Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[Antropus]

2 hours ago, Malhavoc said:

Using last beta version. With clones and consolidate clones disabled, it says it's importing 2771 games, but in launchbox only 2669 are listed. If I check clones and consolidate clones, it still shows it's importing 2771 games, but launchbox actually shows 2771. However I can't say which two are actually missing.. 

Hard to say without looking at the listviews on both launchbox and Lightspeed. Can you send me your lightspeed.ini so I can see if I can reproduce the problem by using your exact settings?

[Malhavoc]

18 hours ago, Antropus said:

Hard to say without looking at the listviews on both launchbox and Lightspeed. Can you send me your lightspeed.ini so I can see if I can reproduce the problem by using your exact settings?

Sure! Here it is: http://freetexthost.com/s55z1wi0cd (just noticed it says within "created with beta 3", but I am actually using Beta 7 now)

Here instead you can download the whole Launchbox's zipped "Data" folder from dropbox, in case it can help you too: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mhltxwkqlzd6hk0/Data.zip?dl=0

Edited March 7, 2017 by Malhavoc

[Antropus]

1 hour ago, Malhavoc said:

Sure! Here it is: http://freetexthost.com/s55z1wi0cd (just noticed it says withing "created with beta 3", but I am actually using Beta 7 now)

Here instead you can download the whole zipped "Data" folder from dropbox, in case it can help you too: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mhltxwkqlzd6hk0/Data.zip?dl=0

Excellent! That will make things easier for me. I will look at this tonight when I am home. Cheers!

[rootshell]

@Antropus: I have to revert my statement of the MAME --xml Updater working. The generated MAME.xml is empty and when i reach the EXPORT tab the list is completely empty. How can i solve this? Do you need more info? I am using Beta7.

[Antropus]

3 minutes ago, rootshell said:

@Antropus: I have to revert my statement of the MAME --xml Updater working. The generated MAME.xml is empty and when i reach the EXPORT tab the list is completely empty. How can i solve this? Do you need more info? I am using Beta7.

Can you post a screen grab showing the contents of your "SupportFiles" folder?

[rootshell]

Nevermind, after reseting everything to default i forgot to change the MAME64.exe path again.

My bad, sorry!

EDIT: After generating the MAME.xml with the updater all games are listet on the export tab. All those popups also showed up when my path was wrong, so i never thought about LS not finding the exe. Maybe add an error dialog if that happens? Would have made my mistake obvious.

Thank you!

Edited March 7, 2017 by rootshell

[Antropus]

No worries
If for any reason your files get corrupted, you can safely delete:

- Arcade.DB
- SoftLists.DB
- MAME.xml
- MAMELight.xml

Then run the mame -xml updater again and it should re-create all files for you.

Cheers,
-Kris

Edited March 7, 2017 by Antropus

[CriticalCid]

I can confirm that all the issues that I have reported are gone now. Thank you!

I also like the idea with the name of the ROM file for the additional apps; it really helps. But I would still wish that Lightspeed could add the actual game name of the clone when there is no other information available for populating the name. Some ROM names like “typhoon” are (almost) identical to the actual game name so for these games that isn’t a problem but ROM names like “sbsgomo” (Space Battle Ship Gomorrah) are a little more problematic to identify.

Another small issue I've found: Some Namco games (Burning Force, Dragon Spirit, Kyuukai Douchuuki, Rompers and Splatter House) have a closing parenthesis at the end of their name.

[quazl]

Super noob question.

Do I need to have imported my Arcade platform BEFORE running this or can I use Lightspeed to do the initial creation?

I also can't see any of the buttons to export or reset in 800x600.

Edited March 7, 2017 by quazl

[Neofuuma]

11 minutes ago, quazl said:

Super noob question.

Do I need to have imported my Arcade platform BEFORE running this or can I use Lightspeed to do the initial creation?

I also can't see any of the buttons to export or reset in 800x600.

Lightspeed can import them initially, without having to setup anything arcade-wise in LB beforehand.

[CriticalCid]

It seems that the DateTime crash is back again. I just imported all the SoftwareLists platforms with beta7 and got this:

Here's the Data folder: Data.zip

[Antropus]

@CriticalCid, The date corruption is coming from this entry:

Platform: Nintendo Game boy.xml
Game: "Football International"

The word "Europe" is being parsed as if it was the name of the month. You can open the .xml file, search for this game and replace "Europe" with "01" and your should be good to go for now. The fix was already rolled into the next version.

-Kris

[Antropus]

3 hours ago, CriticalCid said:

1) could add the actual game name of the clone

 

2) Another small issue I've found: Some Namco games (Burning Force, Dragon Spirit, Kyuukai Douchuuki, Rompers and Splatter House) have a closing parenthesis at the end of their name.

 

1) You mean game description then, not the rom name? That's easy. Bear in mind that some descriptions are pretty darn long though...
2) Good find!

I fixed both as well. Should be good in the next release.

-Kris

[Antropus]

2 hours ago, quazl said:

Super noob question.

Do I need to have imported my Arcade platform BEFORE running this or can I use Lightspeed to do the initial creation?

I also can't see any of the buttons to export or reset in 800x600.

You can import everything using Lightspeed straight away. Actually favorable imho, because of the extensive number of filters and customization that is possible this way.
I will take a look into the resolution issue! You should have no problem with higher resolutions, but 800x600 seem like it's not quite enough to fit all controls.

[The Cimmerian]

Hi, frontend newbie here.

