Antropus

CriticalCid said It looks for the folder name. To make it more complicated is the CHD file itself named differently than the folder name. Chaos Heat isn’t the only CHD in which that this is the case. I don’t have a list but I know that at least 20 CHD games are affected the same way. The name of the CHD doesn't necessarily need to match the name of the folder, but the folder NEEDS a companion .zip file, as in the official mame wiki info posted above. Find the companion zip file and it should work.

Found this one in the official mamedev wiki: Where do I place the .CHD (compressed hard disk image) files? Put them into a subdirectory of your "roms" directory with the name of the game the CHD is for. In addition the CHD, you also need the corresponding ROMs for the game to work. To demonstrate: mame.exe roms\ area51.zip area51\ area51.chd Note that the CHD name does not always directly correspond to the game now. For example, the CHD for Beatmania is named 753jaa11.chd. It would go in a directory called "bm1stmix". So yeah, seems like my logic is correct now and you are the one with the .zip (or .7z) dile missing :)

Btw, there are at least 4 messages answering to your questions since yesterday that are STILL awaiting for a moderator to approve them... including my latest one.

From here (not sure how reliable the info is, but anyway, this is what I used to establish my logic): CHD Files With more modern games needing so much data, hard disks or CD's were used to store the data. MAME supports these files in the form of CHD (Compressed Hunks of Data) files. Games that require CHD files need both a rom zip file and a CHD file which is stored separately to roms. For example Carnevil requires you to have carnevil.zip plus a folder called carnevil containing the file carnevil.chd. Note that the CHD file is NOT zipped. Confused? here's an example... From here: http://www.mameworld.info/easyemu/mameguide/mameguide-roms.html Do you think those games without a companion .zip (or .7z) files are just not complete or is this info unreliable?

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. Interesting. I was reading that each CHD would have a folder and a correspondent companion rom, but that doesn't seem to be the case then? I mean, in the case of CPS3, "jojoba" is a .zip file and a folder. How does mame find those CHDs without a companion rom zipped? Does it look for the CHD file within the folder? Or simply the name of the folder?

DOS76 said I'm going to try this later but I'm going to test it out with a clean version of LaunchBox. Or at least take my current .xml and move it somewhere safe. Just make sure you get the latest version (posted right above). -Kris

Drybonz said Thanks for the fix... I'm reluctant to test now because I've been spending a bunch of time editing and setting everything up nicely. o_O Ha! Fair enough ;) Remember: this is an alpha version at this point. But I'm glad it's working so well to the point that you already got a lot of stuff done though :) Yeah, you can always save your nice launchbox.xml file in a safe place and use a dummy one just for testing. That's what I do too ;) -Kris

Drybonz said I noticed that my CPS3 platform games imported without a file extension. Easy to fix because there's only a few of them... just wanted to let you know. That seem to be related to the fact they use CHDs. Lets try a different approach. See if this version fixes the problem: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1ydXRJTTdBam44aTg/view?usp=sharing edit: yeah, this new approach should work as it now requires that both a .zip or .7z files have a correspondent folder with the same name in order to be considered a CHD, as it captures the rom extension to run the game. I don't have .7z files, but CPS3 is working fine with .zip. Can you try and let me know? Thanks!

Oh, I see what you mean about it referring to a different game. Here's the thing though, my program repeats the information for all games and their respective clones. If you have something like "$info=1941,1941u,1941r1,", all of them will get the Notes repeated. So if the Japanese version is one of them, the same info will be propagated to the others and, although they might be technically in another language, the country info should be correct and they will all point to the Japanese version as the original thing, which still doesn't change their own country info.

CriticalCid said Thanks for your awesome tool. It works like a charm :) Good to know! But unfortunately it’s exactly like I assumed it in my last post. Sega Hikaru doesn’t show up in sources because the unplayable filter filters out all the games for it. So I ask again if could integrate it as its own platform in the GUI. Yeah, this would be a platform to be imported manually for now, I think, and let LaunchBox do its thing. You will not get all the sweet metadata, but it will be imported for now. I will implement the ability to select any source.cpp and add a checkbox by its side, to allow you to bypass all filters. That way, it will force the program to import that source even if everything else is being filtered. I should have it implemented in a few days, so stay tuned! I also have another idea for a future version of your tool. Many games which are imported as the US, Europe or World version refer in the bio notes to the original Japanese version for more information’s. It would be awesome if it could import the bio notes from the original version instead of just a reference to a game version which doesn’t get imported in LB anyway (at least if you filter out all clones). Here’s a screenshot as example: We can surely capture that info as well. The problem is always inconsistency in those support files. If it says "developed in Japan" in some games and something totally different in others, only research will tell me the variations, so I can come up with a regex (or multiple) to match it. -Kris

Edit: New version released. This one adds support to .7z roms as well, instead of just .zip files. Edit2: New version released. This one fixes an issue related to CHD games not playing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1ydXRJTTdBam44aTg/view?usp=sharing

Drybonz said Tested and working! Sweet!

