9, 2016

Thanks for the new version, Jason. All my image folders are set outside of Launchbox and this latest beta seem to have changed things (probably in the xml as well?). The funny part is that half of the legacy way is still working (green lines). The other half is not being translated to the new format as it seems. I can surely change this in my program to match what you are doing with the xml now, but I'm curious why half of those paths do work still, but not the other half! Thanks, -Kris

June 8, 2016

Comparison between my method to parse the notes in LaunchBox and how it shows in MAME (directly parsed from History.dat):

June 8, 2016

After the tests yesterday, I managed to port everything into arrays tonight, so instead of 1 minute to parse all the information, now the correct notes are being imported with no noticeable increase in processing time! :) You will not notice anything different in terms of speed, but under the hood there are many things happening now to assure that the notes will get as good as possible. I added extra measures to make sure that if the words "Export version." are found in the array, even if this is the entry with the biggest number of characters, it will still be skipped and the next biggest one will be considered, by elimination. I noticed only one game still containing "Export version." in it, but it's simply because the info is not available. It points to the Japanese entry, but that entry is not present in history.dat, at least not available for arcade (there's one listed under "nes"). This is very rare though. Here are some new shots showing the new info for some of the games you listed:

A new version coming out tomorrow, quite possibly :) -Kris

June 7, 2016

I'm thinking of another route, but not sure if it will work: - Capture both main and all clones, grouped into arrays, adding the history info to each one of them, then check one by one to see which one has the biggest number of characters, assuming that this just means more complete notes and assume this is the correct source to extract the info from. I might try that and see what kind of results I can get.

@CriticalCid, the solution above worked much better than expected. All the games you mentioned in that list got the correct metadata now! :) It's a proof of concept at this point, so I'm writing things to disk, which is pretty slow compared to arrays, but I needed to see if this would work first. I'm doing this: 1) First loop reads history.dat and spits thousands of .txt files to a folder, each one is named after the rom and with extension .txt. Each one of those files carries the Notes gathered as is. 2) Second loop: a) reads and parses MAME's xml b) creates folders for the parent roms and moves the related parent .txt files into them c) verifies if the other files are recognized as clones, moving those files into the parent folder as well At this point we've got plenty of parent folders which include both the parent and all related clones, as txt files containing all notes for each one 3) Third loop parses each of those parent folders individually, then: a) captures the file size of each file in the folder and creates a list sorted by file size, from larger to smaller b) captures the first line (the larger file) c) parses all other files in the folder and copies the larger file, overwriting all other files in the folder with the very same content present in the larger file At the end, both clones and parent receive the exact same notes, but always from the larger file, independent of being a clone or a parent, because as you remember, what history.dat considers the original game is not necessarily the parent ROM in MAME, so as brute force as this solution might look, it yelled WAAAAAAAY better results than all the crazy coding I had done before, trying to chase information through loops. Since this is reading and writing info to disk at this point, obviously it's not super fast, but it works and it's very promising! It takes about 1 minute to do the whole process for about 34000 entries as it stands, but once I convert the logic to arrays, this might take just a few seconds. It might take some time, but I will get this sucker working :) -Kris

June 6, 2016

I have all bioses saved inside of their respective software list folders and the root of my Software Lists folder was added as a path in mame.ini. The same hierarchy applies to other things. For example: if you create a folder called "Saturn" inside of your mame default "snap" folder and add the snaps for Saturn to it, a software like MameUI should be able to find them, because this is the expected place where Mame will look for them. In general, when it comes to Mess, Mame will look for a folder named after the software list and will then look for the files related to the roms inside of it. The same way, if you want to save all your software lists inside of your mame roms folder, mame should be able to find everything as well without the need to do anything else. I prefer having my SLists separated though, so they don't get all mixed with the CHD folders already in the Mame Roms folder. There are many ways to handle it. You could potentially extract all bioses to a folder called "BIOSES" inside of your mame installation folder, for example, and simply add that folder as a rom folder in your mame.ini. Mame should be able to find it as well.

-Kris

June 6, 2016

I spent some time this weekend writing a parser to help Alexis with History.dat He wanted to get a list of all entries present in MAME but not present in History.dat, so he can complete History.dat by adding all the missing MAME games AND SoftwareList games. The parser finds everything missing and spits lists based on Software list name, separated into Clones Missing and Main Missing. It will make his life much easier and we should see some nice progress on that front in the near future (although, it's still a lot of manual work on his side!) :) Hopefully he will able to return the favor and maybe we will be able to find a way to get those notes for Export games parsed from the main game instead, at some point :) -Kris

June 5, 2016

I totally understand and trust me, I'm VERY anal about getting things right as much as possible! It's just so hard with this because what history.dat refers as the original game, sometimes this game is just one of the many clones available! If both matched, like MAME and history.dat called the original game the main game, then things would be much easier and a lot of code would be unnecessary, but as it stands it's a constant chasing and each regex needs to contemplate 10+ scenarios (!!!!!) because of the variations in the way the entries are written. I'm thinking of another route, but not sure if it will work: - Capture both main and all clones, grouped into arrays, adding the history info to each one of them, then check one by one to see which one has the biggest number of characters, assuming that this just means more complete notes and assume this is the correct source to extract the info from. I might try that and see what kind of results I can get. About the checkbox to make a 3rd loop optional, that's a possibility! -Kris

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