Lightspeed Mame Importer - Teaser

[Antropus]

CriticalCid said As you have Sega Model 2, 3, Naomi and Atomiswave integrated in your GUI, do you plan to make these platforms importable with your tool too? It would be awesome to have all these extra information’s from the various .ini files for these systems as well./>

All of those are already importable. As they all use the same Mame's roms and art folders, all the metadata is applied to them as well. You can either set mame to run them (which will fail to play, since mame doesn't support them yet) or simply enter the path to various emulators, set the command line used to run them and the script will populate everything for you :) The catch is, as it stands now it fits my personal needs, as it removes those roms from the mame platform as they are added to their own platforms. That way they are only shown in one place, which is more organized in my opinion. So, if you decided to add Model 2 and Model 3 roms, linked to another two emulators and custom command lines, everything should work as expected, but those games will not be available under "mame", but rather under their own " Sega Model 2" and " Sega Model 3" platforms.

[CriticalCid]

Awesome! I was hoping that you already did it that way. I kinda feel bad that with each post I give you more and more feature request but I noticed some more: 1) I miss “Namco System 22” and “Sega ST-V” as platforms. Both are standard Systems within HyperSpin so I'm used to them. 2) Does your tool import metadata for the platforms themselves as well? I know that the history.dat offers metadata for various arcade boards. 3) Will your tool import the MAMEUIFX extra ROMs too if I choose my mameuifx.exe as mame.exe? http://mame32fx.altervista.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4

[Antropus]

CriticalCid said I miss “Namco System 22” and “Sega ST-V” as platforms. Both are standard Systems within HyperSpin so I'm used to them.

Not at this point. Everything is hard coded at this point to look for the source.cpp related to each. The ones I added are the most common ones I use, but I do have an idea on how to support EVERYTHING else ;) I' m planning to add a "batch" add platforms based on a text file. You could for example click a button called "Batch Add Platforms", point to an ini file with the following contents:

Sega ST-V=c:\Emulators\ANYemulator.exe=-nogui -fullscreen=stv.cpp Namco System 22=F:\Emulators\ANOTHERemulator.exe=-nogui -fullscreen -640x480=namcos22.cpp AnyOtherSystem=G:\OtherFolder\OTHERemulator.exe=-nogui=others.cpp AnyOtherSystemB=G:\OtherFolder\OTHERemulatorB.exe=-nogui=othersB.cpp AnyOtherSystemC=G:\OtherFolder\OTHERemulatorC.exe=-nogui=othersC.cpp

I mean, this is just an example, but you basically would create a simple text file with whatever number of systems you want to install (as long as they are based on mame and uses the ".cpp" sources as a reference). You could have a hundred different systems in there. I would simply parse it line by line, split the info using a separator ("=" in my example) and the script would add everything for you. The funny thing is, all of that is super simple to do, especially if the user is in charge of providing the necessary info, especially the correct ".cpp" source for each platform deriving from mame. Everything else should work just the same from that point on, with all metadata and artwork gathered beautifully for you from your local library :)

2) Does your tool import metadata for the platforms themselves as well? I know that the history.dat offers metadata for various arcade boards.

Not yet, but if there's a place from where to get the metadata from, any file, we can add it pretty quickly ;)

3) Will your tool import the MAMEUIFX extra ROMs too if I choose my mameuifx.exe as mame.exe? http://mame32fx.altervista.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4

If it's a custom build, I'm afraid it's not present in the mame.dat. BUT, if MAMEUIFX exports the info for those games in its own listxml file, then yes, it will work just fine. What my tool does is this: 1) Checks for your local roms first and foremost. This is the most important list, as you don't want to import games you don't have and have to deal with error messages about missing roms. 2) It then checks listxml or mame.dat for matches and starts getting the metadata from there, especially the information about the different systems based on their .cpp 3) Now it looks into all support files which include at this point: history.dat, catver.ini, nplayers.ini, series.ini 4) It extracting all kinds of information from them 5) it cross-compares each with both the listxml (or mam.dat) and your rom folder 6) It creates a custom, unique ID for each system and one custom, unique ID for each game 7) It creates all emulator entries, including their custom command lines 8) It creates all platforms and links them to their respective emulators 9) It spits a new LaunchBox.xml with everything ready to be enjoyed So, if MAMEUIFX creates those entries when you run MAMEMUIFX -listxml >> listxml.xml in your DOS command prompt, then you are all set! Just beware: if I remember correctly, MAMEUIFX also REMOVES a ton of games. You will need to pick your battle in that case. Now, if you want both, I would suggest you to run the tool first, then inside of LaunchBox you can simply rename the Mame platform to something else. Run it again pointing to MAMEUIFX listxml file and another Mame entry will appear in LaunchBox. Rename it to MAMEUIFX if you wish and everything should work. -Kris

[Antropus]

Btw, thanks for participating actively of this thread and helping me to understand other peoples' needs! As I mentioned in another thread, the more I learn, the more I realize that everything is possible, so I take those little feature requests as little puzzles that I like to solve at night, when my kids and wife are asleep :) -Kris

[CriticalCid]

Yes, MAMEUIFX does export a listxml file. I use it with Clrmamepro and all the extra games are detected there. I searched for a dedicated info file which contains metadata for arcade systems but I didn’t find any. But the history.dat does include some data for very few systems. I guess the missing ones must be filled in manually.

