eternal_sage Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 Ok. Sorry its been awhile, but been busy with work and all that. Anyway... I installed MAME 0.158 and updated my rom sets. I then configured MAME outside of launchbox so it knew where to find my BIOS etc. I then set it up in launchbox (and no, its not the same thing as MESS but I'll explain that later) and imported my roms from launchbox the standard way. It did its thing, and I had no art or fixed titles, but they function. I then went to the MAME installer and clicked the arcade.com button at the bottom which let me access the second tab which showed me the games in lauchbox! I clicked import and it started fixing names although I haven't seen the result yet as I'm back at work and it is still working. Crossed fingers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eternal_sage Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 MESS vs MAME basically comes down to square vs rectangle. MESS is an offshoot of MAME that only emulates old consoles and what i call console-pcs (msx, comodore64 etc). It does this the same way that MAME does, by dividing the actual emulated chips up so that only one copy is ever needed, reducing code redundancy and space requirements. To play a game on either you have to have the driver, bios, and game rom, and to my understanding these files are interchangable between them if you know how. MESS is just a package of drivers for a subset of MAME that has enough popularity to stand on its own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eternal_sage Posted March 16, 2015 Share Posted March 16, 2015 Ok... Finally got home to see what had happened... and it worked. Sort of. I had to restart Launchbox to see it, but I did have correct names for many of my MAME games... and really wrong ones for others... but that is mostly my fault for not using MAME.dat first, I believe. I am testing that theory by deleting the old MAME library and importing again from scratch. EDIT: Ok, now I see why you don't want to have Launchbox try and d/l art and data when importing. It will get some of the names wrong, and then the importer (which is a bit of a misnomer, as far as I can tell) can't fix it or d/l the correct information. So the best course of action is to import into Launchbox without looking up stuff, then using the "importer" to fix all the names with ArcadeHits.com or whatever (which will also d/l some data, like release date and such). Using MAME.dat will only fix the names, although I've found that arcadehits doesn't always find the data you need either, so re-running the "importer" with the MAME.dat will fix any names that are still incorrect, but it will leave any that were already fixed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted March 16, 2015 Author Share Posted March 16, 2015 Thanks for clearing all that up, sage (and devo). It sounds like I need to separately add default emulator settings and platforms for MAME, so I've added that to my list. It does sound like an unfortunately complicated process, so it also seems like I need to come up with a better process inside of LaunchBox for MAME. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wraslor Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 Is this pretty much the only option for mame? I know on my hyperspin setup it's done with database xml files. I'm planning to use launchbox for my living room pc but need a way to filter out the games. Has anyone come up with a way to only import certain games and weed out the junk? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjwest Posted September 28, 2015 Share Posted September 28, 2015 Hi all, just wondering if there was any progress with the MAME issue? I was contemplating importing my MAME roms into LB but because the file names are only abbreviations of the games I thought I better check here first and I am glad that I did! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted September 29, 2015 Author Share Posted September 29, 2015 Hey guys, this is still on my list. When we do implement it, though, we'll probably just come up with a simple look-up list to parse the proper game titles from the file names, and maybe a list of BIOS files to ignore. Not sure if that will help with weeding out the crap or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 FrJason Carr said Actually, I'm not clear on the differences between MAME and MESS. Can someone clue me in? Do we need default entries for both MAME and MESS? Since v0.162 (27th May 2015) MESS has been integrated into MAME directly, so you should not need MESS support at all unless someone needs to run an older version for compatibility. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted September 29, 2015 Author Share Posted September 29, 2015 Hi @CADScott, I believe I've removed MESS from the list of default platforms. Haven't reviewed it recently but pretty sure it's gone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caitsith01 Posted October 3, 2015 Share Posted October 3, 2015 Jason Carr said Hey guys, this is still on my list. When we do implement it, though, we'll probably just come up with a simple look-up list to parse the proper game titles from the file names, and maybe a list of BIOS files to ignore. Not sure if that will help with weeding out the crap or not. Hi! I just started using your great program (I bought premium straight away), and I think you have a chance here to fill a big void - despite the many, many emulator projects, there are very few nice looking, intuitive frontends with the flexibility to support DOS, MAME and platform specific emulators. However, you really must get MAME info working! The data is all sitting there free for all to use, it just needs a small amount of code to get LaunchBox to parse it. This would make the program almost perfect. As you suggest, just getting LaunchBox to parse the names of MAME ROMs from the available data would be a huge step forward. Then your existing scrapers can pull in the necessary info. Unfortunately sincro's program seems to be broken - the options presented on the first page are 'frozen' and don't let you choose anything other than the pre-selected choices. Like eternal_sage, I was able to partially get it working but not to use it for other platforms (NeoGeo etc). A few other easy-to-implement features for MAME which would make a massive difference to LaunchBox: 1. MAME itself can test ROMs to see if they are working, it should be possible to use this info to filter ROMs within LaunchBox 2. MAME is now (IMHO) the best option for NeoGeo, CPS1 etc, and the same information should be available (ROM names plus whether ROMs are working) for those platforms. This is what I'd really like to be able to do with sincro's program, but I can't change the options! 