Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[kmoney]

Sounds awesome....really looking forward to the new version!

[SpaceMidget75]

Good job!

 

Quick question, when it's time to give this a try, what do we have to do regarding the existing mame data we have in LB? With the last version, as we discussed, when I tried to update it and change Flyers to Titles it didn't work and I had to clear image data from LB (which then deleted my mame artwork). 

Also,

Do you happen to know what systems aren't emulated by MAME (MESS) very well and should still use dedicated emus or RetroArch? I'd like to move almost fully over to Mame at some point (although possibly without Software lists as they aren't very complete yet). Probably too much of an open ended question so apologies, unless you have a link that gives a reasonably good playable status of each system within MESS.

Thanks for the hard work.

[Antropus]

Thanks guys. My plan is to make it work in a way that it is aware of all current content and instead being useful only for new imports, that it can be used to simply update information already there, like the paths mentioned above.
So that will come at some point, hopefully soon. About the emulation of systems under MESS, well, that's a tricky one, because the status is not very up-to-date! For example, Sega 32x is still marked as NOT WORKING in MAME while a lot of games work flawlessly. That I can remember, looking at the systems in the screenshot above, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, some Sega ST-V and Sony Playstation are the ones not running very well. Atari Jaguar is the weaker in there and you still can play some games with sound and all, but Rayman, although perfect visually, is missing sound. Saturn/ST-V show problems in many games, although some are fully playable. I tested the PS1 driver and some games ran perfectly, others not so much. Other than that, most of those systems, including the SNES driver that is marked as partially working, works great for me. Other than ST-V and Saturn, Sega drivers are probably among some of the best MESS drivers, with Genesis, Sega CD, Master System and Game Gear running very smoothly. So, yeah, there is no exact answer, as both MAME and websites listing the current emulation state for each driver still have to catch up with the actual status, so I say: import them, test and report to our community!!!

-Kris

Edited October 21, 2016 by Antropus

[Pacman56]

@Antropus I just read your last update and cannot believe all the work you've done in so little time. Like other LightSpeed users, I look forward to test the next version and can't wait to try the new features and import Software Lists as well.

You cannot imagine the difference you are making to the community with your contribution.

Your hard work is very very appreciated.

[The_Keeper86]

This is an amazing tool! You think you could add support for Rocketlauncher and or Retroarch Mame?

[Rion]

On 22.10.2016 at 7:16 PM, The_Keeper86 said:

This is an amazing tool! You think you could add support for Rocketlauncher and or Retroarch Mame?

I have been missing this feature to.

 

Support for RetroArch Libretro Mame & FBA Cores/Romsets

mame2003-libretro (Mame 0.78) "The Most used of the Mame cores"

mame2010-libretro (Mame 0.139)

mame2000-libretro (MAME  0.37b5)

mame2014-libretro (Mame 0.159)

fbalpha (Final Burn Alpha v0.2.97.39 or the latest fba romsets

 

Struggling with the old romlister for these cores and when i did see this program you created  i just could not help myself to put in this request.

Thank you for creating this!

[capidel]

I only can say: Thank you!!!!!

[Antropus]

I don't plan to support older versions of MAME, BUT I did put a "double regex" search in my old code since someone requested it over mameworld.info. In theory, if you use a listxml file generated with an older MAME version, it will still pick it up. Here's the problem though: MAME changes all the time, as new rom/CHD dumps are released. Many games were renamed in the past years and although Lightspeed might be able to read the listxml from older versions of MAME, all support files would have to match that version as well, or else this would screw up the filters, because they rely on the support files to work. Most games would be parsed correctly, but any games that had their name changed and are now a mismatch for the support files will not be parsed correctly. To complicate things further, as I mentioned above there are constant changes happening in the roms, so even if we manage to parse just the games to match each one of those old versions of Mame, that doesn't guarantee that the zip files will work at all, because the roms inside of it might be different. What I can do is to add an option to parse from a rom folder. What I'm thinking is: a) you would use clrmamepro to generate a clean set matching the old mame version you want to create a list for; b) you would save this new set into a separate folder and point Lightspeed to it. Lightspeed would read the contents of this folder, cross the information with the listxml and all support files and spit a list, as complete as possible that will match your ROMs folder. Other than this, I cannot think of a better solution to add support to older versions of MAME and keeping backwards compatibility would be crazy, because it changes every time a new version is released.

About FBAlpha, I don't see a lot of use for it, unless you are trying to run games in a very slow machine, as it uses speed-ups and optimizations, apparently. Other than that, FBAlpha is like a super light version of MAME with no games or systems being emulated outside of what MAME already does. My importer focus on MAME and MAME only, at least for now.

About RocketLauncher, you see, I am pretty old school and don't even know what it does and the reasons to use it since I have my setup working pretty smoothly without it
Is this something similar to the old HyperLauncher? A collection of autohotkey scripts that through "clever hackery" make things work? Or something different?

-Kris

Edited October 26, 2016 by Antropus

[timekills]

To be fair, RocketLauncher is not exactly new...although it's name and being a "stand alone" is somewhat recent. Much like Kodi and Plex (and other video viewing/collection apps) grew out of XBMC.

