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Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool


Jason Carr

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3 hours ago, wirtual82 said:

OK, I tested this. And no problems so far. 

However, I cannot find an option to move or copy the filtered/matched games with images, videos etc. to a chosen location. 

I've written a utility to do this if you're interested?

It will scan the arcade.xml and copy the relevant snaps, titles, cabinets, marquees and videosnaps to the folders of your choice.

It also scans the imported roms folder, checks if it needs a parent rom and copies that to the folder with your filtered roms. This part was designed to be used with the standard LB importer when you've used the "Copy Roms" option as it doesn't copy any relevant parent roms with the clones. It wouldn't take much for me to change this to a) use arcade.xml instead and b) get it to copy the listed rom as well as the parent. That would make it fully compatible with Lightspeed.

Obviously I need to tidy it up a bit as I wrote it for myself one evening - hardcoded paths etc!

 

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I tested this out tonight and everything in the setup and exporting process seems to be great.  The only small glitch I saw was when Lightspeed was installing, the dialog to select the installation path closed... but as soon as I reopened it, it remained open and worked fine.  This also happened when I got to the dialog for setting up all the paths... it closed after the first time it opened... then I reopened it and it worked fine.

Other than that, I tried the export to an empty LB database, and then to my regular database with all my other stuff in it and they both seemed flawless.  I definitely think the bit of extra time parsing and initial figuring out how to work it (it's pretty close to the old one, actually) is well worth it for the improved program.  I like the arcade cabinet graphics.

I'm going to go through the exported games in LB and see if I can find any flukes, but it will take a while.  Initial impression is everything is good to go!   :)

*edit*  I just noticed that Argus imported twice... identical.  It might be the new 1941... lol.

Edited by Drybonz
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Great to see Lightspeed is back!

Last night I started the setup and configuration of Lightspeed on an empty database.
I got the same small glitch that open/closes the folder dialog on first try, on next try all is good.

I still have a question before i start the export to LaunchBox.
I have "MAME 0.181 EXTRAs" and "MAME 0.181 VideoSnaps" unzipped and sitting on a remote share.
If i point to the related folders, does Lightspeed copy all the media files or is it just create links to those?

I prefer the latter, as my launchbox install is on my HTPC on an SSD.
 

 

 

 

 

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17 hours ago, Antropus said:

I cannot post any links, but sometimes you might find just what you are looking for by asking google about a certain "pleasuredome".
Maybe your should try (I never did, obviously!).

Obviously, I did not try this, but thanks for the advice! 

Edited by Machello
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I'm really new to all this, so please be patient with the noob.  I tried out LightSpeed for the first time and I ran into a couple hiccups.  First, I have a 4k monitor and a UHD laptop.  The GUI is not working properly on high DPI displays.  Everything is squished an unreadable.  Not a huge deal, since it works properly on my cabinet monitor (1080p) but I thought the developer should know.

My real issue is that I followed the manual and populated all the fields and when I get to the export portion of the program, my filtered list in unpopulated.  I did this with the default filter options, so nothing exotic.  Any ideas?

Thanks  

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13 hours ago, Drybonz said:

The only small glitch I saw was when Lightspeed was installing, the dialog to select the installation path closed... but as soon as I reopened it, it remained open and worked fine.  This also happened when I got to the dialog for setting up all the paths... it closed after the first time it opened... then I reopened it and it worked fine.

*edit*  I just noticed that Argus imported twice... identical.  It might be the new 1941... lol.

Thank you so much for testing it, man! I will be definitely checking the code to find out why the path windows are closing, since this was now reported by others.
1941... it's back!!!! Never found the root of the problem. I tried and the xml out of Lightspeed seemed completely fine... until Launchbox parsed it and the duplication happened. Weird.

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6 hours ago, rebelone said:

I got the same small glitch that open/closes the folder dialog on first try, on next try all is good.

If i point to the related folders, does Lightspeed copy all the media files or is it just create links to those?

Thanks for testing it! I will be looking into this glitch. Sound pretty annoying!
Lightspeed only points to the folders. It doesn't move any media around. But now that you mentioned, I should add that option at some point, because some people might want just that!

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3 hours ago, evil4blue said:

The GUI is not working properly on high DPI displays.  Everything is squished an unreadable.

My real issue is that I followed the manual and populated all the fields and when I get to the export portion of the program, my filtered list in unpopulated.  I did this with the default filter options, so nothing exotic.  Any ideas?

