Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[Retrofrogg]

15 hours ago, Pacman56 said:

Dan,

I am not the author. Lightspeed was developed by @Antropus which can be seen on the top of this page.

My mistake - thanks for pointing that out!

[ravynsage]

Hi - first post to forum.  Thanks for everyone's hard work on all things emulation!  I spent quite a few hours trying to find a simple rom 'mover/organizer'.  I think I found a gem here:  http://mcm.mameworld.info/index.htm  Although noted as end of life, it was recently updated.  I think Ciro did a great job and hope he keeps it up to date - I could not easily find MCM listed in the forums, so maybe the mods can move it up the food chain.

Thanks!
Ravynsage

[haynor666]

So, no even single sign of life from Antropus. I'm worried about him. No one dissapears like that fir such long time

Edited June 11, 2018 by haynor666

[JesseBlue]

His last visit was on 07/16/2018. ?
 

[Pacman56]

I'm also a great fan of Lightspeed an would really like to see its development continue.

In the mean time, I've spent the last few months creating my own version which is very much inspired on @Antropus great work.

If there is enough interest from the community, I might upload my personal implementation of "Pacman's Mame Lister" to this site but the problem I have right now is that I'm using Antropus status images on the Export tab simply because my graphic artist skills are pretty bad. I first need to have those images redesigned to avoid copyright infringements.  I would also like for Antropus to be okay with me releasing something that is in essence very similar to his work. Last I want to do is offend anyone. Keep in mind that my implementation is nowhere near as nice as Lighspeed but it's gets the job done for what I need.

Here are some screenshots:

[FlightRisk]

What's odd is @Antropus seem a bit rude. He abandoned the project and does not even respond to any messages or email, even to say "I just don't have time". He works in film effects and is a 3D artist. I tracked him down on Facebook and 2 or 3 other places non-game related where he continues to post regularly. I sent him multiple messages in each place to get an answer. I have no idea why he wouldn't respond as a simple courtesy. He spent so much time on this, it doesn't make any sense he wouldn't at least turn it over to the community and put it on Github for people to continue. Maybe he will reply to someone at some point.

Good work on your version of something similar Pacman. 

[neil9000]

8 minutes ago, FlightRisk said:

What's odd is @Antropus seem a bit rude. He abandoned the project and does not even respond to any messages or email, even to say "I just don't have time". He works in film effects and is a 3D artist. I tracked him down on Facebook and 2 or 3 other places non-game related where he continues to post regularly. I sent him multiple messages in each place to get an answer. I have no idea why he wouldn't respond as a simple courtesy. He spent so much time on this, it doesn't make any sense he wouldn't at least turn it over to the community and put it on Github for people to continue. Maybe he will reply to someone at some point.

Good work on your version of something similar Pacman. 

With all due respect you tracking him down on facebook and posting what he does for a living on here is far far ruder than him ignoring e-mails from a complete stranger. Maybe have a look at yourself before you start saying other people are rude?

[FlightRisk]

What's the problem Neil? I didn't post his name or anything private despite the fact he isn't private. He uses his screen name in all his posts just as it wouldn't take a genius to know who a guy posting as "KingOfPop" and signing his name Mike is. Anyone could find him. I posted messages here, waited, then posted in places he frequents more often. I am actually a fan of his work. He is a self-taught world class artist. He posts pictures of his game machines and much of his work online.  He is mentioned in many places and promotions. There are youtube videos where he is interviewed for being a leader in his field. It's no secret who he is, he makes a point of putting his real name and face out there and uses his handle as a middle name. Maybe it was a rush to judgement to use the word "rude" to describe that he won't answer people. He works on big projects. He is consumed when working on one or more. I get that. But several people have tried to make contact in a polite way and no one has heard from him in the gaming community (that I know of). He doesn't owe us anything, but he did put software out there that people use and then abruptly left them hanging without a word.  I shouldn't use my frustration to label him and didn't mean to. At first I thought something happened to him, but then I see he posts all the time in a non-gaming venue. Maybe he just lost interest in gaming. I hope he either answers someone at some point or directs someone to post a message just to find out if there is any hope to pick up the project. 