[Antropus]

Update that you might enjoy: - Control Type and Number of Buttons added as a Custom Fields - Fully functional selective notes now. You can pick and choose what to add to your notes (Trivia, Tips& Tricks, Bio, Technical, etc) -Kris

[Drybonz]

Antropus said Update that you might enjoy: - Control Type and Number of Buttons added as a Custom Fields -Kris

I can't remember, but do the control type categories include 4-way and 8-way controls? This is related to another thread where we were talking about joysticks. There is a video where a guy is using servo joysticks in his cabinet and they automatically switch the 4 or 8 way restrictor in the joystick based on which type the frontend reports that the game requires. So he can select a game, the frontend tells the joysticks which type of game it is and it changes to 4 or 8 way controls. It's pretty insane. That's more of an advanced thing... but would be super cool to be able to do this. *edit* I just enlarged your pic above and saw that it shows 8-way controls... so that is awesome and please disregard. lol

[Drybonz]

Another question... Can the marquee art be imported as the "front" art in Launchbox so that it shows as the main picture, if you want to use that instead of the flyers? I'm actually getting pretty excited about this importer... I can't wait to get my mame games in LB.

[CriticalCid]

If I look at the GUI I guess that this would be absolutely no problem. I think you only have to set the “Front Images” path to the folder which contains the marquees and everything is fine.

[DOS76]

Yes that is exactly how you would do it.

[Drybonz]

Oh, ok... I see that. Thanks guys. It doesn't look like it has an option for title screens though.

[CriticalCid]

The problem is that LaunchBox only supports one path for the screenshots. Nonetheless if you create a screenshot folder and move your snaps and titles folders in it you should have both within LaunchBox.

[Drybonz]

Doesn't LB have a separate snap and title folder in the snapshot folder?

[CriticalCid]

Only if you download images from EmuMovies. It's true that LaunchBox does only support one path for the screenshots BUT it also supports subfolders within that path. That’s why I said that you should create a screenshot folder and move the other 2 folders within it

[Drybonz]

Oh ok... I see what you mean now.

[Antropus]

Little update that you guys might appreciate: MameUI Favorites to LauchBox library in progress ;) The code is working, but things are not hooked up yet. The way you will use it goes like this: - click a button - select any number of .ini files contained in the mame/Folders folder (those are the favorites lists from MameUI) - the program will scrape all of them and it will parse each list according to the section name within the .ini. If games are found under the

[ROOT_FOLDER]

section, the name of the .ini file will be used instead (like MameUI does). The difference is that MameUI supports sub-folders for favorites, LaunchBox doesn't, so I'm transforming both

[ROOT_FOLDER]

and all other sections into platform names where the games will be stored to. You can later on merge things within LaunchBox if you wish (using its own batch edit feature). The code is bare-bones right now, but it's doing the right thing. I'll try to hook it up tonight and have it fully functional in a day or so. I've also added a skeleton for a top menu where I'll be able to add other stuff in the future, without polluting the GUI even more :) -Kris

[Jason Carr]

Just wanted to drop a line to say thanks to @Antropus and that I'm excited about this project. I expect to integrate this stuff into LaunchBox eventually but it's nice to be able to focus on other things for the moment, and it's great to see you've already got it covered, @Antropus. :)

[Antropus]

Thank you Jason! :) I love your program, man. I would not spend all this time developing this if I wasn't excited about it, so thank you :) Things are coming along fast and I hope I can put a little video together soon! -Kris

[Jason Carr]

Awesome, Kris. Thanks again.

[Antropus]

Still optimizing some things here, as there's a lot of redundant code around, but here are some good news for all interested :) MameUI Favorites Lists now land straight into your LaunchBox, with a comprehensive metadata collection + artwork. The program will read all headers within as many favorite lists as you want to add and it will then add those headers as Platforms. It will use the same roms and artwork folders to get things going and it will create all relationships between platforms/emulators and games, so you can simply fire it up and play your MAMEUI favorites from LaunchBox straight away. There's a little catch though. My current code doesn't allow the same rom to be part of two different lists. It checks for existent ones in multiple lists and only adds the first match. It's really on you to keep your MAMEUI lists organized and neat. If you already have a well organized library with little to no redundancy between lists, then this will do wonders for you. If you like to add the same rom to multiple lists, then I'm afraid I will not be able to help at this point. If you can send me your lists (you can zip all your favorites ini files), it will be great for me to test. Let me know. -Kris