Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[Antropus]

Here's some progress log:

- I got a little fancy with the games tester/launcher, adding some console images and graphics, so it looks less formal.
- Newly added star system. 10 ratings range, in half increments until a total of 5 stars. Those ratings are being stored into an external .ini file that can be later on shared among users. Those ratings will be exported to Launchbox once you export your lists
- Newly added favorite system that works similarly to the above. The favorite info is being saved within the same .ini file as the ratings and will also be reflected once in Launchbox
- You can launch any game, from any soft list or arcade, from any listview with only a double click. All command line parameters are populated automatically, so no need to scramble with MESS stuff anymore. Double-click: play any (working) game
- The search engine was improved as well, but I will add some check boxes to offer better customization on where to look for (year, description, rom name, manufacturer etc)
- All supported software lists are now available as a choice and those will be imported as platforms
- Added new arcade platforms as available options (Data East, Konami, Midway, Taito etc)
- Window size and position is now being stored coming in and out of Lightspeed
- Window is completely re-sizeable now
- The layout was completely re-worked to be compatible with arcade machine setups. You can re-size the GUI from a minimum of 800x600 pixels all the way to whatever resolution you are using, meaning: arcade friendly if your monitor supports 800x600.

The interface is still messy, with unnecessary buttons, test functions and bad formatting at some places, but this is all being ironed out as I go.
No release date yet, but the project is definitely not dead...

New search mode:Arcade preview:Console previews:Arcade supported platforms (plus, any other custom platform based on MAME that you might need, based on source drivers at the bottom):Newly supported Software Lists. I will be supporting only arcade friendly platforms working reasonably well for now:New artwork paths added, closer to what Launchbox has available at the moment, less some of the least important ones. They are auto-populated and the folders are expected to live inside of MAME's main folder, but you can point to anywhere you want:- You can now match your final list with any kind of artwork combination, making sure your list only contains games that meet a certain criteria (needs to have snaps+box+flyer+movie, for example, so aal games in the list will conform to this criteria)

- You can now match the notes from Launchbox's own metadata alone or in combination with the metadata from history.dat, which can be completely customized as well. This way you will always have the most complete metadata possible for any given game

- Added an option to update all files in batch mode, so it will try to guess the file names, which is tricky, since some files change names every time, while progetto snaps doesn't, so their files will surely work every time
More to come.
-Kris

 

Edited November 7, 2016 by Antropus

[CriticalCid]

Oh wow. You are slowly turning your importer into a Front End of its own

Looking really great Kris! Can’t wait to get my hands on this.

[Pacman56]

Wow! You've made a lot of progress and it's looking really good.

With all the added functionality,this will be awesome. Can't wait to try your next release.

Thank you Kris.

Chris

[kmoney]

Wow...that is looking really awesome!!

[Antropus]

Thanks guys. I added a "rom folder to list" function today. As long as you point LS to a folder with correctly named MAME roms, it will grab all info for them and will create a list containing those games, with the platform name of your choice. It will only work for arcade games though, not Soft lists, because since there are roms  from different lists named exactly the same, there's no way for me to autodetect which list they belong to, unless I add some kind of deep scan by crc, which is not planned at the moment. 

But as I said, if you add any arcade roms into a folder and point to it, LS will pick everything up!

-Kris

 

[Rion]

1 hour ago, Antropus said:

Thanks guys. I added a "rom folder to list" function today. As long as you point LS to a folder with correctly named MAME roms, it will grab all info for them and will create a list containing those games, with the platform name of your choice. It will only work for arcade games though, not Soft lists, because since there are roms  from different lists named exactly the same, there's no way for me to autodetect which list they belong to, unless I add some kind of deep scan by crc, which is not planned at the moment. 

But as I said, if you add any arcade roms into a folder and point to it, LS will pick everything up!

-Kris

 

This i looking better by the minute!

 

While where on the subject of console roms and systems.

If you decide to include this in the feature. And that is if you do. Then one way of solving this is to include databases for No-Intro/Tosec/Redump/Truerip and so on for example.

I would love to have support for console roms with the ability to sort large archives with setting like "1G1R" one game one region and then sort then after first US relesease, then Eu and so on.

 

Anyway great job and looking forward to the new format

Quote

 

 

[cammelspit]

You know what the WORST part of your program is? The part I HATE so much? I mean, so bad it makes me sick, keeps me up at night even? Yeah, the fact I don't have it, right now, in my hands... Such a good job I can't thank you enough. The wait for the new version is simply killing me.

[luger81]

Does Lightspeed work with the new version of Launchbox? It states that it gets done and then says to open Launchbox but yet it hasn't imported any Arcade roms.

[Drybonz]

No... not until Antropus updates it.

[Antropus]

5 hours ago, luger81 said:

Does Lightspeed work with the new version of Launchbox? It states that it gets done and then says to open Launchbox but yet it hasn't imported any Arcade roms.

