Antropus

Drybonz said *edit* Unfortunately, it leaves me with the same .xml... no changes, new games or platform. Holy! Really not sure what's happening. What's your windows version? If I remember correctly, the previous version was working on both win7 and win10. Could someone else try it and report, please? I can try it in another machine once I get home tonight! -Kris

Please, try this new .exe file. Just replace the old one with it and run it again: Edit: *Bug Fixed* Latest Version posted on page 1, at the beginning of the this thread. I hope it works. I cannot reproduce the problem in my machine. Would be nice to get other people trying it as well so we can narrow things down!

Jason, the latest stable version is being detected as malicious software by Kasperski: HEUR:Trojan.Win32.Generic The update cannot proceed because Kasperski is deleting it every time. I will try to run a web scan on it. Probably a false positive. -Kris

That is a good sign! That means that all filters and basically the whole program worked fine and the last piece missing is xml export. It's weird, because there's not a lot of code involved in that last part. It simply grabs the contents of the listview, adds the notes and spits the xml file. Could you do a little test for me? Can you rename your launchbox.xml to something else, restart Lightspeed, run it and check if a new launchbox.xml file was created? If so, could you check if the games are in it?

Are you seeing the listview populated at the end, after you press "preview" and before pressing "go!"?

Thanks and sorry it didn't work just yet! Lets see if I can help. Things to check: 1) Did you unzip it into a clean folder? This is necessary as some support files were changed 2) Was Launchbox opened by any chance? (I know it's silly, but worth checking!) 3) Is the rom path set correctly and files are present in said folder? -Kris

I'm a long time user of Maximus Arcade and I love the look of it and I thought it was pretty easy to configure... before I tried Launchbox. Years later, Maximus doesn't look dated, but it hit a dead end and is no longer being updated. Also, treating lists as binary files was a big mistake of their part in my opinion. Hyperspin is overly complicated and those themes are like a disco club, with too much going on, to the point that it distracts from the experience of simply playing the games. Don't show those themes to children or they will start fainting and having convulsions! :) Their community and the amount of artwork generated by them is undeniable though. They made a HUGE difference when it comes to artwork, together with Emumovies. Their community is much bigger than the frontend itself and I deeply respect that. Now, when it comes to Launchbox, this is not a hobbyist's project. Jason is working full time on it and really involved with the community. He is constantly updating and making thinks better. It's great looking without being too flashy or cheesy. More in line with Kodi when it comes to the way things are presented and in terms of file lists format as well (xml), so it's easy to edit things and develop tools for it. There are many wizards with the intention of making things as easy as possible to the final user and it really shows. Also, the direct connection to Emumovies is a God sent feature. The brand new database will be HUGE very soon and has the potential to benefit not only this community, but the entire emulation community as a whole and set the bar to where to find quality metadata and artwork. Time will tell, but I have a great feeling about it. Also, Launchbox has a lot of awesome video tutorials already and a very helpful community always available to help. At this point, Launchbox is my favorite frontend for arcade cabinets and PinballX is bar none the very best frontend for pinball cabinets. The best way to find out if we are saying is true is: install ALL of them and spend only 20 minutes in each one. The one that gives you a combination of speed, flexibility when it comes to filters and good looks will come on top and I have a strong feeling that it will be Launchbox. Good luck choosing! -Kris

Thanks Drybonz. I just released the very first Wizard version. It should be easy as pie to understand, as it guides you every step of the way. It has many more filters available, listviews that allow you to refine your output list even further by deleting games you don't want or for adding custom clones you want to play even after all clones were filtered out. It can also create dummy roms so CHD and TTL games are also imported and playable as well. There's also a cool little feature in there that might fit the bill for you: the ability to automatically copy or move the filtered ROMS and CHDS to a folder of your choice, so you can have a very clean set with only the stuff you really play at the end. If you use it, just make sure to edit your mame.ini file so the rom path reflects the new, clean one... Give it a shot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1yRE4zWl9yYmhDNG8/view?usp=sharing -Kris

First version of the brand new Wizard is ready for a spin. Please grab it from here: Edit: Latest Version posted on page 1, at the beginning of the this thread. The interface is pretty self explanatory. Most noticeable changes are the listviews, where you will be able to select any number of clones and add them to your output list with a single button click. Another good one is the ability to name multiple platforms the same and get those roms added to it. Naming all CPS1, CPS2 and CPS3 as simply CPS, for example, will produce a single platform of that name. containing all related roms. About the export releases metadata... I had to remove it for now, as it's not precise enough just yet. There were changes in configuration file structure, so make sure to extract it to a clean folder. Enjoy. -Kris

Now to something totally different: Using Lightspeed to populate Kodi/Advanced Launcher! I added a few lines of code to Lightspeed and I can now populate Kodi/Advanced Launcher with Flyers, Snaps and Metadata that can be sorted by genre, year, title and publisher, all filtered and a perfect match to whatever is being exported to Launchbox. It doesn't have a lot of the awesome features that Launchbox has, but it sure looks good, super fast and launches games pretty smooth as well. Using the right scraper to find the missing artwork, almost everything I tried was downloaded (not a lot of flyers, but a ton of images and titles that is). Testing some skins:

