Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[Drybonz]

14 hours ago, Antropus said:

Yeah, the main purpose of creating those dummy roms is just to satisfy a limitation in Launchbox. You should suggest that to Jason because that's a super easy fix for him. The way I coded the dummy roms is to only create dummies for CHDs which don't have an associated .zip (or.7z), so there's no override. When you delete those dummies using the lightspeed function, they are checked against a criteria so only the dummies are deleted instead of actual roms. I could add that feature without too much trouble, but I am really hoping that Jason can fix that problem. The "Use file name only without extension" checkbox in Launchbox should do exactly that, so no need to have to create dummy files, which is pretty silly anyway. I've seen many people complaining about this limitation with CHDs and I am surprised this was never addressed.

@Jason Carr

[djrobx]

Thanks for this fantastic app!    The "All Killer no filler" feature, and more specifically, the ability to assimilate a group of rom lists, was something I was desperately trying to find.   I had done all kinds of crazy things with batch files to sort of get there.

I think you have mastered the "add" cases.   I can build my desired game list brilliantly in several ways now.  I can merge my output into my existing Attract Mode gamelist now, or build my custom output search-by-search, or even just drop another txt file into the game list folder.    Really awesome. 

Now I feel like we need a better way to manage exclusions.    I tend to remove things from my FE  as I go through my Attract Mode wheel (say, japanese games with so much Kanji that it's not playable for me, or games I manually determine I can't control reasonably with my cab).     Problem then is that these games "find their way" back into my game list again if I ever refresh from my master gameslists, unless I go through and manually remove them from the killer games lists.  

Just like how I want to preserve the work I use to build the lists, I also want to preserve my deletions.   Would be great if I could 

1) Specify a list of roms (exclude.txt) that I always want to exclude from output.   If it's in that file, I don't want to see it ever again.  
2) Come up with some sort of diffing mechanism that lets me determine things that have been removed from Attract Mode since the last export.   I can probably cobble up something with linux command line diffing/parsing to extrapolate and add to exclude.txt if this is too much for LightSpeed to handle on its own. 

The other thing I'm wondering is if anyone has other ideas of sources for quality game lists to add to the list of killer games?   I recommended one on the other forum (see attached), it's a "golden era" list that was thoughtfully put together on another site.    It fills a lot of gaps (like Arkanoid).   I still have a feeling there are a lot of great games missing from the master lists, and I'm wondering if there are other sources / game ratings sites we can tap into? 

 

goldenroms.txt

[quazl]

Can the paths have more than one path.

I keep my ROMs and my CHDs separate.

C:\ROMS\MAME; C:\ROMS\MAME CHD?

[DOS76]

You can keep you ROMs and CHDs separate but you have to tell MAME you are doing so by pointing it to that directory in the .ini

Sorry didn't realize this was the lightspeed thread when I posted.

Edited March 13, 2017 by DOS76

[Antropus]

@djrobx, glad it's working for you! I am making a lot of improvements on the Overrides by list that you mentioned. Soon you will be able to drop simple lists in .txt format into folders. select any number of them from the GUI and Lightspeed will take them in consideration while filtering or you can use the override checkbox to force all of them to be imported. Lightspeed will use the file names to name the platforms. This way you can have any number of custom platforms created, merged, etc. All information will be parsed, clones can be added as additional apps for any platform, Launchbox gameIDs will be imported for all of them as well, notes will work etc. This will vastly expand the current capabilities.

I am also changing my code to allow for the same game to be part of multiple platforms, which can be useful for some. The previous code prevented the same game from doing so, by assigning each game a single ID on startup. Now every time you run the exporter a new ID will be create for each and every game, so they are always unique, allowing for multiple imports of the same game. I also improved the detection of duplicates when adding games into the output, making things faster when adding to output.

On the exclusions list, that's a great idea! I will implement it soon. Should be super easy.

On the custom lists, I assembled some different ones (see image) and I will be packaging them with the next release. I added complete lists for games supported by Demul, split by machine type, FinalBurn Alpha, Golden Era (the file you submitted) and the "All Killer" lists. I believe AntoPisa assembled his own list as well, so I might add that as a preset.
I kept everything separated for Demul and All Killer lists as a matter of convenience, but people will be able to assign any Platform name to any group of lists pretty soon (another request I had before), so they are free to use those lists as separated platforms or all grouped under "Demul" for example.

@quazl, definitely. I thought about that some time ago and I think it's a good idea because I used to have my CHDs in a separate folder as well, so why not? This change will affect an area of the code that I need to pay extra attention, so it might take some time, but should be fine.

Here are some of the new features:

 

Edited March 13, 2017 by Antropus

[djrobx]

@Antropus  Awesome.  Look forward to trying it out!    Thanks again for your work on this. 

 

 

[Antropus]

Btw: go watch Kong:Skull Island! My baby is on the big screen!

[kmoney]

@Antropus I was wondering what might be causing the videos and the marquees not to show up in the export section on the preview arcade cabinet on the right if I have all the paths set correctly and have the videos and marquees for? I can not get any to show up.

[Jason Carr]

FYI guys, I've added something to my short list to stop demanding that files exist if that emulator option is checked, which should make this easier. It's not in there yet but should be soon. Thanks for the reminder guys.

