Ultra God Azgorath

January 6

Yeah RA names are cleaner so I might have to look at renaming all the games in these dats.

January 6

With the No-intro, fbneo and redump platforms, I copy and paste the entries straight from the official dats to my dats. Amstrad CPC, Apple II, PC 8000/8800 and Elektor are the exceptions due to either not having an official DAT or whatever DATs I could find for them weren't quite as "clean" as the no-intro and redump dats.

January 6

Elektor tv games computer has the same problem because there is no official dat for that platform for me to build on so the regions are the roms' extensions (PGM and TVC).

January 6

8 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

Technically, you didn’t name them? It’s the file naming from RA?

Yes and no. Some are from an "unofficial" apple/cpc DAT but others are named from RA but I couldn't find/figure out which roms have which regions so I had to improvise.

January 6

The only difference between apple (also amstrad CPC) DATs and the other platforms DATs is the regions themselves. Apple and CPC don't have normal regions such as USA, EUROPE, JAPAN, etc and because of that, I named their regions after the group they were dumped from (4AM, CLEANCPCDB, TOSEC, GOODSET, etc)

January 6

Just now, Ultra God Azgorath said:

Apple II shows 181 sets for me. Assume this is less for you in CMP?

It's 128 for me because of 1g1r.

January 6

7 hours ago, steve1977 said:

So, all your files with different regions remain separate? Do they show up as multiple games or does LB recognize them and "merges" them for you?

NES show 1,884 sets in RomVault, which seems the same for you in CMP?

Apple II shows 181 sets for me. Assume this is less for you in CMP?

During import, LB will give you an option to tick if you want to combine games with the same or similar name or keep them separate. Yes cmp keeps all files separate if you have normal set mode selected, otherwise if you have 1g1r mode selected, cmp will keep the roms with the regions you selected and prioritized and delete/backup the others.

January 5

2 hours ago, steve1977 said:

Thanks, I thought I cracked it with the "merger" function. Unfortunatelty, it does not work for all platforms. Any thoughts?

I never use the merger option, only the scanner option.

January 5

6 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

If I have two regions and just select the game, what region does it play (i.e., not right-clicking).

I'm not sure which region LB plays 1st. I think its alphabetical so E before U but I could be wrong.

6 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

Still need to decide on LB vs ES-DE. I believe I had purchased LB some decade ago,but then moved to ES-DE. Forgot the reason. Have you tried both and a preference?

I've tried ES-DE. Awesome frontend. Very easy and fast but no retroachievement features yet. Once ES-DE gets RA features, I'll be switching over to it. I'm only still using LB because of the RA features.

6 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

If you delete the unmatched, you also have to download the newly added ones every day? That seems quite an effort? Besides PS2/GC (rom size issue), wouldn't it be more efficient to keep the unmatched roms in the backup folder to add them automatically once RA adds support?

Yes but I don't mind doing it this way. I only want RA-compatible games so I'll download them as they're added.

January 5

3 hours ago, steve1977 said:

Have you tried RomVault yourself? Its seems much easier to use and will help you remove the zip duplicates.

I have it downloaded and have tried it but cmp fits my needs better.

3 hours ago, steve1977 said:

Do you keep the roms that have not been matched? If so, this is taking a lot of space. But if not, this probably requires you to re-download files once they are added. How often does RA adds new sets, so much new download-work is required every month?

No I delete the unmatched roms so yeah I have to redownload them if and when they're re-added. New games are added daily so I put new games in the DATs every day.

3 hours ago, steve1977 said:

If I keep two region files in one folder (xx-eu.iso and xx-us.iso), do you know whether LB/ES will give me the option, which version to play? If so, will it still count both against the same RA record?

Yes, LB combines both regions into 1 game and you right click the game and click "Play Version" and you select the version you want to play. As long as both regions are linked to the same achievement set, they'll both work with achievements.

3 hours ago, steve1977 said:

When it comes to the removed dats, what are the consequences? Game still plays, but there is no RA? What's the reason why RA removes them? Likely many of them as I stumbled over the file above by just checking 3 games.

There's a few reasons why games would be removed from RA.

