Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[kmoney]

Thank you for that,it seems to work great!

[Antropus]

Here's a little update on the Mess module. After filtering all the non-working, prototypes, cassete based and the crappiest systems, it got down from 88.000 to about 26.000 total games imported. The whole process, as it stands, took about 40 seconds, including metadata parsed from History.dat. Still pretty raw though, but I'm just happy to be able to play Neo Geo CD now. The MESS core is solid for this system. So far every NeoCD game that I tried worked perfectly. The systems you see on the side are the ones that I'm supporting so far, so no crappy calculators and not-so-fun computers. I'm cleaning up the list as I test the systems. I want to make sure that the ones left work perfectly or reasonably well. Just for the X68000 and Neo Geo CD alone, it already paid off the time spent. Both work really well under MESS (not all X68000 games work though). The command line parameters are being added automatically and per game, so no need to add any parameters under the emulator... the games just work ;)

[Antropus]

Slow progress is still progress... I started parsing more metadata and adding custom filelds for the MESS core stuff. So far I'm using a combination of Mame Listxml, hash .xml files, my own ControlsButtons.ini and history.dat to generated the metadata and extract the command lines to run the games. *Most* systems/games are working quite well, but I still have to eliminate some non-working systems, like the PC-EngineCD, which doesn't work at all, apparently. Once cassete games, non-working systems and clones are gone, the remaining list has about 17000 games out of 88000 that are listed under MESS. If anyone knows of any support file out there that includes genre for the software lists, please let me know. I highly doubt it, but worth asking (although I have a feeling that not a lot of people are interested in this project anyway...). -Kris

[Antropus]

Another one showing the filters:

[CADScott]

Looking great! I will do some more testing, I just updated my MAME to the latest rom set so I will test some more tonight.

[CriticalCid]

Great to see that you’re so commited to take your importer one step further. I never even bothered to use MESS but with your tool I might give it a shot in the near future. I also have a question for the MAME importer. Do you have to plans to solve the "problem" that many western game versions only refer to the japanese version for the real game info in the notes? Or do you just leave it as it is for now? It’s currently the only flaw I have with your awesome importer. Otherwise it does its job pefect.

[Antropus]

CriticalCid said I also have a question for the MAME importer. Do you have to plans to solve the "problem" that many western game versions only refer to the japanese version for the real game info in the notes?

Good point. To be frank, I'm not quite sure how to handle it. The parser looks at what Mame's own list says about which is the parent and which is the clone. A lot of the awesome games we play are originally from Japan, but we like playing the US version, for example. At this point I'm yet to confirm if Mame takes the country into consideration to define which game is the main and which is the clone or if it respects the country of origin at all times. If anything, I think that the note at the bottom just adds to the confusion at this point. As far as I can tell, the parser is doing the job correctly. It bases its filters on the info provided by Mame itself, so the only thing looking a little funny might be that note gathered from history.dat (which as mentioned previously, is a great source, but not 100% accurate). What's your suggestion? Thanks!

[Antropus]

I forgot to mention that I started (although it's in the back burner for now) an editor module, with a comprehensive listview and lots of functions to batch edit, remove games, add games, rename games, move to different platforms, list present/missing artwork etc. It's a bigger project and it will take me some time though. The great advantage is the speed. You can manipulate thousands of games at once super fast. LaunchBox can get quite slow when dealing with a lot of data. Once I introduced the MESS games for example, LaunchBox started to choke. My editor will basically run apart from Launchbox, manipulating the data from Launchbox.xml and it will serve as an editor, a filter system and a launcher as well, so you will be able to double click and play the games straight from the listview, to test if everything is working accordingly. If not, you can simply change things or delete the game from the list. My focus will be Mame/Mess for now, but depending on how things go, I can try to expand the editor to other systems. -Kris

[CriticalCid]

I guess that MAME and Arcade-History have different ways to handle the whole clone version thing. My wild guess is that Arcade-History prefers the original first release of a game. Which might be in the most cases the Japanese versions and the western versions are just get marked as a export (clone) release. Maybe your tool could check the text of each note if there is mentioned something like „For more information about the game” or something similar. If that’s the case then the importer will automatically import the notes from the version of the game which the text is referring to instead. I don’t know how practical this idea is because I guess it would dramatically increase the time to import the games.

