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Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool


Jason Carr

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1 hour ago, wirtual82 said:

I always run Lightspeed as admin. The ini file is re-created after re-starting Lightspeed. But when I re-start LB, the paths are different. 

Now I changed LB path and videos path. I restarted Lightspeed, and when I click filter 1, the list is empty.

Location of Lightspeed and LB is a google drive folder, a custom path on a different partition than the system one. I can't use  voice recognition in LB because of this. I mean, it doesn't work, I think.

Now I re-started it the third time. And I cannot use it. Look here:

https://sendvid.com/ek9n0956

After deleting the ini. it started normally. 

The path issue is concerning, no doubt. I know that Jason wants to keep all paths relative, as much as possible and I want to make them absolute, as much as possible, because I don't trust that the mailman will know the address by following clues. I rather give the mailman the full address, to make sure he knows where he is going :D

About the video you just posted, I think I get what's going on. I can tell Lightspeed is up and running by looking at the bar. What's happening is that it's out of your desktop area and is VERY probable that this is related to the way Lightspeed saves the GUI window size and position. Size and position are captured on exit and saved in the ini file (last 4 lines). If this happen again, instead of deleting the whole .ini file, please simply remove the values from those last 4 lines. Keep the keys. Only remove the values, save the ini and reopen Lightspeed and let me know if that works. If it does, the problem might be related to multi-monitor setup, for example and if that's the case, I think I can work around it to fix the problem.

Edit the last 4 lines to look like this:
Width=
Height=
PosX=
PosY=

Let me know if it works. Thanks!

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1 hour ago, Machello said:

Sorry for going off-topic but just wanted to say I have muchos respect for your work, not only lightspeed but also jobwise. I just went to your website and saw your work in a few really great movies. Must feel good to be a part of those :-)

On-topic again

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your words.
It doesn't suck to be able to make a living out of the things one loves doing, that's for sure! I am lucky, but it came through long hours of hard work :)

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On 1/14/2017 at 3:50 PM, Antropus said:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your words.
It doesn't suck to be able to make a living out of the things one loves doing, that's for sure! I am lucky, but it came through long hours of hard work :)

No doubt! But, if you love what you do, work is like a hobby :D

 

BTW: Obvisiously I didn't go to 'a certain [redacted]' but I am testing your tool right now. Don't have a lot of experience with MAME set but will see what I can do. Will let you know.

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6 minutes ago, wirtual82 said:

Yeah, that works. But I am not sure where I should put my LB collection? It cannot be a system partition because there is not enough space. 

Good! I will do something to fix that issue. Are you using a multi-monitor setup?

Can you post a screenshot of the way you want your paths to be configured? Does Launchbox recognize those paths with no issues? I want to make sure I can narrow down to the core of the problem if it's coming from Lightspeed specifically or something about your setup in general. Thanks!

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Latest Version: 0.181a_RC3 Updated on: 1/15/2017 @ 2:20PM
Download:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1yQUQ1aXZpSThpbUk/view?usp=sharing
 

- The GUI elements are now preserved on displays using custom DPI (scales different then 100%).
- To avoid further problems with the GUI not being accessible for whatever weird reason, for now only the window size is going to be saved, but not its last position. For the same reason, from now on the GUI will be automatically centered in the primary screen on startup.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the favorite icon (heart) to only work if clicked twice.
- Improved memory usage by flushing many variables when not in use. Lightspeed is still a memory hog though, but there's no way out of it, because data for over 68.000 games, from multiple files is being kept in memory for fast interaction. I prefer that to have to reload arrays and variables all the time, which would slow things down quite a lot.
- "Rom Of" column added. I don't know how I missed it before.
- Overall code cleanup, removing a lot of unused, legacy code.

Please test and report any problems you mind find.

Thanks,
-Kris
 

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On 1/13/2017 at 8:37 PM, 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.

 

Quote

 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.

@Drybonz
I am curious about this issue. I cannot reproduce it on my computer, but reading it again, seems like the issue that you had happened in two very distinct places, is that correct? I mean, one was during the installation of the program itself and the other time was after the program was already installed and loaded and you were trying to configure the paths. Is that correct?

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4 hours ago, Antropus said:

I am curious about this issue. I cannot reproduce it on my computer, but reading it again, seems like the issue that you had happened in two very distinct places, is that correct? I mean, one was during the installation of the program itself and the other time was after the program was already installed and loaded and you were trying to configure the paths. Is that correct?

Yeah, it only happened during installation and configuring the paths dialog, and after simply proceeding with the installation again, it was fine... so it was a very minor issue.

*edit*  Antropus, if we update to a new version, does it still remember our paths and preferences?

Edited by Drybonz
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2 hours ago, Drybonz said:

Yeah, it only happened during installation and configuring the paths dialog, and after simply proceeding with the installation again, it was fine... so it was a very minor issue.

*edit*  Antropus, if we update to a new version, does it still remember our paths and preferences?

If it happened during the installation, then this is completely unrelated to Lightspeed itself. I wonder if it's some glitch caused by something in your computer. Maybe an anti-virus or something like that?