There is 1 or more achievements that are broken and need to be repaired by the dev so the dev temporarily removes (demotes) the set to fix it and then promotes it back once he's fixed it.
The RA team decided that an achievement set for a game is not worth having on the site for whatever reason.
The ra team and/or dev decided to only have 1 region rom linked to a set. So instead of having USA and EUROPE both linked, they decide to keep only EUROPE linked since EUROPE has more languages and USA doesn't have anything that EUROPE doesn't already have.

There may be other reasons but these are the most common reasons I've seen.

January 4

3 hours ago, steve1977 said:

I also did some checks. For example, "10-Yard Fight (Japan).zip" shows up in your file, but it is not listed on the RA web-site. Would this be an example of a file that has been removed from RA, which you mentioned that you cannot spot?

Yes that's correct. I've removed it from the DAT now, thanks but there's probably a lot more like this in a lot of the other dats as well (I hope not though).

3 hours ago, steve1977 said:

I am having the same issue though with both tools. It shows all roms, but doesn't group them. I.e., I see 3 roms for 1942 (NES), but it doesn't merge them into one game. For example, your screenshot shows 1,047 NES roms. CMP shows 1,789 sets and 1,937 roms. RomVault shows 1,884 roms. All using your file.

cmp shows 1047 for me because I have 1G1R enabled with english regions prioritised. Romvault doesnt have 1G1R mode/feature so it looks for every single game that's in the DAT, in your rom folder. As for the 1789 sets and 1937 roms, I have no idea whats going wrong there because I've checked my DAT and there's 1883 entries (Sets) in the DAT and each set has 1 rom in it so you should be getting 1883 sets and 1883 roms, not 1789 and 1937. Each rom needs to be it's own entry, not grouped with others.

January 4

2 hours ago, steve1977 said:

Thanks! In this case, you delete the unmatched ones? And redownload once they’re added to RA?

I still don’t fully understand, but let me play around it a bit over the weekend. You put a lot of thinking into your workflow, so a lot to learn from. Thank you!

cmp by default moves unmatched roms into a backup folder or you can tell it to delete them permanently instead. When it comes to adding and deleting games from the DATs, I add new games that are added on the RA homepage to the DATs but when they're removed and/or re-added after being removed for maintenance, I dont currently have a way to tell when they're removed and/or re-added from maintenance.

January 4

10 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

Just to understand your workflow, how do you make sure that you remember that you already scanned the zip before? CMP will mark it as missing after you deleted the CMP sorted file?

So I have 2 rom folders on my pc. 1 folder, which is my main rom folder, contains cartridge-based platforms with zipped roms that are never unzipped and disc-based platforms with unzipped roms. I use cmp to scan only the cartridge-based platforms with the cartridge-based DATs in this folder. I import all the roms in this folder into LB. The 2nd folder contains disc-based platforms with zipped roms and I use cmp to only scan this folder with the disc-based DATs. CMP doesn't check your collection in real-time, only when you manually scan. If you look at the attached picture, you'll see that the platforms with the red circle are missing some roms while the platforms with green ticks means all roms were scanned and found. By keeping the directories saved and the roms saved in their respective directories, when I manually scan the folders, cmp will tell me if any roms are missing or not.

January 4

2 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

Cool, no worries about rclone. I may look into it though at later stage. But clearly not important.

So PS2 roms would need to be unzipped to be playable from launchbox/emulationstation. Same for some others and also some may require bios files or patches? Let me look into this how to find my routine. In this case, is always need to keep the rom three times (original, processed with cmp, unzipped).

With disc-based platforms (PS1, PS2, PSP, GC, etc), I usually keep 2 copies, the zipped copy to scan with cmp and the unzipped copy to import into LB and run with the respective emulator.

January 4

35 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

Would it make sense to duplicate the rim that we can show both platforms in launchbox/emulationstation?

Btw, are all roms in a format that can be natively played in launchbox/emulationstation? Or does it still require unzipping, bios files or whatever else?

I’ll finally be able to get to CMP

What do you mean by rim?

January 4

30 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

And one more thought. Could you make the dat file available via rclone rather than a web download? This way, i could try to automate. Probably CMP can also be somehow automated, so i could get new roms to the collection without manual efforts.

I don't know the 1st thing about rclone sadly. CMP does have a WWW mode but I couldn't come right with how to use it. With web downloads, it's backed up so if I lose the files on my PC, I can redownload them from the LB forums.