I am sorry to hear! The DPI issue was always there and users decided to get back to 100% scale to avoid the problem, but I totally get your point, especially now that the 4K monitors became so popular. I did some research and I think I found a good solution, by reading the registry to get the current DPI and doing some math to adapt the GUI elements to it. I should have a new version in a day or two with that fixed, so thanks for reporting!
If you clicked the rest button and you still cannot see anything under the filtered list, chances are that you are trying to match the results with roms or artwork not present (or pointing to wrong paths). Check the third tab (options) and see if you have any box checked for matching, on the right column. If you do, try to uncheck all of them and click the filter button again. The fastest way for me to diagnose it is if you sent me your lightspeed.ini file.
Thanks!

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2 hours ago, cammelspit said:

After using it, I actually got LB to throw and error and stop starting. :) I will try again and see if I can figure out what combination of settings causes it.

Weird! Keep me informed if you find anything. Did you start with a fresh library or are you exporting into an existent library?

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8 minutes ago, wirtual82 said:

It does not export the asset paths untill I delete the ini, and re-open the app and re-fill the settings. Or basically paste the copied ini again. It works for the first export, but then it does not update any path changes. So I had to delete the ini and then paste it again. 

Sorry to hear. Not sure if I understand. Are you exporting things then changing the paths and trying to export again and it does not work? The ini file is only saved when you close Lightspeed. Up to that point any changes in the paths *should* work, but they will be only saved once you exit Lightspeed. If this is not happening, it's definitely a bug. Could you describe the steps you took, or maybe some screenshots (or video) so I can have a better understanding of the issue? Thank you!

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Does anyone by any change have already wheels, logo & video fanart for the platforms lightspeed populate?
Ofc all is showing up in Bigbox using Arcade defaults.

I found the classic stuff from hyperspin, but i prefer using artwork for arcade platforms created in this community.

Also is it possible in Bigbox to separate consoles from arcade list like in Lauchbox?

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34 minutes ago, Antropus said:

I am sorry to hear! The DPI issue was always there and users decided to get back to 100% scale to avoid the problem, but I totally get your point, especially now that the 4K monitors became so popular. I did some research and I think I found a good solution, by reading the registry to get the current DPI and doing some math to adapt the GUI elements to it. I should have a new version in a day or two with that fixed, so thanks for reporting!
If you clicked the rest button and you still cannot see anything under the filtered list, chances are that you are trying to match the results with roms or artwork not present (or pointing to wrong paths). Check the third tab (options) and see if you have any box checked for matching, on the right column. If you do, try to uncheck all of them and click the filter button again. The fastest way for me to diagnose it is if you sent me your lightspeed.ini file.
Thanks!

I finally got it working, but I'm not 100% sure why.  I did all the same steps from last night and the filters started working.  I'm sure the issue was ATK more than anything else.  Thanks

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24 minutes ago, rebelone said:

Does anyone by any change have already wheels, logo & video fanart for the platforms lightspeed populate?

I am glad you asked. I do! :)
The tricky part is that some of them I downloaded from random sources, since I used google to search and if I made a package available, then sure enough some author would complain about it. I've seen this so many times. It's an ego thing I suppose, because MOST of us are doing this absolutely for free, since it's a hobby of ours and to top that, they are claiming ownership on the artwork traced over copyrighted brands! I mean, are they paying Sega for using Sega's logo? Nope. So why do the world needs to credit them for the "art" that it is to use other peoples property without asking in the first place? Sorry for my little rant. It just makes me mad that the vast majority of us are in this for the passion for retro games and although crediting people for their hard work is important, people should be more understanding if others redistributed it, especially when it comes to artwork based on copyrighted brands. It's fan art. Make it a commercial product and make people pay for it, then you can claim ownership. But beware: if you are making any money, then you will have to pay the owners of those brands ;)

Anyway, I can make the logos available to anyone interested, only not publicly ;)
 

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44 minutes ago, Antropus said:

Weird! Keep me informed if you find anything. Did you start with a fresh library or are you exporting into an existent library?

I will keep you posted. I will also try to import into a fresh LB install.  I will say, though, I keep all of my roms, the LB cache and most of everything in different folders to what is normal. I even have all of my stuff split onto miltipleHDDs and even my SSD. Further investigation will be required but if I find anything or have a theory I will be sure to let you know.

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3 minutes ago, wirtual82 said:

The ini is set correctly, I mean, the changes are reflected in the ini, but when I export it again, the LB platform path folders are totally different,. They are not changed. Though, it works when I delete the ini, start the app, set the paths again (or paste the saved ini before starting the app) and re-start the app again to export. I know it's very strange. 

Could it be permission related? I mean, maybe it's installed in a folder that needs admin rights, otherwise it will not allow for Lightspeed to delete/re-create the ini file? It's just a guess, of course. Are you running Lightspeed as administrator (elevated)?

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