I'm having trouble populating the list with this tool and the youtube videos (the one from LaunchBox and the one made by the creator of LightSpeed) are for an older version which is very different from the current one and I'm totally lost here.

Now, the tool doesn't ask for the xml LaunchBox file (nor did I find that file either) and the pdf manual isn't helping much either; so my question is if anyone knows of a tutorial video for the current Beta 7? That would be a godsend.

 

I also have some questions:

1. Do I have to unzip all the artwork (icons, marquees, etc.) or does LightSpeed can be used with the zip files?

2. Is it necessary the overdrive part? I'm having troubles understanding its function.

3. One time I was able to fill the export (last part) of the tool, but I couldn't complete it, the information suddenly vanished as I click on the number 2 (output) part. Can anyone provide a more detailed explanation for this?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Antropus]

The program is in constant development, so it gets outdated pretty fast these days, until it gets closer to a final format that works for most people. The manual needs update and the video made by the Launchbox team was done a long time ago. My intention is to create a series of videos demonstrating, but I have a full time job and this is one of my many hobbies at night, so not much hope there either

To the questions:

You don't need a Launchbox.xml file anymore. Jason made it obsolete many versions ago. You will not find anywhere in Lightspeed a place looking for this file. You will be requested to provide the root folder where Launchbox was installed, that's all.

1. No need to unzip artwork for the sake of using them as filters, but if they are zipped, just like what happens with the UI in Mame, no artwork preview will be visible in the gui. It only works if you have a collection of .zip or .7z files named correctly after the rom name and all living in a folder you can point to. One single file with all artwork in it will not do it.

2. Overwrite is only necessary if you already exported the ROMs you are trying to export now, so all the information for those ROMs will be overwritten. If you already exported those ROMs before and you try to use "Merge to Library" instead, then only the difference will be imported and Lightspeed will skip any game found in your library. Think it this way: Merge = incremental + found games are bypassed. Overwrite = acts as if you were exporting those games for the first time, overwriting any matching game already in the library.

3. The button "2 Output" is context sensitive, so watch out what listview you have selected. Why is that? Because it's very useful when you are trying to assemble a list based on searches for example. Let's say you want to create a list of games with the keywords "Donkey Kong" for example. You can search those words and you will see the results under the "search" listview. While still there, you can click "2 Output" and select  "Add All". All games containing the words "Donkey Kong" are now ready to be exported to any list format you want. If you are exporting to Launchbox, just select it from the dropdown menu on the lower left, browse for Launchbox's root folder and then click "3 Export".

That's really all you need to know. Try it out and let me know.

-Kris

[quazl]

11 hours ago, Antropus said:

You can import everything using Lightspeed straight away. Actually favorable imho, because of the extensive number of filters and customization that is possible this way.
I will take a look into the resolution issue! You should have no problem with higher resolutions, but 800x600 seem like it's not quite enough to fit all controls.

I guess I am the only one on an old CRT?

I might be able to teamviewer or RDP into it and get a higher resolution. If you didn't want to change up your UI, that is an option for us old schoolers.

Amazing work by the way. What IDE and language are you using to build this?

[CriticalCid]

13 hours ago, Antropus said:

1) You mean game description then, not the rom name? That's easy. Bear in mind that some descriptions are pretty darn long though...
2) Good find!

I fixed both as well. Should be good in the next release.

-Kris

Ah yes, I meant the description. I know that they can be very long that’s why I suggested that they only should get used if there’s really nothing else besides the ROM file name for populating the Additional Apps name.

So today I tried to import the Demul games and it seems that Lightspeed can’t properly filter out all games. I checked all filter options (except Mess SoftLists) in the both Filter tabs and only checked the Demul platforms (Sammy Atomiswave, Hikaru, Naomi 1+2) in the Platforms tab. Lightspeed filters out 245 games but when I manually add all games with the Hikaru and Naomi source driver’s I end up with 286 games.

I only noticed that something was wrong because Lightspeed only imported just 1 game for the Hikaru platform at my first try.

[Antropus]

6 hours ago, quazl said:

I guess I am the only one on an old CRT?

I might be able to teamviewer or RDP into it and get a higher resolution. If you didn't want to change up your UI, that is an option for us old schoolers.

Amazing work by the way. What IDE and language are you using to build this?

No, no , no. This is my problem, because I want people to be able to use it with their CRTs as well, especially considering that I have one in my arcade cabinet (although never tested with it... yeah, I suck!).
I will definitely look into this soon! Language is the good and old Autohotkey

[Antropus]

5 hours ago, CriticalCid said:

Ah yes, I meant the description. I know that they can be very long that’s why I suggested that they only should get used if there’s really nothing else besides the ROM file name for populating the Additional Apps name.

So today I tried to import the Demul games and it seems that Lightspeed can’t properly filter out all games. I checked all filter options (except Mess SoftLists) in the both Filter tabs and only checked the Demul platforms (Sammy Atomiswave, Hikaru, Naomi 1+2) in the Platforms tab. Lightspeed filters out 245 games but when I manually add all games with the Hikaru and Naomi source driver’s I end up with 286 games.

I only noticed that something was wrong because Lightspeed only imported just 1 game for the Hikaru platform at my first try.

 

The code is already in place, but I think I a better way to keep the format is to clip the description at around x number characters. I can use maybe 12 or so characters to represent that entry when no extra info is found, so it doesn't break the gui when the name is like 30 characters long!

I am looking into this probably with hikaru/naomi. Probably a little miscalculation on the filter parameters. I was able to generate a list showing the difference between the two so I can use it as a guide. Thanks!