However, I'm not completely sure what RocketLauncher support is requested, as the XML files for MAME work with RocketLauncher.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

Aside: RocketLauncher is, as the name implies, a "launching tool" for emulators. It's advantage is you can set it up once, and point other front ends [LaunchBox, HyperSpin, etc] to use it, rather than configuring emulators individually for each front end. It really becomes a help when you start having to configure controllers, keyboard macros, etc. It also allows for more precise control over the way some emulators open files (such as compressed files or images outside of default.) Not least is it's ability to add bezels, loading screens, exit screens, etc even if your front end doesn't. And again, you don't have to configure all this per front end - just once in RL* and tell the front end to use RL as the emulator.

For example, RL will launch MAME (or whatever emulator you choose) to play arcade ROMS. In LaunchBox you'd choose RL as the emulator of choice for Arcade, rather than MAME. If you wanted to try another front end, again you'd tell it to use RL as the emulator,and wouldn't require setting up ROM locations, or emulator configs, or anything.

@Antropus P.S. Am I missing the file link, or am I correct in assuming the information you've posted earlier is reference to a planned release version that is, as yet, unavailable for public consumption?

*RL = RocketLauncher

Edited October 26, 2016 by timekills

[Antropus]

Oh, I see. So it's similar to Retroarch in the sense that it's not an emulator, but lather a launcher, only with added features for showing artwork and more support for controllers I suppose.

Yeah, if someone can provide me with some info about what files it needs to run, if they are text files of any kind (.ini, .xml etc), I can definitely add support to it.

-Kris

[Antropus]

You are correct. Those are just pics showing my progress. No new releases planned just yet. The program is growing quite a lot so it will take me some time, especially since I only work on it after the kids are asleep

[timekills]

4 minutes ago, Antropus said:

Oh, I see. So it's similar to Retroarch in the sense that it's not an emulator, but lather a launcher, only with added features for showing artwork and more support for controllers I suppose.

Yeah, if someone can provide me with some info about what files it needs to run, if they are text files of any kind (.ini, .xml etc), I can definitely add support to it.

-Kris

Sort of...Retroarch includes the emulation capability "built-in" through its cores. RocketLauncher does not include any emulation of any sort. But similar in that you can make global or per-emulator (even per-game) settings, and that you choose one of them as the emulator through a front end rather than a separate emulator program for each system.

 With Retroarch however, you're stuck with the emulator core they provide, which can make it easier but somewhat more limiting. RocketLauncher requires you to provide the emulator, but has the benefit of being able to use any emulator you choose.

[Antropus]

Thanks for the info. Sounds pretty cool. I agree with you about Retroarch. It's pretty fool proof and a great solution for lazy people
But you have to rely on the good will of a few individuals to update the cores. I don't like that at all. MAME makes huge progress on every version and having to stick with an old version of it just for the sake of not  doing any work is not worth for me, reason why I will support software lists within MAME, so people can play other systems nice and easily, using the most current emulator. Some people swear by Retroarch's shaders, but to be quite frank, I went through the work of putting my LCD monitor side by side with my arcade machine that has a Kortek multi-sync arcade monitor in it. I went through all my MAME HLSL settings and created a very close match, including color aberration, distortion, blurriness etc (I will release it to the public at some point). Those shaders carry on to the console systems if I want to, so Sega Genesis and SNES looks pretty damn sweet with scanlines. I don't hate Retroarch, but it definitely holds people back when it comes to use the latest available software.

[Antropus]

Here are some of the tests I mentioned above, trying to match MAME HLSL to my actual arcade monitor. My LED TV is kinda old and totally angle dependent, so it goes a little washed out depending of the angle the picture was taken, but in person it was a pretty close match. I can improve with some tweaking and better mask though, pretty sure. It looks great in person. Hard to tell it's a LED once it's in the arcade and without looking really close, at least that's what I think
Besides, even monitors of the same brand and model can look different, so contrast  and color saturation differences don't mean much, especially considering that you can tweak those on the TV itself.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Antropus

[Antropus]

Btw, which of the Golden Axe close-up is the arcade and which is the LED?

[Lordmonkus]

I'll take a guess and it's only a guess at the first being the LED and the 2nd being the actual monitor.

Very nice settings you got there, have you checked out the BGFX presets in newer versions of Mame ?

[Antropus]

Thanks! I will be sharing them soon.
I haven't! Do you have some examples I can look at?

[Lordmonkus]

I don't have any example shots at all, sorry.

But I really like the CRT-Geom preset it has. It has the benefit that HLSL has in that it doesn't care if the game is vertical or horizontal unlike the old GLSL shaders but it doesn't have the customization that HLSL has. You are stuck with what you get unless you really know how to get down and dirty in code for now. Supposedly they do plan on customization and ini files like HLSL.

Was my guess correct ?

[Antropus]

You got it wrong, good sir
I cleverly added some radial blur and chromatic aberration in my HLSL settings to make it more authentic looking. I tricked you, so that means I can trick more people with my settings

 

Edited October 27, 2016 by Antropus

[Lordmonkus]

Lol, well I did say it was only a guess. The reason I guessed that way was because the pixels looked a tiny bit too perfect.

Doesn't bother me one bit to be wrong about it though, it means that the shader tech is so good that it's nearly impossible to tell the 2 apart and that's a very good thing. Though I am sure some CRT purist who stares at them all day could tell the difference but we don't care about those people