[Jason Carr]

Hi @Antropus, I was finally getting around to fixing some of the MAME metadata issues on import, but I had it on my list to check your app out first. I must say, you've really nailed it. You did what I wanted to do but didn't have the time or the MAME metadata expertise to get it done. If you would, I'd like to talk about the possibilities going forward of providing a better way to integrate this into LaunchBox. I don't want to take development or credit from you; I'd prefer if you continued to develop this yourself. I just want to make it the primary way to import MAME games into LaunchBox, possibly distribute it with LaunchBox, etc. Let's have a conversation when you're available. Maybe hit me up at my jason@unbrokensoftware.com email? :)

[Drybonz]

I think it would be awesome if you guys could get your two projects integrated. :)

[Antropus]

Jason Carr said Hi @Antropus, I was finally getting around to fixing some of the MAME metadata issues on import, but I had it on my list to check your app out first. I must say, you've really nailed it. You did what I wanted to do but didn't have the time or the MAME metadata expertise to get it done. If you would, I'd like to talk about the possibilities going forward of providing a better way to integrate this into LaunchBox. I don't want to take development or credit from you; I'd prefer if you continued to develop this yourself. I just want to make it the primary way to import MAME games into LaunchBox, possibly distribute it with LaunchBox, etc. Let's have a conversation when you're available. Maybe hit me up at my jason@unbrokensoftware.com email? :)

Wow! Thank you so much, Jason! We are both on the same page, that's for sure. We both want to make the experience as painless as possible for the common users, thus making LaunchBox the easiest choice for anyone out there. I would love to collaborate on this and get something really cool for anyone to use. This is a hobby for me, as I do have a full time job as a VFX artist, but I'm deeply committed to the cause of retro arcade. We will be in touch! :) Cheers, -Kris

[Jason Carr]

Awesome, Kris. That sounds great. I think we can probably keep the conversation public here, actually. I'll jump straight to what I'd call the ideal scenario; I'd love to see it all happen in an idiot-proof wizard with explanations for every option and handholding for the whole thing. Obviously that's a long ways off; I think we should integrate it mostly as-is before we go down that path. The community is fairly desperate for a good solution for this; I'm not sure how many people have found your app already, but we need to do a new LaunchBox Tutorial video for MAME as soon as we can. I'll wait for your call on all this stuff, but I'm thinking we should use what you have already for that video. Then we can work on idiot-proofing it all later. Ultimately we need to remove the confusion and start publicizing this as the best solution.

[Antropus]

I totally agree. I have this idea that might help as well, to have an intermediate step before you get to the final result: I thought about introducing a listview so people can actually see and check what's being included in their library, similar what what you do with launchbox already, but not only that, with the possibility to drag and drop any number of mame/mess rom files right into this listview as the program parses all the metadata for those games to be included in launchbox.xml, showing you the result right there before you confirm what you want. This way, you will have the freedom to bypass any pre-defined filters, forcing the import of some clone roms that you really like, for example. Also the possibility of deleting stuff from the list as well. Adding informative windows as part of a guide/wizard to help in each step of the way shouldn't be too hard either, so we can definitely get to that soon! -Kris

[Jason Carr]

Awesome, yeah, the intermediate list view does sound like a great idea. All sounds great. I'll let you keep working on it all; hopefully for 6.0 we can distribute it with LaunchBox and use it instead of the current MAME import stuff. I'll talk to Brad too about doing a video on it. :)

[Jason Carr]

Just so everyone knows who @Antropus is... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1231969/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 We're dealing with royalty here, people. ;)

[Antropus]

Ha!

[Drybonz]

Jason Carr said http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1231969/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Whaaaaaaaaat?!? o_O That's quite a resume.

[CADScott]

It is crazy how talented some people are! Very impressive stuff, some great movies there, and amazing programming skills as well.

[Antropus]

Thanks guys :) Talent is a myth. It all comes down to the amount of dedication and passion you put into something. In other words, how obsessed you are with something :) -Kris