Not released yet. I am just updating people on my progress, so they don't think I stopped working on it

I made some more major changes in the final export and it improved speed quite a bit.
It takes less than 5 seconds to filter 68000+ possible entries down to 19000+ working or partially working games from both arcade and software lists combined and then another 16 seconds to spit this 19k games list into launchbox, with all bells and whistles, including notes from both LB metadata and history.dat.

Looking ok so far, but I will not release anything before I am happy with the way it looks and works. Still many filters to hook up with the software lists and buttons and cosmetics to add. I also have to go through the code cleaning a lot of crap and adding my own notes, as my intention is to release the source to the public at some point in the future.

-Kris

[Machello]

I am so glad that LaunchBox happens to be your favorite front end. [emoji4]







Chris

Amen to that :-). Really Looking forward to start working with your tool. Keep up the good work!

[luger81]

Thank you all for replying to my question. That makes me feel better and not to waste more time trying to get it to work. I went ahead and imported them the old fashioned way.

[spektor56]

7 hours ago, Antropus said:

my intention is to release the source to the public at some point in the future.

-Kris

github plz

[Antropus]

Completely unrelated, but this is another reason I've being a little slow with Lightspeed: another little project I've been working on for the past 2 years.
Please check out the trailer coming out tonight on Jimmy Kimmel!

[SpaceMidget75]

Wow! What was your job on the movie if you don't mind me asking?

I was a HUGE Godzilla and Kong fan as a kid, but so far none since the 80s have really hit the spot for me.

Godzilla (1998) - I actually really enjoyed this one (I know, I know). Great cast, nice and over the top with plenty of Godzilla, BUT he should never have been portrayed as the bad guy for the USA to kill and cheer about.

King Kong (2004) - Not bad, but FAR to long and drawn out. Rapport between lead characters (and Kong himself) wasn't great, but those T-Rex fights were brilliant!

Godzilla (2014) - Was he even in it?

Apologies for going OT.

[Antropus]

6 minutes ago, SpaceMidget75 said:

Wow! What was your job on the movie if you don't mind me asking?

I digitally sculpted him, including the fine detail you see in this poster. I also sculpted the "skull crawler" creature they are showing on the teaser clip released this morning.
My role in this movie was much more than that though, but I will only be allowed to talk once the movie is out. I hope you enjoy the trailer!

-Kris

 

[Drybonz]

Looking forward to it... I liked the last King Kong.  Did you work on that one as well?

[spektor56]

Will have to go see this one in IMAX, does it have a 3D version?  There's a new fancy theatre here that's around $100 for a movie for 2 people, might have to check it out with the wife.

[SpaceMidget75]

I was looking at writing a little util that will copy the roms, extras and videos, that make up the exported list, from their original locations to a new location and then modify the paths to the new location (I'd like my full MAME downloads completely untied from LB or various reasons).

However, I'm a bit confused about the XML schema. This is not necessarily Lightspeed related but I was wondering if @Antropus or @SentaiBrad or someone else could explain it to me:

Each platform has a bunch of folders elements like so:

    <VideosFolder>D:\Data\Games\MAME\VideoSnaps\videosnaps</VideosFolder>

    <FrontImagesFolder>D:\#TEMP\MAMETEMP\ExtrasExtracted\titles</FrontImagesFolder>

    <BackImagesFolder>D:\#TEMP\MAMETEMP\ExtrasExtracted\cabinets</BackImagesFolder>

    <ClearLogoImagesFolder>.</ClearLogoImagesFolder>

    <FanartImagesFolder>.</FanartImagesFolder>

    <ScreenshotImagesFolder>D:\#TEMP\MAMETEMP\ExtrasExtracted\snap</ScreenshotImagesFolder>

    <BannerImagesFolder>D:\#TEMP\MAMETEMP\ExtrasExtracted\marquees</BannerImagesFolder>

Only the MAME one, via Lightspeed, is filled out - all the other platforms are blank.

There is also a set of <PlatformFolder> elements which seem to contain the same sort of info:

  <PlatformFolder>

    <MediaType>Box - Front</MediaType>

    <FolderPath>D:\#TEMP\MAMETEMP\ExtrasExtracted\titles</FolderPath>

    <Platform>Arcade</Platform>

  </PlatformFolder>

  <PlatformFolder>

    <MediaType>Box - Front - Reconstructed</MediaType>

    <FolderPath>Images\Arcade\Box - Front - Reconstructed</FolderPath>

    <Platform>Arcade</Platform>

  </PlatformFolder>

  <PlatformFolder>

    <MediaType>Box - Back</MediaType>

    <FolderPath>Images\Arcade\Box - Back</FolderPath>

    <Platform>Arcade</Platform>

  </PlatformFolder>

So my questions are:

Why are only the Arcade folders filled in, yet all the other platforms are also showing images fine?

Why have these folders at all when there's an entire section dedicated to the same info? Isn't this duplicating?

Thanks

 

Edited December 7, 2016 by SpaceMidget75

[snoopybooh]

Just checked the first page of this topic so I'm definetely missing something I should read. I've downloaded the importer tool but the app is asking for a launchbox.xml that I'm unable to find. I supposed that file is no longer used or it's been shredded with different files. Do I need to download an updated version of the importer tool or something like that?