Yeah. Just uninstall it either through control panel > Programs and Features or by double-clicking the uninstall icon in the installation folder. It should remove everything but Lightspeed.ini and Ratings.ini, which are created after the installation, so those files will be preserved.

-Kris

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Hey @Antropus first I have to say just thank you for improving and updating your awesome importer. It is so much appreciated! :)

I just tested your tool on a fresh LaunchBox installation and the import worked quite fine for me (only tested Arcade games so far though) but I noticed some issues:

1. All the notes are starting with an empty line. That is not so much a problem in LaunchBox itself but in BigBox it can look quite ugly and out of place depending on the Theme.

2. Older versions of LightSpeed have parsed the day and month for each game but your current build only imports the year.

3. Some custom fields don’t get imported properly. Only very few games have the Sub-Genre info and some fields like “Added on MAME version” and “Extra Info” are completely missing.

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@CriticalCid, thank you SO MUCH for really testing it! Very much appreciated. This is the only way we will get the bugs fixed.

1. Fixed!
2. Fixed!
3. Extra-Info is not present in a great deal of games. That info is actually extracted from the game description, which many games don't have.
Otherwise, VerAdd and Sub-Genre info seem to be fixed now!

I will be releasing a new version tomorrow. I added a switch to reverse the folder matching filters.
This way you can now filter by games missing snaps, for example, or games missing any type of artwork in fact.

I will add a few tools in the future for manipulating the artwork, moving it around to match the lists, generating artwork for clones from their parents etc.

-Kris

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This is a bit off-topic, but has anyone that is using Lightspeed to import wheel logos been able to assemble a 100% complete set?  I have a bunch of missing ones in my set, even after filtering games.  I had requested a feature for Launchbox to be able to set a generic default logo for missing logos for various platforms, but I don't think it was ever added.

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Good morning @Antropus

I started testing LightSpeed using the latest build (Lightspeed0181a_RC3.exe) and must say that I'm really impressed with the new functionality.
Hopefully you won't mind if I report bugs as I encounter them rather than all at once in a single post. I prefer taking my time testing the importer thoroughly and making sure I’m not reporting false positives J

First, I noticed that when I choose to disable (uncheck) the Import Options “Remove [] Tags” and “Remove () Tags”, RC3 appears to ignore my selection which was working fine Beta v0.7J.
First screenshot is taken from the Arcade platform after scanning a complete MAME 0.181 rom sets with LightSpeed RC3 against a clean version of LaunchBox 7.5-beta-6.

1.pngThe second screenshot is what version Beta v0.7J used to generate when these Import Options were disabled.
Please notice that RC3 did not preserve the information within parenthesis and the result appears to show duplicate games rather than clearly show the distinction between the various clones.2.png

 

Lightspeed.ini

Edited by Pacman56
Added Lightspeed.ini
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Fixed!WithBrackets.jpgNoBrackets.jpg@Pacman56 not at all! Thank you so much for testing and catching this!
There was an override I added by mistake, so every time you had the "Launchbox DB" box checked it would remove the tags.

I fixed it just now. Please feel free to report anything else you find. Just bear in mind that I found a couple of bigger problems that I fixed for the next version, which I plan to release soon, but not before I fix some other minor things. Next version will pack a lot of bug fixes and I am excited for you guys to try it soon.

Thank you again for taking the time!
-Kris

Edited by Antropus
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I delayed the release because I got carried away by a little project, which is the reporting of missing Artwork/CHD/ROMS. I added a new tool which is now reporting anything missing and exporting as lists for now, but the intention is to add many new tools to it, like removal of orphan artwork, renaming of artwork from description (with tags or not) to rom name and vice versa, creation of clone artwork from parents and even a mini-scraper to get missing artwork from emumovies from that very same little interface. I am planning to make those missing lists exportable to launchbox as well, so you will be able to, for example, export all games missing snaps to launchbox and use it to scrape only what's missing, if you prefer LaunchBox's more robust scraper. I am also planning to add a function to move/copy all related artwork when you copy/move ROMS, but this will come a little later.

Some tools might seem redundant with what Launchbox already does, but this program is targeted to users of other front-ends as well.

-Kris

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2 minutes ago, Antropus said:

 

I delayed the release because I got carried away by a little project, which is the reporting of missing Artwork/CHD/ROMS. I added a new tool which is now reporting anything missing and exporting as lists for now, but the intention is to add many new tools to it, like removal of orphan artwork, renaming of artwork from description (with tags or not) to rom name and vice versa, creation of clone artwork from parents and even a mini-scraper to get missing artwork from emumovies from that very same little interface. I am planning to make those missing lists exportable to launchbox as well, so you will be able to, for example, export all games missing snaps to launchbox and use it to scrape only what's missing, if you prefer LaunchBox's more robust scraper. I am also planning to add a function to move/copy all related artwork when you copy/move ROMS, but this will come a little later.

 

That really awesome @Antropus

This new tool will be a very nice addition to LightSpeed. This will bring more functionality than I could have ever hoped for.

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