Drybonz said I just edited a random game from zip to 7z and it launched perfectly. :) Cool, that's what I thought :) I just uploaded a new version that *should* import any rom extension now. Try this one and let me know: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1yVHpnRlFpdVdfTU0/view?usp=sharing Drybonz said So, on another note... say I screw up the first time and forget, or simply change my mind and want to add another type of screenshot, for instance (maybe I want to add cabinet shots under "fanart" for example)... is it possible to run Lightspeed a second time to make that change, or as you said above a person would need to roll back the .xml file and start over? There are different way to do it: 1) Open your launchbox.xml file and do a search and replace, searching for the fanart folder and replacing with the cabinet folder for example. 2) Go to tools > manage platforms > edit > change the paths in the second tab 3) as a last resort, you could roll back to a previous backup and run lightspeed again as you said, but this will add duplicates at this point. In the future I will add a detection feature that will check for stuff already there and just add what's missing. -Kris

Drybonz said It was fine in Avast as well. I wanted to mention, in addition to the comments I made above, a quick suggestion for a feature... which is a PlayChoice game filter if that is even possible. The filters seem to be working well as I scroll through the games that were imported... I just get the error about missing rom files with every game. PlayChoice can be definitely filtered. I'll add it to the growing list :) Would you mind posting a screenshot of your launchbox.xml file? Just open it, search for "1942.zip" and save a screenshot. It should look similar to this,only with the path pointing to your own rom folder: If the path is correct, but your roms are in .7z format instead of zip, that might be the problem, as my code only supports .zip at this point, but I can easily adjust it tonight, if that's the case. -Kris

Drybonz said Everything seems to work fine, but when I re-open LaunchBox nothing is imported. Will it not use MAMEUIFX as the emulator? *edit* Ok, I ran it again from the beginning and it worked this time. The only difference I could see is that I closed Lightspeed before I re-opened LB. *edit* One initial problem that I notice is that if you ran Lightspeed more than once it creates duplicate emulator entries in LB that you have to clean up, even if you have rolled back to your backed up Launchbox.xml. *edit* After importing, when I run a game, it says the rom file does not exist, even thought the file path is right. This is a migration tool, so at this point it's not designed to check for already existent games and update their info. It's designed to be used as a Mame migration tool, meaning that if you don't have any mame games in your library, this will quick start things for you. It WILL create duplicates if you already have stuff in there (or if you run the tool multiple time pointing to launchbox.xml every time). Things to watch for: 1) You will need to make 100% sure LaunchBox is not running before you run lightspeed, or else launchbox.xml will be recreated on Launchbox.exe exit. 2) Make sure mame is working outside of launchbox, meaning that mame.ini should be all configured and pointing to the right paths already 3) When you select your mame.exe file (yes, it can be any mame version, including MameUIFX), things are auto populated for you as SUGGESTIONS for file and folder paths. If your mame installation points to different paths other than the default mame installation folder, then you will need to changes those paths manually to reflect your custom settings. If your MameUIFX is already working nicely outside of launchbox, then you might not need any additional command lines passed, so you can simply delete the suggested parameters and try again 4) At any given time you can revert anything done to your library, as backup files are being saved every time you run the program. If you look under your Launchbox installation folder, you will notice a bunch of files named Launchbox###########.xml. Those are the backup files. Look for the oldest one, rename it to launchbox.xml and you should get back to the starting point before you ran it multiple times. -Kris

Definitely false positive... or your computer is infected :) When in doubt, upload it to www.virustotal.com. I just did and out of 56 different anti-virus packages, only 1 reported it as a virus, so a classic case of false positive: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e0308219a60104f34f0c9fdafc632a509794938ab0735263126d17ad16146c37/analysis/ Try uploading your download to that website and run the test. If a bunch of them show it as positive, than you better install a better anti-virus in your machine!

CADScott said @Antropus, the new version you posted is throwing a trojan warning in Security Essentials and stripping out the exe file. I've got he most updated Kasperski installed. I just downloaded that very same file, ran the virus scan on it and no threats were detected. Sure thing that the program modifies things, as it copies and renames files in your computer, but only when it comes to launchbox.xml as far as I'm concerned :)

The fastest little tutorial I can make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKmY-NYb-Ko

Thanks! Here's a super pre-alpha that anyone is invited to try: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1yZkgzQjVpN0lEdXc/view?usp=sharing How to use: 1) Close LaunchBox 2) Unzip somewhere and Launch the app 3) Select the mame.exe file you want to use 4) Select LaunchBox.xml 5) adjust anything you want 6) click the red logo to start 7) re-open Launchbox and enjoy ps.: when you click the browse buttons you will be prompted to pick files instead of folders. I did that on purpose because I hate the little tiny folders selection dialogs. Assuming you have files in those folders, just pick any of them and you should be fine. Assuming that they are empty folders, then you can simply copy and paste the addresses or write them manually instead of browsing for them. Although my app makes backups of your launchbox.xml files before replacing them, I strongly encourage you to make a backup of your launchbox installation folder before proceeding, just in case :) -Kris

CADScott said I am using it on 7, works fine Sweet, thanks!

CADScott said The browse button for the Mame ROMs paths does not seem to work at all, nothing happens when it is pressed. Fixed in the new link above! Also noticed an issue with the media selection dialogs, such as the flyers, which require the selection of an actual image file, rather than the directory itself. It still works, but it is rather intuitive. Yes, I explain that in the video. I just hate that little tiny window for folder selection, so I'm using a file selection window instead. The only thing about it is that you do need to select a file, BUT you can always add the address through copy/paste or manually typing if the folder is empty. It's just so much faster to navigate with a fully featured window! Other than that it works great, just imported my entire MAME collection, very fast indeed! Great to know!

I hope it works under Windows 7. Only tested under windows 10.

CADScott said The browse button for the Mame ROMs paths does not seem to work at all, nothing happens when it is pressed. Thanks! All those last minutes changes I did today :) Try this one: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1yZkgzQjVpN0lEdXc/view?usp=sharing

CADScott said Google drive works fine, many thanks, will let you know how it goes! Sweet! Thanks for letting me know!

Please download from that link I just posted. Moderation is blocking anything with the "m" word in the address, as it seems. Just move your mouse to the top and click on the arrow down to download :)