Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[Antropus]

In that case there's not much I can do. If Launchbox kept a log, then I could access it. Since you are deleting them inside of Launchbox, then I guess that would be a suggestion to Jason :)

[CriticalCid]

Antropus said Please give it yet another shot an thanks again for being, apparently, my only customer :P

Another customer here ;) I finally found the time to test the newest version of your importer and had no problems at all (except for known double custom field bug and the export games). I really like your new wizard as well. Looks really great, is very intuitive and works like a charm. Really looking forward to the final release of your tool (which hopefully has the export release issue solved) so I can finally import my MAME games into my real LaunchBox setup. Keep the up the good work :)

[Antropus]

Oh, good to know, man! I'm being very busy at work these days, but I managed to get some nice progress on those notes. It will not be perfect, but a lot of notes will definitely be imported from the original sets. The reason why it's not going to be perfect is because of what I mentioned a few times: History.dat, although it's an unbelievable effort, is not perfect. Little grammar errors and lack of a consistent way to define things adds a gigantic number of possible variations for each thing. My script will contemplate the most common ones, so the Capcom games, for example, should get covered, but some other systems might not. It will be a vast improvement though. I will try to work some more on it tonight :) -Kris

[Bil]

Hi, just wanted to say thanks for the importer Antropus. I have tested it to import the MAME set and am eagerly awaiting the software list import feature, mainly to add MSX and X68000. :) For these systems (and others) I am currently using GameBase, but would like to eventually import those systems into LaunchBox.

[Antropus]

Glad to know I'm not the only one interested in the Software Lists :P I'm slowly but surely working on it and already thinking about ways to integrate it into the Wizard. I'll hopefully have a version for testing in a week or two. Thanks! -Kris

[locvez]

Hi, I just want to say thank you for the tool, it made importing mame roms so easy, well done! There's a slight issue though, not sure if it's my screen resolution, 1080p on a hdtv but a couple of screens has the text vanish at the bottom of the screen, notably the bit that tells you what locking or unlocking the emulator does. Apart from that, great job and I can't wait to see what you do for the software lists!

[lionking03]

Hi thanks a lot for this awesome tool which make launchbox greater without spending hours and hours in manual filtering I just have a question about the 3 last platform (atomiswave, naomi and hikaru) when i select them and specify an emulator (demul) they didn't appear in launchbox maybe i did something wrong but I can't figure out what

[Antropus]

lionking03 said I just have a question about the 3 last platform (atomiswave, naomi and hikaru) when i select them and specify an emulator (demul) they didn't appear in launchbox maybe i did something wrong but I can't figure out what

I just tested and they do work. I think the only thing you will need is to select all filters, to make sure they are added (use the toggles at the top to speed things up). That happens because those games are marker as "preliminary" by Mame, so if the filter "unplayable" is unchecked, nothing will be added! Also, make sure to uncheck the box "Lock Emulator". The last thing is, since those are exceptions, make sure that all other platforms are unchecked and only those three are checked! I say that because is favorable to "Lock emulator" for anything running on Mame and unlocking emulator just when you want to use different emulators while still parsing the metadata from Mame.

locvez said I just want to say thank you for the tool, it made importing mame roms so easy, well done!

Thanks and you are welcome :)

There's a slight issue though, not sure if it's my screen resolution, 1080p on a hdtv but a couple of screens has the text vanish at the bottom of the screen, notably the bit that tells you what locking or unlocking the emulator does. Apart from that, great job and I can't wait to see what you do for the software lists!

I wonder if it's related to the font size in your system? I mean, it *should* fit in the GUI proportionally, so if you are seeing the entire GUI the text should behave correctly... I think. I will reduce the amount of text though. It's too much of a manual in there :) Here's my theory: when English is not your first language, you tend to write much more than strictly the necessary stuff, just because you want to make sure others understand you. That's what I tend to do! I speak too much and I type too much. Foreigners... :) -Kris

[lionking03]

thanks fot the quick reply is just that box "unplayable" indeed it all work now for hikaru and the others thanks again just a little thing, on the first post of this thread you should delete the download link at the bottom of your first post, when I discover the thread I read the whole first post before downloading and then I use the link at the bottom which was a previous one screen version of lightspeed and then while reading all the thread I didn't understand why I didn't have the other features. then I discover the first downloading link :), my bad but maybe it will help others

[blu3planet]

thank you for a great tool! i just had my rom list reduced for ~10k to around 2800 games like nothing. i wonder though, all my games are in 7z format. is there any way to extract all of the games from the 7z into separate dirs and somehow process the entire folder with the subdirs to leave only 1 version of each game? for example, if usa version exists i'd prefer usa. afterwards i prefer world, then europe and only then japan\asia when others are not avail? i just think it's better to have mame games extracted, as these often aren't small files like old console roms.

[Drybonz]

You would want to get a split (instead of merged) set. You can do this with CLRMAMEPro, but it's a bit tricky. Easier probably to just download a split set. Then you can use Lightspeed to organize your set. I'm not sure if the option to move to folders is working yet but if/when it is, you could move your unwanted roms to another folder and then delete that folder.

