Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 Antropus The forum is assuming some of your posts are spam potentially because of the frequency of your replies. I would suggest trying to slow down the amount of replies you make at one time. I'll see if I can't get your previous 4 posts to show up. Edit: Antropus said 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. You're also more than welcome to PM me. I see a lot, but I can't see everything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 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 :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 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!!! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 Antropus said 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. Frequency CAN be flagged if the forums see's that repeated replies from the same user over and over. It is an over zealous automatic sorter due to spam issues we were really having. Either way, in my second reply I did say that I saw that .nz was the culprit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 We are replying at the same time. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gif Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 I just ran your little tool and I will say that it is pretty cool I didn't get any meta but that is because I don't use the MAME folders I just rely on LaunchBox to get that stuff. I initially thought that there would be more platform choices like Sega system 16 Sega System 32 as platform options (maybe in the future). 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. Either way great work thanks for contributing to the community. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 Antropus said Update coming soon: 4) Added "Play-Choice", "Bootleg" and "Tabletop" as new filters -Kris Sweet! Thanks... I thought of this too late but would Vs Nintendo be a good filter as well? I was deleting them manually last night and thought of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 Antropus said There's always a way to do it, but the question is always: is it worth the trouble? :) -Kris In my humble opinion... as I was using Lightspeed yesterday, one of the main things that stood out as something that would improve its usefulness would be the ability to add to, or change, things you did before. I think the main limitation was having to do everything in one session and roll back the .xml if you screwed it up or wanted changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 That's why it's called importer instead of editor :P It will come eventually... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 Antropus yeah its not a big deal I made all the platforms under MAME deleted them and bulk edit each platforms emulators so everything is running and I only have one emulator entry all with minimum effort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 Okay I ran the importer a second time this time pointing it to my demul.exe in the MAME.exe space pointed it to my LaunchBox.xml and my Demul roms I then added the .bats I use for Atomiswave and Naomi unchecked unplayable and ran that. It imported the games and all the ones I tested are working so it looks as if it works with other arcade emulators also or at least ones that use the same naming sources that MAME does. I'm going to try model 2 and 3 next. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 I will release my Demul wrapper sometime soon. You will not need .bat files to run the games at all ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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