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Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool


Jason Carr

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Here, this is a barebones Launchbox.xml file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1yWXcxTzAwVi1Uc0U/view?usp=sharing Try the following: 1) Close Launchbox completely 2) Rename your current launchbox.xml to something else (launchbox.BKP, for example) 3) Download this barebones file from the link above into your launchbox installation folder 4) Run Lightspeed, point it to this new launchbox.xml and let it do its thing 5) Re-open Launchbox and report what happened Thanks!
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Just updated to the latest Beta. Things look good still, so don't blame Jason! If someone is messing things up, more likely it's me. Poor guy is updating his own software while I'm the one side-loading and "hacking" it :P lb1.png Let me know if the steps above help you to solve the problem and please provide the info I requested so we can try to track down if there's a bug. I'll try the steps your described on my side next. Thanks!
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kmoney2315 said I just tried to import mame with the importer and everything seemed to go smoothly until I tried to open launchbox and a popup came up and said my xml file had been corrupted. Thankfully I have a backup xml. I wonder what could be wrong as I kept the importer tool at default for the most part. I put in my mame exe,rom and launchbox xml paths. I then unchecked include chds and changed the videos path and checked off mame and neo geo for platforms to include and checked off all the filters except imperfect and playchoice and then hit GO. I wonder what might be going on as I tried it twice without success?
I tried to reproduce the steps you described and generated a new fresh list using the barebones launchbox.xml I mentioned above. Everything went as expected. If you download the file into your launchbox folder and run Lightspeed with the very same options shown below, you should get the same results that I got. If you are still getting the same error, then we will need to investigate what the problem is. It might be windows related, but it's just a guess. -Kris lb2.png
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I was reading in some thread over here the other day, something about MESS being such a pain to run and configure, so I'm spending some time testing things and seeing what kind of info I can extract from both listxml and hash xml files. So far I was able to extract the most important things and probably all I will need: - the exact command line necessary to run each game, so no more guessing. In the future you will be able to play MESS games just like you play your Mame games. No pain. Just import your favorite systems, filter them to make sure you get the ones that actually work, point to the artwork and Lightspeed will populate Launchbox with all the metadata you will need. I'll do the hard work for you. - status, which is important to know what actually works, now that so many games are supported under a single emulator (more than 127.000 roms all together, including non-working). Not sure how long it's going to take me to fully integrate the MESS module, as it needs more details in place, but I hope I can have something testable in a few weeks (full time job and family don't leave me much free time these days...). Notable systems that I was testing, most of them with no noticeable glitches: - NeoCD - X68000 - PC Engine - Genesis (Megadrive) - Master System II - NES - SNES - GameBoy Advance - GameBoy Color - GameBoy - Atari2600 - Atari5200 - Atari7800 - MSX1 and MSX2 -Kris
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The xml got corrupted with the barebones xml file also. I have tracked it down to it has something to do with my mame roms folder. When I pointed the importer to another rom folder with only a few games in the folder, it imported fine and the xml file did not corrupt. At this point I do not know what in my main mame rom folder is causing the xml to corrupt but I do now know it is something in that folder. Maybe there is too many files? I have an up to date full split set. I will run the set through clrmamepro again when I get home.
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kmoney2315 said The xml got corrupted with the barebones xml file also. I have tracked it down to it has something to do with my mame roms folder. When I pointed the importer to another rom folder with only a few games in the folder, it imported fine and the xml file did not corrupt. At this point I do not know what in my main mame rom folder is causing the xml to corrupt but I do now know it is something in that folder. Maybe there is too many files? I have an up to date full split set. I will run the set through clrmamepro again when I get home.
That's good to know. It should definitely work with a clean set, but this is not right and I'm glad it happened so we can squash this bug. I will review my code but if I have to guess, maybe you've got both .7z and .zip for one or more of your roms? The way I'm collecting that info is in a single swoop. I should be more careful and do it in two passes: the first to collect the .7z and later the .zip files (or vice versa) and make it use only the first if the second is found. An alternative would be to add two checkboxes by the Mame folder ".7z" and ".zip", so the user can pick what type of set their are using. I rather go with the first option though, as you guys should put whatever types of sets you want in there and my code should handle it. But it can be something completely unrelated as well! Could you go to your windows explorer and list the contents by type to see what's in there? I'm curious if there's some other file in there causing the trouble. You should have only .7z, .zip and folders for the CHDs, if that' s the case. Thanks! -Kris
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So I tried it again after getting a fresh clean latest set. Also the newest standard mame and I have the roms in zip format only along with the chds that are not zipped of course and it is still corrupting the xml file. I have tried everything I can think of in different configurations, andlike I said before if I copy a few of the same roms to another folder and not the complete set,it does not corrupt the xml file.
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kmoney2315 said I am on windows 10 and I tried to send the xml thru pm but it will only let me send up to a 2 mb attachment.
Thank you for your file! That was very helpful and took me just a few seconds to find the problem. It will be fixed in the next release, but for now just do this: 1) Open your launchbox.xml in any word editor that can open large text files (EditPad Lite is what I use) 2) Search and replace all ocurrences of "&" (no quotes) with whatever you want ("and", no quotes, for example) 3) Save it and launch Launchbox. I just tested your very own launchbox.xml and it's working ;) Let me know how it goes and Enjoy!!!works.png
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The problem came down to the way you have your folder named "arcade & console games". The "&" has to be replaced by the html equivalent, which is ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3493405/do-i-really-need-to-encode-as-amp ). I'm doing this already for notes and game descriptions, but I never thought about verifying if someone used "&" in their folder names. The best I can think of to make completely sure this will never happen again is to replace any ocurrence of " & " with " & " before launchbox.xml is saved. I'll do this now. New version coming in a few. -Kris
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I did notice something else as I only wanted the mame and neo geo platforms imported so I only put check marks in those 2 boxes. I wanted the cps1,cps2,and cps3, included in with the mame platform but I noticed that none of these games got imported because I unchecked the boxes. I think cave and the rest of the platforms did not get imported either.
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I sure can fix that. A very easy workaround is to import those platforms by using the checkboxes and then in Launchbox, select all games in each of those platforms > right click > edit and then in the wizard, select Mame as the platform you want to move them to. That should do it. -Kris
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I fixed that for the next release. The new behavior goes like this: - If Mame checkbox is on and the others are off, those will be included in the mame platform - If Mame checkbox is off, just the other checked platforms will be created - If both Mame and other platforms checkboxes are checked, a Mame platform will be created excluding the games in the other checked platforms, which will include those games within themselves. Update coming tonight. Thanks for reporting on that! -Kris
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kmoney2315 said I did notice something else as I only wanted the mame and neo geo platforms imported so I only put check marks in those 2 boxes. I wanted the cps1,cps2,and cps3, included in with the mame platform but I noticed that none of these games got imported because I unchecked the boxes. I think cave and the rest of the platforms did not get imported either.
Edit: newest version can be found at the beginning of the first post of this thread. I think this one also fixes a little bug that was causing 1 or two games to get duplicated custom filelds from time to time, as reported by @Drybonz. I could not find them anymore in my recent imports, but it's worth a spin. -Kris
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