Edited August 25, 2018 by FlightRisk

[Agent47]

2 hours ago, neil9000 said:

With all due respect you tracking him down on facebook

Just tracking down the guy on another site period to "bother" him is something I feel is pretty rude when it seems pretty clear he doesn't want to address it.

If he wanted to address it chances are he would've done so in this thread long ago or responded to one of the (many, I'm sure) PMs people sent him here. People leave the emu scene and hobbyist communities in general all the time. Sometimes they pop up years later and hop back in, sometimes they don't. If it seems like someone doesn't want to be bothered with something people just have to accept it and move on.

Maybe my opinion on it is just because I've been on the other end where I've abandoned projects or contributing to certain communities in general and I still get messages about those things even in cases where I made it clear I was done. I have had people pester me on different sites I'm still active on about it and at first I would sometimes message back saying I was no longer supporting stuff but now I mostly ignore messages outright but I do find it mildly annoying when people do it.

BTW, I'm not trying to dig at FlightRisk specifically with this so please don't take it that way. Just more of my opinion or a PSA for interacting with other online community members in general.

Edited August 25, 2018 by Agent47

[FlightRisk]

No offense taken. Thanks for the input

[riccetto80]

On 8/22/2018 at 5:57 PM, Pacman56 said:

I'm also a great fan of Lightspeed an would really like to see its development continue.

In the mean time, I've spent the last few months creating my own version which is very much inspired on @Antropus great work.

If there is enough interest from the community, I might upload my personal implementation of "Pacman's Mame Lister" to this site but the problem I have right now is that I'm using Antropus status images on the Export tab simply because my graphic artist skills are pretty bad. I first need to have those images redesigned to avoid copyright infringements.  I would also like for Antropus to be okay with me releasing something that is in essence very similar to his work. Last I want to do is offend anyone. Keep in mind that my implementation is nowhere near as nice as Lighspeed but it's gets the job done for what I need.

would be wonderful, what you waiting for?

[haynor666]

Pacman56 please post your program.

[Ziege_UK]

Hi

@Pacman56 did you ever upload your version? I'm dying to get my hands on something like this

[Retrofrogg]

Doesn't the new MAME wizard with the improved metadata scraping negative an app like this?

[Drybonz]

The new MAME wizard does some of what Lightspeed did.  You don't get all the custom metadata fields and with LS it was a lot easier to go back and make changes, etc...

As far as Antropus being rude, that is absurd.  He was one of the most helpful and nice guys on this forum.  He got busy with job and family and stopped working on this.  Simple as that.  Anyone that doesn't know that obviously wasn't around when he was active here.  

There really isn't anything else to say about this.  Lightspeed was a very useful tool... it's a dead project... Jason has done his best to fill in some of those features with the MAME wizard.  Nothing else to talk about.

Edited October 21, 2018 by Drybonz

[Pacman56]

@Ziege_UK I'm sorry to say that did not upload my version yet for a few reasons. There are a few issues I would want to address before making it public.

Also, I really want try Jason's new MAME importer and see how it compares to what LightSpeed is/was doing. To be honest I've not done that yet as I got really busy with other things.

Perhaps I'll find that Jason's new MAME importer is meeting my needs although I don't think there is any support for software lists which to me is important. I'll have to take some time and test it out meticulously.

One of the issue I observed with the old built-in importer or even LightSpeed is that some of my favorite roms were not imported as games or additional apps which is one of the reasons created my own tool. Hopefully, the new built-in MAME importer has addressed that.

In any case, I agree with others that Antropus was not rude to anyone. Let's remember that he was kind enough to share and support his tool (like many folks on this forum) and never asked anything in return.

Cheers everyone ?

[neil9000]

17 minutes ago, Pacman56 said:

@Ziege_UK I'm sorry to say that did not upload my version yet for a few reasons. There are a few issues I would want to address before making it public.