[Antropus]

lionking03 said thanks fot the quick reply is just that box "unplayable" indeed it all work now for hikaru and the others

Glad to know! First post is now fixed as well. Thanks for letting me know. About the countries, I have a little program that I wrote that works great for DAT-O-MATIC and Tosec, on the console side. You point it to a folder full of roms and it will create the country, demo, prototype etc folders and will move them in there. It's easy to do because of the naming convention, that includes the country info on every rom. With Mame things are trickier, because not all games have the country of origin present in the xml. In that case, the languages.ini file can be used, but that refers to the language in the game, not the country of origin. I could write something to prioritize USA, then World, etc, but that would affect the games that have that info present in the xml, but like Drybonz mentioned, that would be good only on a split set.

[Antropus]

I was thinking about other features to add and think I will add those, for now: 1) another page with additional filters for number of players, number of buttons, control type, orientation (vertical or horizontal), cocktail support and region (when present). This might sound overkill, but this can be extremely useful if your cabinet is built for certain types of games. For example, if you built a cocktail cabinet and want to make sure that only games supporting cocktail games are imported. Or you've got a two controller control panel and want to import only games designed for two players simultaneously. Or you built a cabinet used for vertical games only etc. 2) Multi-format xml and text exporter. This would allow for anyone, including other front-end users, to take advantage of Lightspeed. I have this already coded in another project, so it's easy to implement. You will be able to export the filtered list to Hyperspin, Maximus Arcade, simple lists in text format, CSV, batch file etc, so if you, like me, use different front-ends in different cabinets, you can use the program to easily create lists for all your systems. I don't use Hyperspin. I kinda hate that thing, but its xml format is used by PinballX, which I love, so I like to code the Hyperspin exporter so I can filter my arcade lists for my pinball machine. Why? Because I built an awesome little control panel with suction cups that I can stick to my digital pinball and play mame games in it. Check my pride and joy:

[Drybonz]

Heh... cute kid, man. Nice control panel too. What kind of joysticks did you put in it? The suction cup idea is brilliant. Along the lines of the "control type" info... is there any cleanup that can be done on that? There are many games that don't have a control type listed at all, and then some are listed two different ways, such as "8-way+stick" and "8-way joystick". I thought it would be more useful if it was standardized a bit.

[DOS76]

Filtering the results by orientation and control type is a brilliant idea that has so much potential. Even if users wanted to have separate MAME categories in the same LaunchBox ie Arcade: Horizontal, Arcade: Vertical, Arcade: Racing Wheel, gun, spinner trackball and what ever else is in e it could make your MAME very trimmed down and easy to navigate. You could even do like Joystick 0 buttons joystick 1 button. Its a really good idea.

[Antropus]

Those are Sanwa. Love them. About the controls info, once upon a time there was a well supported controls.ini/xml file that simply died and stopped being updated years ago. A certain famously annoying individual, who seem to be involved in every single discussion at the Arcade Controls forum, complaining a lot, being a know-it-all and overall more talking then actually doing something (other than some funky software that he writes from time to time), well, this fellah offered his amazing powers and wisdom to take over that project and update it from that point on. As I predicted, the project went nowhere. A single update was released and that was years ago... So, what you see in Lightspeed is my own implementation, not complete by any means, but a good start. It uses Mame's own xml and tries to "decrypt" the information that is not always clear and needs a lot of thinckering and deduction to extract the less obvious control types. I did this because I don't want it to happen again, that some "messiah" comes up promising to update the file and simply vanishes again leaving the community hanging. I want to give power to the community to be able to extract the information themselves, instead if relying on individuals. It also reflects into my political view: more power to the people, less power to the government ;)

[blu3planet]

so basically i need to get clrmame as you said, use the merger as "non-merged sets", and then use the scanner as split sets? i just miss on the final bit of info - once i finish with scanner, how do i preserve only usa rom > europe > world > asia\japan etc? on another note, is there any way to discover the roms in my list which require a chd to run, but don't have it?

[Antropus]

blu3planet said so basically i need to get clrmame as you said, use the merger as "non-merged sets", and then use the scanner as split sets?

< You can set things to split mode and use the rebuilder to created a clean, split set in another folder. Take a look at clrmamepro's how-to. You can find that info online, I believe.

< on another note, is there any way to discover the roms in my list which require a chd to run, but don't have it?

Lightspeed does that automatically. If you have that checkbox on, it will create the .zip/.7z dummy companion roms for you, although it will not list which ones it creates. That calls for something that I can add as well: a complete log file that can be exported, listing things like this, for example, so you can know which CHDs had no companion roms. I can add this, but only if it doesn't hurt the performance (I doubt it will).

[Antropus]

Oh wait, I think I misunderstood. You want to know which roms require CHD to run. I have this filter available somewhere. I'll add it to Lightspeed and combined with the future feature of exporting the output listview to a text file, you will have a perfect picture of what games need CHDs. -Kris

[Antropus]

Here you go: http://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/docs/htm/rebuilder.htm