38 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

Would it make sense to duplicate the rim that we can show both platforms in launchbox/emulationstation?

Btw, are all roms in a format that can be natively played in launchbox/emulationstation? Or does it still require unzipping, bios files or whatever else?

I’ll finally be able to get to CMP

All roms need to be zipped before you scan them with the DATs and CMP but whether or not you need the BIOS files and need to unzip the roms depends on the emulator you're using. RetroArch can run ZIPs natively without unzipping while CD-based emulators like duckstation, dolphin, pcsx2, ppsspp etc cant run zips natively so you'll need to unzip those manually.

January 4

10 hours ago, Colosso said:

Thanks.

And what about SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color?
The games listed under Neo Geo Pocket on RA have color screenshots and Neo Geo Pocket Color is missing.

This is confusing.
Do you know what's up with this?

Even though they are 2 separate platforms, Retroachievements combines both platforms into 1 platform on the site so my DAT is only 1 DAT with all the compatible/linked games in it.

January 3

7 minutes ago, Colosso said:

Thanks for the great DATs!

Stupid question maybe, but why is there no Atari 5200 DAT?

Thanks.

Because Retroachievements doesn't support Atari 5200 yet.

December 31, 2024

3 hours ago, steve1977 said:

Excellent! Thank you.

It seems all the heavy-lifting was done when you created the file. So, now it’s easy and straight forward.

I’ll play around a bit in the new year and see how it goes. Will also look into some form of automation.

Thanks for your amazing effort to the community. You said it elsewhere, this really feels like something RA should provide or make more easily available.

Happy holidays!!!

You're welcome. Yeah, one of the RA Team members has told me that he wants to make a dat-o-matic of sorts to host RA DATs in the future but we'll see what happens.

December 30, 2024

No CMP is actually quite minimal and simplistic. All your roms need to be zipped before scanning as CMP only scans for zips and ISO is the standard in the official Redump DATs so they'll be the standard in my DATs as well aside from the GameCube RVZ DAT. I tried making CHD DATs in the past but users were getting different hash values even though they converted the ISOs the exact same way I do so I stopped it. As for languages, there is a "English" region for english translated games but other than that, everything else is region based so the language will be whatever the region is, just like the official nointro dats. As for versions, I usually give the latest versions region entries while older versions won't have region entries so they'll be deleted unless you use "Normal Set Mode" which will keep all versions.

December 30, 2024

TBH you don't need a config from me or anyone else for clrmamepro. You just copy and paste the DATs into the "datfiles" folder in the clrmamepro folder, in clrmamepro select the platform and in settings add the platform rom directory, change the mode to 1g1r mode, select and prioritise the regions you want and select scan. It will keep the regions you want/prioritized and move the rest to a backup folder.

December 29, 2024

4 hours ago, steve1977 said:

This is amazing, thanks for the great work. This must have been a ton of effort...

Is this still 1.0 or have you already implemented 2.0, you spoke about plans before? If still 1.0, easy to wait for 2.0 or will one easily transition into the other?

I’d aim for perfection and adding 100% of all roms available with RA. Preferred in EN language, followed by the original language if not available.

If RA removes a game, i’d also like to remove the rom. Easily to spot if this happens?

Thanks again for all you’re doing for the community.

@steve1977Thanks. Yes the dats are currently v2.0 where every linked game rom on the site is added to the dats instead of just 1 rom per game. Use these dats with clrmamepro if you want to use 1g1r to keep 1 rom of a specific region per game and delete the rest. Sadly I currently don't have an effective way of finding out when a rom or game is removed from the site so i can remove it from the dats but i'm open to some ideas if anybody has.

December 9, 2024

I'll see what I can do. You're welcome.

November 27, 2024

@UplinkI did do it in the past but users were reporting different hash values than what was in the DATs, even though they converted the same roms i had and used the same program to convert them to chd that I used. I think different versions of chdman create different hash values so I stopped making chd DATs as a result. It would explain why there's no official/unofficial chd DATs anywhere as well.

November 23, 2024

Try these: Far East of Eden - Tengai Makyou - Ziria (Japan) (Rev 7).cue Far East of Eden - Tengai Makyou - Ziria (Japan) (Rev 7) (En) (LIPEMCO! Translations) (v1.2).cue and here's the updated DAT: RA - NEC TurboGrafx-CD.dat

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