Antropus

CADScott said Perhaps the platform names in the importer could be a customisable field name as well, with the default name already filled in? This will be available in the new wizard I have in progress. You will be able to click any platform name and change the name in the popup window. kmoney2315 said I actually would like if all the Capcom CPS 1,2 and 3 where all together in one platform called Capcom Classics or maybe Capcom Arcade Classics. I'm afraid that would be too specific. There is an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to personal taste :) Some people would like to combine Cave and PGM for example. Or split naomi1 and naomi2. Or combine just the vertical games of CPS and Cave and call it "Supa dupa Shmups!" ;) You can very easily do this by combining things using Launchbox's own edit wizard. BTW: The wizard GUI is looking awesome! It's coming along. Thanks! -Kris

Maybe it's for the best then! I'll put an extra effort on it this week and see in what shape we are by next Monday. I will hold on adding anything new to the current importer so I can concentrate on the wizard instead. That might just work out!

I wish I could have the wizard ready, but I cannot promise anything with the crazy busy family life + full time job I have :) I need to be careful during the migration so things don't break and I only had 3 days working on and off the wizard. It will happen, just possibly not in this time frame, I'm afraid.

CADScott said ...everything works exactly as expected So glad to hear! Thanks for testing :) Jason Carr said Very nice, Kris. I've fixed some of the MAME issues we had built-in to LaunchBox, because I felt like we still needed an overly simple solution. So this is what I have... Very cool, Jason! Those are very helpful to have indeed. It saves a ton of time of manually filtering things. And thanks for the link and the shout!!!! :) I got my flyer collection from the EXTRAs pack, downloaded from a certain "dome" ;) Here are some screenshots of my wizard in progress. Didn't work much on it for the past 2 days of adding features/fixes to Lightspeed core, but hopefully I will get back to it soon: -Kris

Version 0.3g is up: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1ycXBKT0hhejhSdTA/view?usp=sharing Change Log: - I removed the place hold, Mame and Mess buttons for now, since they were disabled at this point anyway. - Relative paths fully implemented (although not fully tested). 3 possible scenarios: a) Path in a drive other than the Launchbox installation folder = paths become absolute, following the example convention: "k:\Mame\Snaps" b) Path is inside of the launchbox installation folder = path becomes relative, following the example convention: "Images\Snaps" c) Path is outside of the launchbox installation folder, but in the same drive = path becomes relative, following the example convention: "..\Mame\Snaps" Relative paths apply to: Emulators, Roms and Artwork A lot of code was added today, so please test and report anything broken. Thanks! -Kris

Use WinUAELoader as the .exe, not WinUAE with this command line: -mode whdload -game %file It should work. But you need to be completely sure that everything is up and running under WinUAELoader (please google it) before you attempt to run it in Launchbox. I use WinUAELoader with the latest WHDLoad set and it works great, but I'm yet to configure it for Launchbox. Runs in my arcade machine with Maximus Arcade so it shouldn't be a problem. -Kris

I had this one, my very first videogame console ever, back in Brazil... around 1981-82 or so :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIHrqiIOcMc -Kris

Another distraction for me these days is to expand my program to import Amiga games, with the possibility of filtering them. I wrote a little app that extracts the WHDLoad games one by one, searches for the readme file inside each one, parses the info from it to extract the game's full name, year and manufacturer and then looks for clues in the zipped file names to extract country (when available) and version (almost always available). My intention is to create an ini file with all this info compiled in it, that can be used for filtering purposes. I know that .dat files are available for the TOSEC and Dat-O-Matic sets, which I'm not interested in at this point (besides, they don't carry a whole lot of metadata in them anyway). The reason is that I bought a registered key for the WHDLoad set years ago and I'm proud to support those guys for the awesome job they've done over the years. Besides, WHDLoader is a pretty straight forward launcher. -Kris

I've had stopped development of my MESS module for Lightspeed at this point, as I'm refining things on the Mame side right now, but CD-i is one of the systems that seem to be working quite well in MESS (aka MAME). You just need a mouse to use it. I'm planning to get back to it some time soon, tweak things a little more and soon put it in one of the future Lightspeed betas. I want to break this notion that it's so messy to the point that it's unusable. My program will do the hard work for you and import a clean collection of MESS systems/games ready to be played under Launchbox. I'm getting a good chunk of systems working quite nicely under mess at this point, including the CD-i. Cartridge based Sega systems work great. -Kris