3. Most serious MAME collections include a large amount of pre-configured artwork - flyers, snaps, marquees etc etc - it would save a lot of time and bandwidth to include the ability to point LaunchBox at this material (or is there a way to do this that I'm missing?). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted October 3, 2015 Author Share Posted October 3, 2015 Hi @caitsith01, proper MAME imports are indeed a high priority for me right now. Per #1, that sounds cool; I'll add that to the list (though it won't likely happen as soon as a decent import system). #2 hopefully should work when I get the imports working. #3 shouldn't be too difficult to make work already; LaunchBox will already scan for images via the game's title or the ROM file name if you just drop them in the right folders. So it might take a tiny bit of work, but shouldn't take much at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caitsith01 Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Thanks Jason - looking forward to it. In the meantime, I have managed to figure out this workaround to get @sincro's program to work for other platforms (NeoGeo etc). Steps: 1. Get sincro's program plus a copy of mame.dat as per earlier posts here. Put them in the LaunchBox folder and fire up LaunchBox. 2. If you currently have a set of ROMs for the platform 'arcade', do a bulk edit and re-allocate them to a temporary new name (e.g. 'arcade1') 3. Take a set of ROMs for the platform you want to use the tool on (say, NeoGeo) and do a bulk edit to re-allocate them to the platform 'arcade' 4. Quit LaunchBox. 5. Run sincro's program. Click the button to import the mame.dat info. Then click the button to apply that info. The program should pause for a while, then ask you if you want to update the LaunchBox.xml file. Click 'yes'. 6. Close sincro's program. Open LaunchBox again. Your roms in the 'arcade' platform should now have update metadata (for at least some of them, depending on what was matched from your mame.dat). Do another bulk edit to change the platform back to whatever it should be. 7. Repeat steps 3-6 for each platform you want to use the tool on. 8. When done, do a final bulk edit to put your arcade games back in the 'arcade' platform. So basically, temporarily park your actual 'arcade' games on a different platform, then trick sincro's program into treating your other ROMs as 'arcade' ROMs, then switch everything back to where it should be. This gets around the inability to select other platforms in sincro's tool. Hope this helps someone, saved me a lot of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikeking8 Posted October 7, 2015 Share Posted October 7, 2015 I'm not sure if anybody else figured this out, but the gray square with "fields" you see on sincro's Info tab is merely an example screenshot. I'm attempting to import MAMEs right now with the program... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudechester Posted December 6, 2015 Share Posted December 6, 2015 Has anyone got Mame working yet in Launchbox? I see this threads being going since May 2014... but not many success stories here? Console emulation is setup to work, and they do pretty easily. So far I cannot get any computer Amiga, Atari St etc working, and no Mame emulation to even start :( I found all these things very easy in Hypserspin (which was supposed to be complicated??) I'm sure it "Should be easy / easier" with Launchbox, so it's probably some simple step/steps I've missed out on. Drag dropping a Mame rom does not run straight off like Snes or Gens. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted December 6, 2015 Share Posted December 6, 2015 The last few Beta builds have new MAME features (possible the latest stable too) when you import the games its really sweet for naming but truthfully you will still need to add your own metadata to a large portion of your games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudechester Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 I can add something here "JASON" you need to make this header of your Forums :) This is where a lot of people seem to be coming stuck actually, as I read on other posts. To get Launchbox to run games (Doesn't need any fancy command lines) YOU MUST make sure all the roms are stored in Mames local rom directory (Not copy roms over to launchbox games directory, either manually or by using the wizard) - in other words, the games won't run, unless they are in Mame's Rom directory. Found this out the hard way, but hope it helps others :) (I'm using Mame64 to run mine - which is the latest version "mame0168b_64bit") Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted December 8, 2015 Author Share Posted December 8, 2015 Ah, yes, that is true. Good point. We do need to warn people for that. I just added it to my list here: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/236/warn-people-about-the-location-of-mame Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imgema Posted December 26, 2015 Share Posted December 26, 2015 Is there a way to import MAME roms using the Hyperspin XML? Because it already counts out a lot of MAME's junk and it's pretty clean. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted December 26, 2015 Author Share Posted December 26, 2015 Not currently, but I can review that to see if we can integrate it or similar. Can you get me that XML file for review? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmoney Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 Jason Carr said Not currently, but I can review that to see if we can integrate it or similar. Can you get me that XML file for review? I am not sure if imgema got a xml over to you or not but that would be an awesome feature in order to use a hyperspin xml file to weed out the junk. Basically if you use Don's Hyperspin Tools (it is a program that makes it real easy that you can rename roms or create your own xml files among many other things) it is a program that makes it really easy to weed out mame clones,adult games,bios,mahjong,etc. and you can include anything or remove anything you wish and then it will generate a xml file. Also some example clones that you want to keep are pacman and tmnt2po (2 player version of tmnt) and etc. It was originally created for hyperspin but the xml files it creates can be used with any frontends that has the ability to read xml files. In fact I have all my xml files located in the database folder inside of Launchbox so Rocketlauncher can read them to get the info for the fade and etc. that rocketlauncher uses when I use LB. I imported my mame games last night in LB and chose all the options to remove clones, bios and etc. and while it removed the majority of it , it still left a lot of junk behind that I need to figure out how to remove. If it had the ability to read an xml file that already had the stuff you don't want removed that would be awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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