Antropus

Drybonz, You might like to know that the next version of Lightspeed will support what you want to do. By now you probably already moved ahead and downloaded the split sets, but I'm adding this feature to Lightspeed for anyone with merged sets to use. It will be fully implemented in a day or two. It works like this: 1) Before you do anything else (like generating the bulk of your mame filtered library), the first step is to drag and drop any merged rom set that you want to run clones from into a little area in the gui. 2) A listview will open up showing all clones related to that main set and you will be able to use checkboxes to select any number of clones you want to play from LaunchBox. 3) You will see two buttons available: the first one will allow you to create dummy files with empty contents, named after the clone rom and the same extension as the main set you drag-dropped (.7z or .zip). The second button is an actual rom splitter and can be useful for anyone who just want a quick way to split their merged sets. This one will unzip the file(s) you just dropped, it will verify only the clones you just checked by running mame in the background just to get a list of the necessary roms to run each clone, look through the newly unzipped folder for those roms and finally will create the correspondent brand new zip files (or .7z) that will contain all necessary roms to play said clone, without adding any other roms necessary to play the other clones. It will be a clean spit/merge file. 4) This feature will bypass all filters and will force the clones you selected into the final LaunchBox.xml, so unless they are broken, you will get them available in LaunchBox. I tested both ways and I can confirm that mame will launch the correct game even if you point to a dummy zip file, as mame will look for the roms in there first and since it will not find them, it will look for them in the main set, launching the correct clone set based on the name you passed. You will able to test it yourself around Wednesday. Cheers, -Kris

I'm wondering here. Wouldn't a dummy zip file work just like what happens with the CHDs with no companion roms? Like, if you create a text file with the clone name you want to run and .7z or .zip as an extension, in theory mame should look for the roms in this file first, then look if it can find them inside of the main set and once it finds it, it *should* launch the game. I imagine that the dummy file with no contents will do the trick, since LaunchBox will pass this file (with no extension) as a parameter to mame and that's all that matters, I believe. I'm already creating dummy .zip files to run CHDs and it works great. I could, in theory, just create the dummy files for the merged clones you want to play, but I'm thinking about going all the way and creating a little tool to split or merge sets within Lightspeed. I did some tests and wrote a little concept that works like this: you drag and drop into an especial area of the gui the merged roms containing the clones you want to play. Lightspeed will then search for all related clones (from the xml) open a listview, listing all related clones available within that set, with checkboxes that you can select. You select the clones you want and then (this is the part still missing, but I think I know how to do it) Lightspeed will unzip the main set, run mame.exe with a parameter to retrieve the necessary roms to play that game and re-zip a brand new file, correctly named after the clone, containing all the necessary roms to play this specific game. It will basically create a split/merge for this clone, but without any unnecessary roms used by other clones. From that point on, those would get piped through Lightspeed to get the metadata and image paths sets, just like with the other stuff. I think it might be useful for other people with merged sets as well, but I'm doing it for the fun of figuring it out :)

Yeah, I think a split set is easier to maintain these days. When you need to download just new stuff to complete your collection, it's easier to find and faster to download split sets. I think frontends should support that though. If you are a Premium user you are paying for a product, so I think you should definitely ask for it as a feature in LaunchBox. All that's necessary is to read the information from the xml file, add a checkbox somewhere in the Gui like "Merged Set" and simply assign the main rom as the path if said game is a clone. Or have that option during the import wizard, so you would drag-drop your main set, check the "Merged Set" and LaunchBox would do it. Once I'm done with the new stuff I'm adding to Lightspeed I might sketch something that works :)

Definitely doable... but this is very specific. I mean, I don't know many people who still keep their ROM sets merged! On top of that, the purpose is to add what, five, maybe 10 different clones that are preferable to the main set? Something like this could take you literally five minutes to do manually while it could take me more than an hour to code, and I would be doing this for you, since I would not take any advantage of the time spent on it, think about that for a second ;) Now, if you manage to find at least 5-10 people who need this feature really badly, I wouldn't mind adding it :) -Kris

Alright, got the copy filtered ROMs to folder part working and I'm testing it now. Seems to work great. I'm adding an option to copy CHDs, just roms or both (copying CHDs is very time consuming btw... huge files). I'm getting a little over 2700 roms as a final result, after all filters (except for "imperfect" (games that work, but with glitches in sound or GFX, which are playable anyway). New beta getting closer to be released. -Kris