CriticalCid said Awesome! Now is your importer truly 100% perfect for my needs. I just want to say thank you for your work on this and that you share it with the whole community. It’s more than appreciated. Thanks man! Unfortunately it doesn't completely eradicates the problem :/ It's better though. I'm trying different things to avoid adding a whole new loop that can make the whole thing to run much slower. I will get there eventually. Here's my *final* list of MESS supported systems. I will only make those available when I release my MESS module, only because those were personally "inspected" by me and seem to be working quite nicely. There are many other systems working, but I'm really not adding support to super crappy, unplayable systems anyway :P I will add more systems as they become playable, if they are worth playing. All in all, at this point my MESS module is: - Parsing all software lists while cross-referencing the info with mame listxml for extraction of additional data - Adding 16.000+ games across over 30 systems, the vast majority running really nicely - Adding custom command lines per game, with auto-switch drivers for when the game runs in PAL or NTSC (or else the games will not work) - Adding basic metadata, which includes: control type, media type, number of buttons, orientation, resolution, serial, region, manufacturer and basic info from history.dat. All of the above is taking about 50 seconds in my machine. That means that in the future you will be able to add over 32.000 games between MAME and MESS in a little over a minute, playable in Launchbox straight away without the need of figuring out the command lines to run those systems. Import > Open Launchbox > Double click > play. Not sure if it can get any easier... -Kris

I just checked and they uploaded a good amount of boxes packages over there and the rest says "coming soon", so they are definitely working on it! http://www.progettosnaps.net/softwareresources/

I apologize for derailing your thread, locvez! I agree with you. It's a thread about how to make something work, not about judging if it's the best way or not. Let me know how it goes. I'm actually excited to go back to this Mess module. As I mentioned before, I've got a fair amount of systems running very well and I'm on a quest for artwork to populate the library at this point. There are many packages out there, but they are either TOSEC or Dat-O-Matic named. I could use a fuzzy renamer to get part of it there, but it's limited. I'm actually collecting and renaming a lot of stuff manually and have some systems almost complete now. I'll share those artwork packs once I finish them at some point. You can find plenty of screenshots for software lists, but not a whole lot of flyers or boxes named in Mame convention. I believe Progetto Snaps is working hard on it though and the team responsible for catver.ini is working on documenting the software lists by genre as well. Mame is a juggernaut. Lots of teams working on stuff constantly, in the spirit of preserving the good and old games. Things are just getting better now, so never give up! :) -Kris

CriticalCid said But I also hope you will look into the problem with the notes for the export releases when you have finished the wizard. @CriticalCid: try to spot the difference between those two screenshots ;) The problem (if this is really a problem) is that now at the top of the notes, the original name is presented, not matching the description under the game cover anymore. But that name is redundant anyway, so I may just eliminate that first line all together. So far this only works for export releases that derive from Japanese releases, which are the vast majority.

I just tried that search term and one of the first results leads to a 621mb file with 54 roms. Oh Google... you little devil you :)

Drybonz said Does it use the same rom set as MAME? That's a lottery. Mame changed a lot of sets over the years, as better dumps were retrieved. Some might work. Some might not, for that reason. Model 2 emulator wasn't updated in many years, so your best bet is to search for something like "Sega Model 2 emulator full set" and see if you can find those roms, so you can be sure they will work. They are not many, so not a whole lot of hdd space will be necessary. Good luck!

All Daytonas are marked as "preliminary" on both emulation and driver status, so no, they will not work. You can run them pretty decently using the good and old Sega Model 2 Emulator by Elsemi.

Not at all. Look, I work in a place where there's a lot of amazing, ground-breaking technology being developed on a daily basis. If you look at the code produced here, it's gibberish, incredibly complicated math and quite frankly, out of this world stuff that no human should have to understand. It's developed by scientists who care more about the science itself than anything else. It's the job of the interface gurus to translate that into something that us, mortals, can use and understand. Your argument goes a little like this "if it's not user friendly it's incomplete and lacking, not worthy of my time", which I believe to be a mistake, because you are missing one of the biggest sources of fun in life: the challenge! I got the job I have by doing, instead of questioning. If I didn't know how to do it, after a lot of research I ended up learning how to do it. That's the main difference: you can choose to be paralyzed when facing something that doesn't quite work the way you want it to or you can make it happen. The whole point of me developing Lightspeed is because in my own little world I believed that LB was lacking some things and took on myself to find a solution for my own needs, later on sharing with a community that deserves the very best, because the community folks are the gears of this giant engine. Passionate, selfless, generous people. Now, I could complain about it non-stop instead, but that would not solve my problem :) Now, Launchbox is a paid product (at least the Premium version) and I would argue that instead of dissing and complaining about an emulator that created this whole little "industry" of retro-emulation and spun a number of front-ends, arcade cabinets, websites, android apps AND Retroarch itself, we should spend more time talking about POSITIVE ways of making things happen for the users. Now for some positive feedback: I watched all your videos and they are incredibly positive and helpful. For some reason I don't feel that same positive energy when it comes to your online interaction with the users though, at least speaking for myself, of course. There's a whole lot of discouragement that comes from you, man, just so you know ;) Lets be positive for a second and believe that there are other ways of doing things. The community will greatly appreciate it. I know I do. Not a personal attack at all and I really hope you don't take it that way. Just a pattern that I've been observing since I registered. Cheers, -Kris

