Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[Lordmonkus]

Ok, here you go. And here is a link to the original thread over on the arcadecontrols.com forums. The classics list is still being tested and finalized so once that is done all the lists should be done barring errors or other problems. http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,149708.msg1563036.html#msg1563036 This list is based on the Mame 170 rom set and I cannot remember if it is for the split set or merged set of roms. The user Badmouth over there on that forum board deserves all the credit for compiling this list.

[Antropus]

Thanks for this @lordmonkus! I will see if I can get this going tonight. I'll need to add those filters with an overwrite or else this list will be pulverized by all the other filters. I will think about the best way to do this. Shouldn't be hard. -Kris

[Lordmonkus]

Good luck.

[locvez]

Hey @Antropus - Just wanted to drop you a line and say that after reading your reply to the display text issue, I had a look at my settings and I just noticed that I have display scaling set to 125% due to using a TV from the couch so it was skewing the text. when i set scaling to 100% it fixed the issue. :)

[Drybonz]

Sorry I didn't see that earlier... mine is also set to 125% text and has the same text misalignment. Getting too old for that 100% text. ;P

[Antropus]

Thanks for letting me know, guys! That's what I thought. I will see if I can code something to extract the current dpi and adapt the text size automatically. Not sure if it will be possible, but I will try!

[Drybonz]

It's a pretty minor issue, IMO, so I never mentioned it. I could get by fine if it doesn't get changed. :)

[Antropus]

Ok, the code is still a little messy and needs a good amount of cleanup and testing, but here's something for you guys: - All Killer No Filler List is now implemented as a possible filter. Not only that, but from now on you will be able to point Lightspeed to your own manually created lists and Lightspeed will import those games into Launchbox, with notes and metadata in just a few steps. What I did was to transform the All Killer No Filler .bat files into a more commonly used format, all in a single file with the categories defined as sessions of an ini file, similar to what Progetto Snaps uses for their support files, like so:

[HORIZONTAL SHMUPS] sonicwi2 airbustr alpham2 androdun bchopper blkheart [PUZZLE] aquarush bakubaku bangball blockhl blockout

If you point Lightspeed to a file like this, every session contained within the square brackets will become a new platform in Launchbox and all games below it will be imported to this platform. Lightspeed will then use the very first emulator in the list as the emulator linked to those games/platforms. You can rename the emulator as you wish, simply by clicking on its name, like in my example here: Cheers, -Kris

[Lordmonkus]

Very cool.

[CriticalCid]

Awesome to have such a feature but I don’t necessarily want all the lists/genres as different platforms or in a separate platform at all. Would it be possible to add an option that these games in the list just simply get the favorites tag? I still want to import all my 2000+ games with the normal filters so I would rather have all the “Best of” games in their respective platforms like MAME, CPS1, Neo Geo, Model 2, Naomi, etc and just marked them as favorites. So I would still have mostly all playable games in my MAME libarary on my LaunchBox setup but I could easily filter for the games which are considered best.

[kmoney]

Awesome...great job,that sounds like a really cool feature!

[Drybonz]

CriticalCid said Awesome to have such a feature but I don’t necessarily want all the lists/genres as different platforms or in a separate platform at all. Would it be possible to add an option that these games in the list just simply get the favorites tag?

Can you import the list, select all and mark as favorites, then delete the platform?

[Antropus]

A ton of incoming new features. Nothing to test just yet though :) - Started to work more towards an open concept that goes beyond LaunchBox (but keeping it as the primary focus, of course). With that in mind, users of other Front-Ends (or users like me who use multiple FEs) will soon be able to take advantage of this tool as a powerful list generator, a great alternative to RomLister. - New option added: "Match My Roms Folder". If this is checked, the final resulting list will be compared to your actual ROMs folder, so ROMs you don't actually have will not be included. If unchecked, now even if you do not have any ROMs stored locally and you are planning to download them later, you still can generate complete "offline" lists. - The filter system was greatly improved. There were many inconsistencies before, so I decided to carefully test each one in complete isolation to make sure that they are not overlapping each other anymore. As a result, you can now generate much more precise lists of a single genre, status, decade etc. New filters added: a) Shmup Horizontal b) Shmup Vertical c) Deco Cassete d) Vs. Nintendo e) Custom filter from File f) filter by decade (70's. 80's, 90's, 2000's and 2010's). -Re-organized second filter screen. You can now completely isolate roms that need CHDs to play or roms that don't need them. -Vastly improved exporter window. a) To keep the performance high, I removed the second screenshot that was showing the front image art. The reason is that some of those images are from high resolution flyers and the loading time was slowing things down. In its place, I added a card showing the most important info about the game. b) The listview is now a game launcher of its own. Double click any game in the list and it will launch Mame so you can review/test the game if in doubt, before adding it to your export. c) Added the "skeleton-code" to what the new Exporter will be. Those are some of the Front-Ends I will be supporting at first, either because they are FEs that I use personally or simply because they are very simple to implement, so why not... Still a lot in my todo list, but I will get there. Cheers, -Kris

[Lordmonkus]

Damn dude, this is looking better and better all the time.

[Drybonz]

Looking great... I think the info card is more useful than the second picture anyway, so that will be nice. Also, the filter by decade is a great idea.

[Antropus]

Other than Maximus Arcade, which is a little bit trickier (although I'm pretty sure I already have the code to generate Maximus lists somewhere), all other export formats are now fully implemented. So far you can already export fully filtered lists to: - Hyperspin - PinballX - MameUIFX - mGalaxy - AtomicFE - Cabrio - AdvanceMenu - Rom Names Only - Game Description Only - XML File combining most of the information from all lists: game name, description, clone of, manufacturer, year, series, source driver, number of players, control type, number of buttons, display type, resolution, orientation, version added, region, genre, video path. Working pretty sweet :) -Kris

[Drybonz]

Awesome... now you are going to have to get the word out to all these other frontend users to let them know about it. I think it will be pretty big.

[Antropus]

Drybonz said Awesome... now you are going to have to get the word out to all these other frontend users to let them know about it. I think it will be pretty big.

Thanks man! I'm trying to get things ironed out first and I REALLY need to write some documentation for it. Although it's kinda straight forward, now that this is becoming an open tool, there are many little tricks users of other frontends can use to take full advantage of the program. It's becoming really flexible and with that flexibility comes certain needs, to make sure I cover most possibilities. Once I have all exporters in place and working (planning to add some more FEs and the ability to export lists of missing roms for example), once I have a nice little manual and once I unlock certain things that only work for Launchbox right now, then I will definitely post this tool in other forums. I think this will serve two purposes: a) to bring up an easier, more controlled way to export lists; b) to bring up some more visibility for LaunchBox. A place like BYOAC is great, but they have a historical disdain for paid software, except some rare occasions, like with Maximus Arcade. So to even hear about other front-ends over there is quite rare. Since Lightspeed was developed primarily for Launchbox, maybe this will bring it to more people, at least so people can know that there's a great alternative out there. Paid, true, but still there's the free version that people can always try (although, without BigBox, great part of the FE is missing imho). I'm just excited that more people will be able to try. I really like that you and a few others are constantly testing and giving me feedback to improve, but unfortunately not a lot of people do the same, so most of the bugs I need to discover myself. Putting this into more hands will be great for me to be able to track things faster. -Kris

[Drybonz]

You might try the RocketLauncher forums since people there use a few different front-ends sometimes.

[Drybonz]

On a side note... I have a copy of Maximus Arcade I got with my controller... I have barely even looked at it, but I may have to play around with it once your new Lightspeed is available.