Here's an update ready for some tests. I rushed a bit and moved quite a bit of code around, but didn't have a whole lot of time to test, so you guys please let me know how it goes: EDIT: please download the very latest version from the link at the very first post of this thread Change log: - TTL games playable (if emulation status is good, obviously) - Corrected lowercase - New config (Lightspeed.ini) file saved on exit, so no more filling up everything every time. You can also edit the file manually if you want to change things around faster. - Relative paths now implemented. One thing though, the paths will be considered relative in relation to the position of your launchbox.xml file. So anything pointed to any folder inside of your launchbox installation folder will become relative, which is the way Jason has things set. BUT, at this point, anything outside of launchbox's install folder will be assumed to be absolute paths, even if they are in the same drive as launchbox, but outside of the installation folder, at least for now. Please test and report. Thanks! -Kris

New version coming tomorrow. I need to test it a bit before release, but I need to go to bed now :) Change log preview: - TTL games are now parsed and playable. If they are marked as emulation "good", a dummy zip file will be created and the game will be imported/playable under Launchbox. So far, only 4 games fall into this criteria: Breakout and 3 Pong variations. - Lowercase removed. Everything preserved as present in the original paths - No more redo... a config (ini) file will now be generated, saving all your current settings on exit and reading them all back next time you open Lightspeed. This took forever to do... so many fields/checkboxes. Now I remember why I decided to delay this. Glad it's there now, though :) - Relative paths still in progress. I got the game paths already in place. Need to do the emulator paths next. What is preferable, ".\Games\Mame" or "Games\Mame"? I'm using the first, but either way doesn't matter much to me in terms of work, so let me know which one you prefer, Jason. -Kris

Here's a little test a I just did: 1) Installed a brand new mame, with no roms in the rom path 2) Ran "Mame64 breakout" in the CMD window 3) Game launched perfectly :) That means that there are no roms associated to those games. Seems like they live within the mame.exe file ;) In fact, you can copy JUST your mame.exe to ANY folder right now and from the command line run "mame64 breakout" for example and the game launches with no problem. Since this is the case, I can safely create the dummy zip files IF the emulation status is marked as "good". Easy :) -Kris

I just looked at how many [TTL] games there are in mame xml. Vast majority is preliminary. The only ones marked as "good" are breakout and about 3 versions of pong. I could, in theory, check if the game: 1) Contains [TTL] in the name 2) if it does, check if the emulation status is marked as "good" 3) if it is, check if a rom of the same name is present in the roms folder 4) if it's not, create a dummy zip Now, that's a little risky, because all those scenarios can be met and the dummies can be generated but if you still don't have the roms where those live, the game will not work. The question is: where are those roms coning from? What set contains them? Info on TTL games: http://discrete.mameworld.info/

Both suggestions don't seem hard to implement. The lowercase was introduced because I thought it looked nicer for some reason. I can simply remove that line and everything will be original again. About the relative path, that shouldn't be too hard. Seems like all I need to do is: 1) check for the drive and compare to the path to launchbox.xml 2) if different drive, keep the way it is, with absolute paths 3) if drives match, compare rom path against launchbox.xml 4) if the path to launchbox.xml is contained within the rom path, trim everything until that point so it's relative 5) if not part of launchbox path, then replace the folder names with ..\ all the way to the root. About the game being TTL, that's new info to me. Not sure how that works and how mame looks for those games. I already have a routine in place to generate dummy zip files to make CHDs work, so the approach can be exactly the same, but I will need to research more about those types of games. Thanks guys!

Drybonz said *edit* On a side note... as I'm testing the new version I was thinking one thing that might be nice for down the road is if Lightspeed would write your directories to a cfg/ini file so you don't have to fill them each time. In my to do list, no doubt!

Drybonz said Breakout is breakout.zip... it's the original "Arkanoid" game, by Atari. I don't have a breakout.zip in my collection (which I believe to be complete) neither I see a breakout in the mame xml :) But try the new version. It might show up somehow :) Edit: found it in the xml, but not in my roms. The game will not show up in LaunchBox unless it's found on your collection. The status is marked as good, so I wonder why it didn't get imported if you say you have the rom.

Here's the fix: Edit: newest version can be found at the beginning of the first post of this thread. From now on, every time the emulation is marked as preliminary, the game is going to be considered non-working, BUT, if the status is preliminary AND the emulation is marked as good, then the game is considered "imperfect". Cheers, -Kris

I don't know this breakout game, couldn't find in the mame xml, but "Destroyer" is marked as status "preliminary", reason why it's not being added. I just realized it is a mistake on my end, since status preliminary doesn't tell the whole story. Emulation "preliminary" should be the only ones filtered out. In the case of Destroyer, only the sound is preliminary, so it should be included like you said. Easy fix. I'll have an update in a few minutes. Thanks!