I have a totally different take on it. Mame/Mess strive for accuracy and still manage to be very fast and compatible with a TON of different systems. The main objective is to preserve and document hardware/software, period. It was never about making the life of the common user, aka the "avid gamer" who just wants to play it, easier at all, but over the years they developed MANY mechanisms to make it very possible for front-end developers to make stuff playable for their users. You see, I don't think they have any obligation to make it dummy proof at all, but rather strive to develop the best emulator they can, as accurate as possible. Front-end developers NEED to research how the program works and call on themselves the responsibility of making the life of their users easier, that's the main point I'll make. The information is all out there. Other emulators will surely be faster most of the time, because they use a ton of hacks to make things to run faster, because they are developed by gamers for other gamers. They don't care if it's precise, as long as it "plays nice". The Mame/Mess guys are going the opposite direction, removing more and more hacks as their emulation gets more accurate, to the point that some systems run absolutely perfect, especially the arcade stuff. A lot of computers/consoles used similar components and that's what we will start seeing more and more: compatible, accurate systems becoming playable through Mame/Mess. Will it happen overnight? Nope. Mess was added to Mame only a year or so ago. Give it time. -Kris

Btw, most if not all systems populated on the left fully work or partially work and were all added in a little over half a minute with my program :) There's a movement happening right now about the folks in charge of the support files (catver, series, etc) starting to dedicate more time to the software lists, so I believe that in the future we will have enough information per system to be able to capture more metadata. I know that there's a whole lot of hype surrounding Retroarch, but don't count Mess out. Remember: Mess is now under Mame, the most powerful emulator to ever exist ;)

I will get back to my mess module at some point, but here's what I'm populating when it comes to CD-i. It will be painful for you to edit each game and add the correct command line, but I found it very effective when it comes to running most systems. Everything is being added automatically, so there's no sweat on the user's side of things, but yeah, if you are going to do this manually you are screwed :) I will get back to the mess module at some point and make people's lives easier. Here are my settings: -Kris

Debugging, cleaning code, moving things around and testing at this point. Here's a sneak peek: Cheers, -Kris

Drybonz said Bump n' Jump may be another game that isn't imported correctly, but not 100% sure. I can't find it in my LaunchBox set. Because it is a clone of Burnin'Rubber. You should have this one in there. Here are some good news. I added two listviews at the very end of the wizard. They will work like this: 1) Press a button and all games and all metadata (other than the notes) will be loaded into the main listview, where you will be able to delete stuff and rename the descriptions. 2) If you have the Clones checkbox checked, all clones will be loaded into this main listview 3) Now the fun part: if you have the Clones checkbox unchecked, only the main sets will be loaded into the main listview, but all clones will be loaded and available at the Clones Manager Listview, which will list all clones available based on the other filters. Once there, you will be able to select and add ANY number of specific clones into your main listview with a single click. 4) The main listview will behave like a preview of what will be added to Launchbox, so at anytime you can re-parse data with different filters, delete things, add clones and what you see in there is exactly what you will get in launchbox. 5) Once the preview window looks like you want, press a button to bake everything into your Launchbox.xml. I noticed that problem that we were talking about in the past about only one game having duplicated metadata from time to time and I'm now 95% convinced that this is a Launchbox bug. I exported new stuff many times and a bunch of times I noticed the duplicated metadata and it ALWAYS happens with the very first game you click and none of the other games. I have a feeling that it's something related to the way the launchbox loads the xml file, like, if you don't wait until it's completely done and click in something, it glitches the import and repeats the metadata. Since it only happens with the first game you click, ANY game, there's no way that lightspeed is causing the problem. Could you take a look at this @Jason? Thanks! -Kris

Thanks guys! :)

As I get closer to release the wizard version (still ways to go...), I'm adding more things to it. With the new ability to custom name platforms, you will indeed have the ability to rename CPS1, CPS2 and CPS3 to the same name, like "Capcom Arcade Classics" as you mentioned and they will all be contained within a single platform of that name. I added many more filters as well. You will be able to create custom platforms by genre if you wish. For example, you can uncheck everything but "Driving", name the main Mame platform "Driving - Arcade" and a new platform populated solely with driving games will be created. You can do the same for Shmups, fighting games, platform games, breakout games, etc. So, instead of only filtering junk out, you will be able to create specific working lists by genre. -Kris