Update log: - When "Lock Emulator" is on, from now on all other platform emulator, browse buttons and command line parameters will be shown greyed out, so it's clear that only the first line will be taken in account. This is going to be the default state when you open Lightspeed, assuming that you want to create all platforms linked to a single emulator, unless you uncheck it and in that case, every single new platform created from that point on will have a companion custom emulator linked to it. - Added the skeleton code for moving/copying ROMs based on the filters (not working just yet). I'm planning to make this an open tool within Lightspeed, meaning that you will be able to ask Lightspeed to move/copy the roms as it creates the libraries for you or you can use this as a standalone tool, meaning that you can simply use it to move/copy your roms based on the filters, but without having to necessarily migrate or populate anything into LaunchBox. - .zip and .7z files are now checked against folders inside of the ROMs folder. Mame assumes that any folder inside of the ROMs folder contains CHD files and everything else is considered a ROM, either .zip or .7z. Lightspeed will now verify if a folder does not have either a .zip or a .7z companion file and if that's the case, Lightspeed will create dummy .zip files matching the folder names Now, every single CHD folder will have a companion .zip file and this way LaunchBox will ALWAYS try to launch the game. If the game works without a companion ROM file, it will launch just fine. If the game is broken, then nothing much will happen and you should not be adding any broken game to your library anyway... use the filters! Adding this feature took an incredible number of 5 lines in the code :) Little update in the GUI, now in grape flavor:

Drybonz said On a related note... is there any way to use your filters from Lightspeed to move the rom files that are filtered to another folder? The reason I would want to do this is so that my games list in MAME matches Launchbox. Super easy to add this feature and already in the plans! It should come in a couple of days. I'll probably add a "copy filtered roms to folder" kind of feature. I really don't want to move original roms around so people cannot blame me for screwing up their library later :P Stay tuned!

JustinM said I cant find download link? Hey Justin, I believe this is the latest alpha I released. You can try it out for now, but the first Beta is coming in a day or so (please download the whole thing, including the "SupportFiles" folder): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1ydXRJTTdBam44aTg/view?usp=sharing The beta will have some important extra features, so stay tuned. -Kris

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this up, Drybonz! Very much appreciated as I try to kill the remaining bugs :) I noticed that thing about one single game having repeated custom fields. Even in my video demo it showed up and like you said, just in one game. So odd. I will look at it. If you need help with the MameUI list, let me know. Maybe a screenshot showing the contents of your ini file? I will be looking into that problem we discussed before, about CHD games without a companion rom file not launching. I'll add a routine to check if a folder doesn't have a correspondent .zip (or .7z) and if that's the case, Lightspeed will create a dummy .zip (or .7z), so things should launch flawlessly. Stay tuned! Thank for all your contributions and suggestions. I'm listening! -Kris

I don't know how many people are testing it at this point, but I assume at least 4. Since it was released a few days ago, I would like to ask you guys for some feedback on the current features. I know there are many feature requests floating around, but I'm interested in squashing bugs at this point, before a new release comes adding some extra features, including the ability to keep all mame platforms under a single emulator as described above. Assuming you have a mame collection of roms and artwork living in your HDD: - Did the program import your mame roms collection correctly? - Was the metadata parsed correctly? - Is your local artwork showing up correctly in LaunchBox? - When you double click a game, does it launch correctly? - Was the process fast or slow in your machine? - Did you try the MameUI lists Importer module? Did it work? - Are the current filters working for you? Did you notice any inconsistency, like a game that was supposed to be playable (and you are sure is in your roms folder) not showing up in the library? Thanks guys.

Something I did yesterday night: added the ability to "Lock Emulator". What that little check-box does is: - Assigns a fixed ID for Mame - When it is on, it disables emulator and command line for all platforms and assumes the information entered in the first line as the default emulator for all platforms created from that point on (red rectangle in the image) - It checks if an emulator with the same ID is already present in your LauchBox.xml. If it's present, it doesn't add a new emulator, but rather merges the newly created platforms into the existent emulator - At any time, by switching it off you are telling Lightspeed to go ahead and create a different emulator for the specified platform. For example: you can leave it on, check all check-boxes to create all platforms linked to a single emulator and then switch it off and add a different platform using the source driver menu for "model2.cpp", defining an entirely different emulator and command line. Later, switch it back on to tell Lightspeed to merge the next platform to the core emulator again. - This emulator ID is hard coded, meaning that this number will be always the same. What that means to you is that no matter how many times you run Lightspeed to add more systems to your collection, it will always merge new platforms to the present Mame emulator ID you defined the first time you ran Lightspeed. Let's say mame just released a new version that supports Sega Model 2. You could re-open Lightspeed, pick that driver, give it a name you like, check the "Lock Emulator" check-box and this platform will be added and the emulator will be assigned to be the Mame.exe you created days ago. - It doesn't matter if you changed the name of your main Mame emulator in LunchBox later on, Lightspeed will always look for the ID number, so even if you renamed your emulator description to "My Super Awesome Mame", any time you run Lightspeed it will find it and you will be able to link any new Mame platform to that emulator. Work in progress: -Kris