[Antropus]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

FYI guys, I've added something to my short list to stop demanding that files exist if that emulator option is checked, which should make this easier. It's not in there yet but should be soon. Thanks for the reminder guys.

Sweeeeeet! Thanks Jason!

[Antropus]

@kmoneyI never added support for videos, because it is supposed to work just like a fast, pretty basic front-end, just for testing purposes. The marquees should show though!

Edited March 14, 2017 by Antropus

[kmoney]

@Antropus Ok gotcha...no problem, my marquees are not named exactly like the rom name which is the reason the marquees are not showing up. The videos are , I was just making sure I was not missing something.

[quazl]

A little bit late but here is a picture of Lightspeed on my CRT.

Edit: This tool is turning into something quite amazing! Just some really amazing work! @Antropus

Edited March 14, 2017 by quazl
Kudos!

[Antropus]

@quazlThanks! Hey, looking at the image seems like your monitor is running at 640x480, right? I mean, it's missing a big chunk of the GUI!!! I tweaked the size a bit more trying to accommodate it based on your previous request, but it only improved the view for 800x600, which is unfortunately the minimum size I can go to accommodate everything
My arcade monitor is a Betson/Kortek Multi-sync, so it runs fine at 800x600. I have it for over 9 years now and the image still look pristine! Can your monitor do 800x600 as well or is it stuck to 640x480?
I really cannot do anything below 800x600.

[Antropus]

I just researched your monitor by the serial at the top and it's Wells Gardner 27' that indeed goes to SVGA (800x600). Try switching your resolution to SVGA!
What are you using to play it in 15khz and 31khz? ArcadeVGA? Soft15khz? GroovyMame? If you are using one of those and setting MAME to automatically generate the correct signal, switching your monitor to 800x600 will not mess anything, at least when it comes to MAME!

[quazl]

6 hours ago, Antropus said:

I just researched your monitor by the serial at the top and it's Wells Gardner 27' that indeed goes to SVGA (800x600). Try switching your resolution to SVGA!
What are you using to play it in 15khz and 31khz? ArcadeVGA? Soft15khz? GroovyMame? If you are using one of those and setting MAME to automatically generate the correct signal, switching your monitor to 800x600 will not mess anything, at least when it comes to MAME!

Yes, you are correct. I will try it tonight!

[Wayne100]

Hi all, can I use Lightspeed to import and seperate arcade Platforms in LaunchBox, if I already have various arcade and console platforms setup/installed in LaunchBox? (SEGA Genesis, SNES, CPS, Naomi, Neo-Geo etc.)

Would like to have all of my arcade ROMs seperated into seperate platforms.

Have had a read through this thread, and quite a few references to corrupted .xml files etc?

 

[Pacman56]

Just tried importing the Software List Platforms using Beta 9 and noticed that 8 platforms were not created even though all platforms were checked within the LS interface under the Platforms tab. This was tested using LB 7.8-beta-13.

The missing platforms are:

• Apple IIGS
• Atari Jaguar
• Casio PV-2000
• Philips CD-i
• Sega 32X
• Sega CD
• Sharp X68000
• Sony Playstation

Edited March 16, 2017 by Pacman56

[djrobx]

On 3/13/2017 at 10:04 PM, Antropus said:

@quazlThanks! Hey, looking at the image seems like your monitor is running at 640x480, right? I mean, it's missing a big chunk of the GUI!!! I tweaked the size a bit more trying to accommodate it based on your previous request, but it only improved the view for 800x600, which is unfortunately the minimum size I can go to accommodate everything
My arcade monitor is a Betson/Kortek Multi-sync, so it runs fine at 800x600. I have it for over 9 years now and the image still look pristine! Can your monitor do 800x600 as well or is it stuck to 640x480?
I really cannot do anything below 800x600.

For folks with this issue, you should consider running the Remote Desktop hack (google "RDP Wrapper") and using Remote Desktop to do your ROM list management.  Create another admin user account, and you can log in and do this stuff without disturbing the front end at all.   The hack stops the remote desktop user from kicking off the main user and also enables it on "Home" variants of Windows.   This way you can use your laptop's native resolution for management, without disturbing the primary desktop. 

I use both TightVNC and Remote Desktop so I don't need to do this kind of stuff on the cab itself.  TightVNC is better for testing stuff since it won't change the sound output or video resolution (mirrors display instead of redirecting).

Edited March 16, 2017 by djrobx

[Antropus]

8 hours ago, Pacman56 said:

Just tried importing the Software List Platforms using Beta 9 and noticed that 8 platforms were not created even though all platforms were checked within the LS interface under the Platforms tab. This was tested using LB 7.8-beta-13.

The missing platforms are:

• Apple IIGS
• Atari Jaguar
• Casio PV-2000
• Philips CD-i
• Sega 32X
• Sega CD
• Sharp X68000
• Sony Playstation

Can you post a screenshot of your options, filtersA and filtersB tabs? To get certain systems to import you will need to check all statuses for example (good, imperfect and preliminary) and make sure you are not forcing Lightspeed to match artwork you might not have in your system, by unchecking all options on the right column of your options tab.

Next version will come soon and have a ton of fixes in it as well, so if this turn out to be an actual bug I will definitely look at it before releasing the next version!