Edit: newest version can be found at the beginning of the first post of this thread. Change Log: - Game descriptions now respect and represent ":" and "/" correctly - Both Developer and Publisher are now being captured. It solely depends on how precise Mame has this info stored internally though, so discrepancies will occur, sometimes showing Publisher as Developer and vice-versa. Maybe we could convince someone in the Mame team to correct that order so we can get more precise info, dunno. Still, the extra info is now being captured anyway, which is always good! - Genres are now simplified, with only the main group showing under genres and everything else being split into a custom field called "Sub-Genre", which can also be retrieved via filters Screenshots: As usual, please give it a spin and let me know if something breaks! From now on, you will always be able to download the latest version from the very top of the very first post of this thread (thanks for the permission, Jason!). Cheers, -Kris

I forgot to mention that I started transforming my currentGUI into a multi-GUI Wizard yesterday. Now I have plenty of room to add stuff, so the number of filters that you can use increased quite a bit :) It consists into a splash/intro GUI followed by other GUIs for adding Paths, Options, Filters and the last one should be a listview, before you can finally patch launchbox.xml. Each title will have a "?" by it, so you can get help each step of the way if you need. Looking pretty clean so far. -Kris

I noticed that before, that the image didn't show up in my library and then I checked and the image was indeed in the folder, but with the underscore in the name. Maybe I forgot to refresh or something else. I will try to reproduce the problem and will let you know! If it works, then it's all good, but naming after the ROM and not after the actual description is common practice when it comes to Mame artwork. Any Mame artwork pack you download is treated that way. The same is not true when it comes to other collections though, especially consoles, since those use either TOSEC, Dat-O-Matic or other naming conventions to name the roms. Mame is its own thing :)

Jason Carr said - I noticed that developers, publishers, and genres aren't split up (they come over as "Taito/Midway" for example). It would be awesome if the importer could separate these and put them in LaunchBox as separate since LaunchBox supports multiple items for these. I totally agree. It looks a little awkward. It's hard to trust the info provided by the support files though. For example, you will find games containing "Arika/Capcom" and some other games containing "Capcom/Arika". If we define a logic that Capcom is always the Publisher (which is probably true), than the other company mentioned, when found, will have to be the developer. That's a little tricky, because if the support files (including Mame's own xml file) ALWAYS considered the first to be the publisher and the second to be the developer, than things would be easy, but as in the example above, the support files have clear discrepancies and sometimes one might come first and other times it will come second. Quite annoying :) BUT for now, what we can be completely sure is that if no "/" is found, we should assume (I believe correctly) that Publisher and Developer are exactly the same. I can add this to the code pretty easily. Now, I can still split the two every time a "/" is found, but we will need to decide which one will be considered the developer and which one will be considered the publisher. Apparently, most of the time the Publisher comes first, but as I pointed out above, inconsistencies will happen, not because of some flaw in the way I'm capturing the variables, but simply because of inconsistencies in the official support files. Lets decide and I can add it! Another way would be to have a database of publishers only (as an additional support file), so I could compare to that and assume that anything not in the list is assumed to be a developer, but I doubt that would be consistent either :) Now for the Genres, this is much easier as it is pretty consistent. I can simply split that and consider the genre to be what's before the "/" and add the additional info after the "/" as an extra field, so people can still use it to filter stuff if they want to. Jason Carr said - What is going into the Source field? It's a different use of that field than what it was intended for, though that might not be a bad thing if it's useful. I just don't know how it would be used. Either way, this isn't a big deal because it's simple to clear out. Thanks for answering this one, Drybonz! Jason Carr said - Game titles often come over with a dash in them, such as "1943 - The Battle of Midway". It would be great if we could rename these games to proper titles with colons like this: "1943: The Battle of Midway". That should be as easy as doing a search and replace on " - " to ": ". That was deliberated at some point. What happened is that I noticed that when you drag and drop a missing artwork into the game info window, it names the artwork after the description of the game, instead of the name of the rom. When that happens, if you have ":" in the name, windows simply cannot name the file using it, so ":" becomes "_" and when I re-open Launchbox, the artwork cannot be found for that reason. I think you could help with this one, renaming the artwork using the rom name instead. That would avoid this kind of problem :) All great points. Thanks for looking into those Jason! -Kris

Thanks guys :) Talent is a myth. It all comes down to the amount of dedication and passion you put into something. In other words, how obsessed you are with something :) -Kris

Ha!

I totally agree. I have this idea that might help as well, to have an intermediate step before you get to the final result: I thought about introducing a listview so people can actually see and check what's being included in their library, similar what what you do with launchbox already, but not only that, with the possibility to drag and drop any number of mame/mess rom files right into this listview as the program parses all the metadata for those games to be included in launchbox.xml, showing you the result right there before you confirm what you want. This way, you will have the freedom to bypass any pre-defined filters, forcing the import of some clone roms that you really like, for example. Also the possibility of deleting stuff from the list as well. Adding informative windows as part of a guide/wizard to help in each step of the way shouldn't be too hard either, so we can definitely get to that soon! -Kris