DR9 said What are you using? Rocketlauncher? Something totally different? My own thing :)

DOS76 said You already don't need .bat files you just have to have different versions of Demul for arcade and Dreamcast. I already have the .bats setup though so I haven't stopped using them you have to just have a couple of the boxes checked on the main emulator form in manage emulator but those boxes mess with the ability to run the DC images. Yeah, my wrapper kinda bypasses those problems. You just need to run it with no parameters and it will work fine. I have one for Naomi and one for Atomiswave. They completely hide everything with a splashscreen and a progress bar and boot straight to the game. They also move the mouse out of the way and completely disable it, so just the joystick works. It exits straight back to Launchbox with no flashing windows of any kind. Pretty clean. I will change a couple of things and create a the same wrapper, with added flexibility, since I will allow for my own parameter to be parsed. For example, if you want to run naomi, you would just have to point to my wrapper and in the parameter you write "naomi" (or atomiswave, or hikaru or whatever parameter I come up with :) ). I'll try to release the individual wrappers and also this one that will accept parameters, so it can be used with all systems, over the weekend or so. I'm creating some splash screens for the systems right now :) -Kris

I will release my Demul wrapper sometime soon. You will not need .bat files to run the games at all ;)

That's why it's called importer instead of editor :P It will come eventually...

DOS76 said Just as a thought (sorry if I'm being a pain in the ass now) couldn't you have it only make one emulator entry in LB and just put the platforms under associated platforms instead of having 8 separate emulators that lead to the same path. Really I guess it wouldn't be much work to manually do that afterwards so its not a big deal. I will try to add this option at some point, but I think it's important to create multiple emulators at this point, as many systems, although part of mame database, are not playable at the moment, so you need to be able to point to different emulators. Also, the ability to setup different mame versions and command lines for example, like using groovy mame when sending the signal to a CRT monitor to play donkey kong and MAMEUIFX to run unofficial games with no scanlines when sending to a LED monitor. I'm not too concerned about this though, because you can always merge platforms and easily move stuff around inside of Launchbox. The Bulk edit Wizard is pretty cool! There's also something tricky about it: my program generates Unique IDs every time you run it. So, unless you add ALL systems in the same session, without closing Lightspeed (in that case I can keep track of an unique ID and assign the same emulator to multiple platforms), next time you run Lightspeed, it will not have that emulator info stored, so it will create a different ID and the new platforms added will be part of another emulator and so on. What I could do is to add some code to read Launchbox.xml and extract the emulator ID# from the core Mame platform, but lets say you decided to rename that core platform to something else at some point, like "Mame (Arcade)" and you also have other platforms named "Mame (Mess)" and "Mame Test". In that case it would be hard to know what platform holds the core Mame platform IDs... unless I add yet ANOTHER drop-down menu listing ALL emulators that exist in Launchbox.xml so you could pick the emulator that you want to link the new platform to. There's always a way to do it, but the question is always: is it worth the trouble? :) -Kris

Update coming soon: 1) You will now be able to manually add any source driver as a platform!!! Do you want an STV platform? Select the stv.cpp driver from the drop-down menu, give it a name (or accept the suggested name), set the emulator path and parameters and click the generate button! 2) Added those little buttons "A" (for ALL) and "N" (for NONE) in the bottom left corner. They will select or deselect all filters, so you don't need to do it manually 3) Re-organized the filters by most used 4) Added "Play-Choice", "Bootleg" and "Tabletop" as new filters 5) Removed Sega Model 2 and Sega Model 3 from the presets and added Hikaru instead (I needed space in the gui to add the new drop-down and new fields). With the new ability to generate platforms by source driver, you can easily select model2.cpp from the new drop-down and generate a list for Sega Model 2, so nothing changed that much 6) I'm cleaning up some space in the gui, so I can add more tools as I go. Some images: -Kris

