Antropus Posted May 16, 2016 Share Posted May 16, 2016 I still love the way Maximus looks. Very smooth interface. It's what I have running in my Arcade machine for 5+ years now. Rarely had any problem with it. Worth the shot. Launchbox is in another league when it comes to how easy it is to get up and running though. Thanks for the tip on RocketLauncher! -Kris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted May 16, 2016 Share Posted May 16, 2016 MAMEWorld would probably be a good place too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CriticalCid Posted May 16, 2016 Share Posted May 16, 2016 I can’t believe how fast your little MAME import alternative for LaunchBox has grown to such a huge monster and maybe the ultimate tool for importing MAME games for every mentionable frontend out there. Kudos to you! Can’t wait to test it in all its glory when it’s finished. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 17, 2016 Share Posted May 17, 2016 CriticalCid said I can’t believe how fast your little MAME import alternative for LaunchBox has grown to such a huge monster and maybe the ultimate tool for importing MAME games for every mentionable frontend out there. Kudos to you! Can’t wait to test it in all its glory when it’s finished. Thanks a lot for the support, man! I just migrated my test code into Lightspeed, so that problem about the Export games not showing the correct notes from the main games is mostly gone. As I mentioned before, I did my best to "juggle" around a gigantic amount of variations, so the result is much much better, but not perfect and I will blame on the History.dat guys for that :) I also finished the Maximus Arcade exporter and tested it in my own machine. Worked great. You will need to download the Maximus Game List Converter first, then drop the generated file into it to generate the final .LST file, but this is pretty easy. It's a fast but necessary step, because Maximus' lists use their proprietary binary format. -Kris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 17, 2016 Share Posted May 17, 2016 Do you guys have any example of a GameEX game list? I want to add support to that format but couldn't find anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted May 17, 2016 Share Posted May 17, 2016 I have used PinballX recently, but never GameX. I'm not sure how similar they are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 17, 2016 Share Posted May 17, 2016 I just installed it to see and it's a no go. GameEX is another FE using a custom binary file as game list format. Why do people do this? It's so annoying, because lets say you want to remove one or two games from your list. You could simply edit a text file and easily remove them. Nope, instead, for some reason the developers want to force you to open their program, go through a bunch of menus and then remove the game. Makes total sense :) So far both GameEX and Mala are out of luck for that reason. Maximus also uses a binary format, but at least they released a conversion tool to convert txt into binary and vice-versa. All other FEs, including Launchbox use text files (.txt, .xml or similar) to store the lists and I will be supporting those first and foremost. Edit: Mala export is now fully supported! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted May 17, 2016 Share Posted May 17, 2016 Why do they do this ? Because they believe if they make their shit in some proprietary format people will somehow be forced into using their stuff. They think it makes them special somehow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 17, 2016 Share Posted May 17, 2016 A smart fellah developed this nice little command line program to convert an ini file into Mala's binary format (Binary Delphi INI...). I will be able to help Mala users after all! :) http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=101104.0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted May 18, 2016 Share Posted May 18, 2016 I think GameX is not used much anymore anyway is it? I could be wrong about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 18, 2016 Share Posted May 18, 2016 Oh I think they are still going strong! Their forum has almost 16,000 people registered. I think PinballX is a much better front-end though. GameEX tries to be more of a HTPC and community centered program. It looks like a great front-end as well, but I think it has way too many bells and whistles for my personal taste. Tom Speirs is a great guy. He was releasing PinballX updates almost on a daily basis back in the day. He really listened to the community. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 20, 2016 Share Posted May 20, 2016 Some more progress: - New filters: number of screens, samples, supported and unsupported savestate. Cocktail/Upright will come next. - Cleaner filters interface, since many new checkboxes were added - Mala exporter fully implemented. It uses a third party command line conversion tool as the backend, but completely hides it. Lightspeed streams the cmd into a nice little progress window instead (picture below). Tested. - Maximus Arcade exporter fully functional as well, and also using a third party conversion tool, which is called on completion. You just have to drag and drop your generated list into the program's window and it will convert your list into Maximus' format. Tested. - I'm documenting things now. About 14 pages and counting. -Kris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted May 20, 2016 Share Posted May 20, 2016 I like the design on the filters pages. *edit* On a side note... I'm guessing the guys over in the original "all killer no filler" thread at BYOAC will be very interested in this now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 20, 2016 Share Posted May 20, 2016 I hope they will! One of the next steps moving forward is to contact all the support files maintainers, mala and maximus list converter developers and the guy in charge of the All killer list. I'll credit all of them and ask if it's ok to package those extra files within Lightspeed, once I'm over the beta. I'm refining things as well, thinking about cleaner solutions for some of the current features etc. I want to make sure it's a good package since the target audience is potentially bigger. -Kris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Squashed some more bugs over the weekend, but since I moved quite a bit of code around, I'm sure more stuff will come up :) I added a cool feature, especially for a front-end like Launchbox: - The ability to create lists containing only games that have artwork available. You can now force the output list to match your snapshots folder, or your flyers/front image folder, or your videos folder. Combined with the already present feature that allows you to create lists containing only the roms you have, now you can create lists containing only games which you have roms, snaps, front images and/or videos for, or any combination of those 4 elements. - As a consequence of those new arrays in place, now it will be very easy to generate lists of missing snaps, flyers, videos and roms, by rom name or description, so I will add those lists to the new list exporter. Here's what was added to the list (check the new columns): -Kris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Drybonz said I like the design on the filters pages. *edit* On a side note... I'm guessing the guys over in the original "all killer no filler" thread at BYOAC will be very interested in this now. Speaking of the BYOAC All Killer list the Classic list has been completed. At a quick glance it doesn't look like anything is in it that isn't already in the other lists but it is there and I have attached an up to date pack downloaded off the forums over there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Awesome! Thanks a lot lordmonkus :) The way I have it set, anyone will be able to edit a single ini file to come up with their own dream list. I will update with these new files. Thanks again! -Kris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 I forgot to mention. I still need to talk to the support file maintainers, but I have a plan to program an updater. Not sure if it will work, but it would work like this: Every time a new Mame version is out you would press an updater button to go thorough the various websites, download the zip files and unzip them inside of the correct folder, all under the hood as you watch a progress bar, while making a backup of the previous versions before copying the new ones. That would be neat, so you can make sure your files are all up-to-date with minimum effort. Lets see if I can implement it. -Kris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Wow... that is an amazing idea. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antropus Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 Done! I just need to make it pretty now :) I actually found a super nice sample code online, so I didn't need to think too much about the downloader. It's downloading all files, unzipping them (I will start packaging 7zip with Lightspeed soon) and copying them over the old ones. No backup working just yet, but soon. I spend most of my time bench-marking it against the only similar software out there, which is RomLister. Overall the speed difference goes from about 25% faster on very large lists all the way to 160%+ faster in smaller lists, all in favor of Lightspeed! It seems much more precise as well. RomLister was listing random stuff mixed in some specific lists, but overall, in many lists, both programs yelled the exact same results, with Lightspeed being always faster. Very happy with it at this point, but bugs are still present, so I will squash some more before I can release something for you guys!! -Kris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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