Also, I really want try Jason's new MAME importer and see how it compares to what LightSpeed is/was doing. To be honest I've not done that yet as I got really busy with other things.

Perhaps I'll find that Jason's new MAME importer is meeting my needs although I don't think there is any support for software lists which to me is important. I'll have to take some time and test it out meticulously.

One of the issue I observed with the old built-in importer or even LightSpeed is that some of my favorite roms were not imported as games or additional apps which is one of the reasons created my own tool. Hopefully, the new built-in MAME importer has addressed that.

In any case, I agree with others that Antropus was not rude to anyone. Let's remember that he was kind enough to share and support his tool (like many folks on this forum) and never asked anything in return.

Cheers everyone ?

Software lists are not yet available for import, but is planned. The new importer adds all working games to Launchbox with the default filters, of course you can uncheck various filters and it will import non working games as well, but by default every game marked as working in the current MAME release is imported into Launchbox, and clones are added as additional apps.

[Ziege_UK]

Thank you for the reply. 

I'm happy to wait for any solution 

[Pacman56]

On 10/21/2018 at 3:55 PM, neil9000 said:

Software lists are not yet available for import, but is planned. The new importer adds all working games to Launchbox with the default filters, of course you can uncheck various filters and it will import non working games as well, but by default every game marked as working in the current MAME release is imported into Launchbox, and clones are added as additional apps.

Thank you @neil9000  I recently tried the new MAME importer and was really impressed with the results. Unlike the old importer, I was able to find and restore all my favorites using the default filter against my full merged sets (MAME v0.202).

I'm also happy to learn that importing the Software Lists is something that is planned. I've learned the hard way (while creating my own version of LightSpeed) that importing SL is not that trivial. Some might think that you can simply assign the appropriate command line parameter to the platform level but for some platforms that would not be sufficient and command line parameters have to be assign at the game level. An example of that is with the Atari 7800. Some of the games listed in the a7800.xml (found in the hash folder of MAME) are NTSC games and others are PAL games. NTSC games have to be launched using the "a7800" parameters while PAL games have to be launched using the "a7800p" parameters so that the correct mame machine is used to launch the game. This is just a simple example. There are more complex scenarios with other SL platforms. Fortunately, the information necessary to make that decision can be parsed from these xml files. I would be happy to share all of my findings with @Jason Carr when he's ready to implement Software Lists in LB/BB. This would save Jason a lot of time and frustrations. Hint, hint Jason ?. Just PM me if you wish and I'll send you code spinet that shows what to look for in these SL xml files.

[Jason Carr]

On 10/27/2018 at 4:57 AM, Pacman56 said:

Thank you @neil9000  I recently tried the new MAME importer and was really impressed with the results. Unlike the old importer, I was able to find and restore all my favorites using the default filter against my full merged sets (MAME v0.202).

I'm also happy to learn that importing the Software Lists is something that is planned. I've learned the hard way (while creating my own version of LightSpeed) that importing SL is not that trivial. Some might think that you can simply assign the appropriate command line parameter to the platform level but for some platforms that would not be sufficient and command line parameters have to be assign at the game level. An example of that is with the Atari 7800. Some of the games listed in the a7800.xml (found in the hash folder of MAME) are NTSC games and others are PAL games. NTSC games have to be launched using the "a7800" parameters while PAL games have to be launched using the "a7800p" parameters so that the correct mame machine is used to launch the game. This is just a simple example. There are more complex scenarios with other SL platforms. Fortunately, the information necessary to make that decision can be parsed from these xml files. I would be happy to share all of my findings with @Jason Carr when he's ready to implement Software Lists in LB/BB. This would save Jason a lot of time and frustrations. Hint, hint Jason ?. Just PM me if you wish and I'll send you code spinet that shows what to look for in these SL xml files.

Thank you @Pacman56. Yeah, I'd love to have that code for when I tackle the software lists. Feel free to send it to me and I'll set it aside for when I jump on it.