DOS76 said I initially thought that there would be more platform choices like Sega system 16 Sega System 32 as platform options (maybe in the future). Then you might like to know that I added the ability to generate ANY number of custom platforms with my latest wip (images below). In the next release (which should be promoted from alpha to beta), you will be able to select a source driver, name the platform manually, set an emulator and parameters and it will generate this platform for you, obeying to any filters and gathering all the metadata for you just like before. I also think that the program if modified or another similar program was created could come in handy for other uses like importing everything into LaunchBox just by adding multiple ROM paths that specify the platform you could import all of your systems and roms at the same time which could kind of be amazing even though it wouldn't get the meta all at once that would be up to the user to do one platform at a time. I had the same thought and that shouldn't be too hard to add after all this coding, but I decided to stick with Mame for now, as this is the one people normally have the most trouble with. I have a big plan that involves adding MESS systems as well, and this one will take me some time to develop, as I want something just as simple, but that could bring Software Lists as platforms, remove games/software lists that don't work and set up all the right command lines and artwork for you, so you would simply open LaunchBox and fire up any game and it would simply play straight away. It will come eventually :) Either way great work thanks for contributing to the community. My pleasure. Thanks for the feedback! -Kris

gif said I am about to install this but just want to make sure that this is the approach to follow Lightspeed Mame Importer ---> LaunchBox -------> pointing to retroarch.exe for emulator? or am I pointing emulator in Lightspeed? also which emulator it recommended for good mame rom function over all should I stick with retroarch or some another standalone one and point it to that? Thanks I would say, stick to mame for arcades (other then newer stuff like Model 2, Model 3, Atomiswave etc) and use retroarch for other cores, like consoles for example. Hard to beat the real thing at this point when it comes to arcades and it's updated monthly, while retroarch seem to use older versions of mame as the core. You can either compile your own, to remove the nag screens for example or you can download a version like Groovy Mame, which is already patched and ready to be installed in an arcade cabinet and although I never used it, I hear great things about it! I'm about to install it in a few days. But answering to your question, if you feel more compelled to set retroarch as the emulator, make sure everything is working outside of Launchbox first. Then it's just a matter of setting the emulator path and the right command line for it and it should work. Yes, you should point to the emulator in Lightspeed, because it needs to assign an ID and link hook everything up for you. Later on you can move stuff around, change emulator etc, by batch editing inside of Launchbox, if desired. -Kris

SentaiBrad said Ok I see now too what the issue was. It is for some reason having to do with the .nz domain. So it has nothing to do with my suspicion about frequency. I'll see if we can't get that white listed so that you don't have to do anything special with your posts. In the mean time I'll try to keep an eye on it for you. Thanks a lot!!! :)

The frequency doesn't seem to be the case. That would be absurd. I used to administrate a forum with over 30.000 people, so I doubt that would be the case. Every post that was flagged for moderation had a link attached to it, especially to "mega" or other websites. It has no problem with google drive, but if I post anything linked to mega it will be flagged. edit: we replied at the same time :)

Mame look for either a .zip, a .7z or a folder. If any of them satisfy the criteria, matching what's in mame's internal database, then it tries to launch the game. Launchbox on the other hand doesn't seem to recognize the folder side of things, so I mentioned the use of a dummy zip file just to trick Launchbox. The "remove (*)" option is for cleaning up the final name description. If it's on, a game called "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (US 940523)" will reach LaunchBox simply named "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs". -Kris

Yep... just did a quick test: 1) created a dummy, empty .zip file called "chaoshea.zip" 2) Added it to Launchbox 3) Fired the game up and it worked :) I can add this option during import, something like "create dummy zip files to run CHDs?", or similar. -Kris

How would you add to LaunchBox a CHD game without its companion zip? What's the normal approach? I wonder if it works, since it's pointing to a folder instead of a file! Could you do this test? Could you try and see if this CHD without the zip file works if you add it manually to Launchbox? If it doesn't I'm getting suspicious that LaunchBox will always look for a file with an extension... just to later on ignore the extension. If that's the case, I could force the creation of a dummy comapinion zip file just to trick Launchbox. That way, it should find a file, find an empty zip and then look for the correspondent CHD folder and run the game, at least that's what I would think. I will try it out later tonight. That might be a solution.

CriticalCid said After the CHDs were mentioned in this thread I tested a CHD game which only consists of a CHD file and doesn’t have an additional ROM file (Chaos Heat). It didn’t start. Now I wanted to test it with the new version you just posted but now Chaos Heat wasn’t imported at all. It will not be imported if a .zip or .7z named the same as the folder containing the CHD is not found. The good news is: if you don't have the .zip files, that means the game is probably not working... or is it working when you run it outside of Launchbox even with a missing companion .zip file? Edit: I was able to run Chaos Heat from mameUI without the need of the companion .zip file. Now I'm intrigued: how does LaunchBox handle that? I mean, if that option to ignore extension is on, shouldn't launchbox simply work independently of the file having or not having an extension then?