Lightspeed: Ultra-Fast Mame Importer Tool

[Klopjero]

and in other it appends data after the </LaunchBox> 

[Lordmonkus]

It could be something do with how this software was made back when Launchbox used a single xml file instead separate ones for each platform. Again though I don't know for certain because I never used.

[Klopjero]

It spits out seperate ones... so that's not it. anyway I can fix this... I thought I'd just post it here. so the author knows whats up. 

I wanted to use this tool because it promises me that it will split up my mame collection into CAVe, ZYNC, CAPCOM play thingy, NEOGEO etc.. which is waht I want... and not a huge un navigatible blurry mis mash of arcade games.. there was a price to pay however.. 

[Lordmonkus]

Well I don't even think or know if the author has been around for a while.

Launchbox's Mame importer tool will give you the option at the end to create playlists based on the categories you are wanting.

But if you can get this tool to work for you then be my guest and go right ahead and do it

 

[Klopjero]

it is my recommendation that this tool is not to be used with Launchbox.. It's makes quite a mess of your XMLs... liek I said earlier.. seemingly random placement of </launchbox> and after fixing that you consistently get parsing errors with messages like

xml data at the root is invalid

or Extra Content at end of document.. 

this needs to be updated.. so please either take it down before some other nOOb destroys his database

[Neofuuma]

1 hour ago, Klopjero said:

it is my recommendation that this tool is not to be used with Launchbox.. It's makes quite a mess of your XMLs... liek I said earlier.. seemingly random placement of </launchbox> and after fixing that you consistently get parsing errors with messages like

xml data at the root is invalid

or Extra Content at end of document.. 

this needs to be updated.. so please either take it down before some other nOOb destroys his database

If I remember correctly Launchbox makes backups of the xml files in a backup directory, so you may be able to recover any damaged platform xmls from there.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Neofuuma

[CriticalCid]

Lightspeed itself also creates backups of your databases afaik, haven't used it in a while myself.

The main issue with this tool is that it doesn’t play too nicely if you use it on an already populated LB setup, it works way better for new LB installations. In addition, the Beta-10 has this nasty bug that damages your XML files in LB. Beta-9 is far more stable from my experience and is the version that I used to import my MAME games to my own setup. The only bugs that I’ve encountered so far with beta-9 are wrongly assigned console ports as additional apps to an arcade game if you choose to import Arcade Games, SoftwareLists and Clones all at once (but hey, some people would that even consider a feature and not a bug ) and that LB randomly duplicates the Custom Fields of some games that Lightspeed has added (that doesn't break anything, only clutter your metadata sidebar in LB. You can manually remove them if you want but that's a fight against windmills honestly...).

So, would I recommend using it in its current state? It depends. It does a better job at importing MAME-based systems than LB does and adds a ton of useful extra metadata. If you are interested in that, can live with the issues I’ve just listed and are fully aware that you can't expect any support from the creator for any other issues that might appear, than yeah, go for it. But make sure to only use Beta-9 and only use it on a complete new LB installation to minimize any possible problems you could run into.

 

Link to Beta-9:

On 9.3.2017 at 0:53 AM, Antropus said:

Version: 0183_Beta9
Date: 3/8/2017 3:30pm

Full Installer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1yZmYtcnEzWkJDbmc/view?usp=sharing
Zip File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B23vaxsfSk1yYUJLWVU0WnFCS00/view?usp=sharing

Change log:
- Two versions for download now: installer or zip file. The zip file should be used if you are planning to install Lightspeed in multiple folders in the same machine, for whatever reason.
Just bear in mind that running two instances of the program at the same time might produce undesirable effects, since part of the code relies on context sensitivity, meaning that it will operate based on the active window's name.
- Fixed a bug that was causing additional applications (clones) info and custom fields to be duplicated
- Application paths (rom paths) are now being generated at all times, even when the roms are not present in your system. Lightspeed will tell Launchbox to point to those "ghost" roms anyway and that allows for a "future planned setups", even when you still don't have the roms in place yet. 
- When no extra info is found, the Additional Application name will assume the rom description name
- Fixed a bug causing the gui to freeze every time you tried to export to different front-ends and replied "no" when asked if you want to overwrite a file that was previously exported
- Lightspeed will now parse the GameID from Launchbox's game databse assigning it correctly to all games found in it
- Lightspeed will also parse the wiki link if the game is present in Launchbox's DB
- Fixed a bug causing some of the Hikaru, Sega Model 1, Sega Model 2, Naomi, Naomi2 and Atomiswave games to be parse as "Sega" platform, producing incorrect lists when filtering those systems in isolation
- Fixed a bug causing the number of games exported to be reported incorrectly, thanks to the new Additional Applications feature. From now on if clones are being added as applications instead of imported as roms, only the parents will be counted, producing a consistent count at the end. If games are being merged, the games already present in the current library will not be counted and the difference will be reported.
- Fixed an additional bug causing a game under the Nintendo Gameboy.xml file to get corrupted thanks to a date misinformed, causing Launchbox to crash.

As always, please test and report. Thanks!
-Kris

[Lordmonkus]

I put a big warning not use this at the top of the first post. If someone can confirm this does work and not cause problems please let me know and I will remove the warning.

[Retrofrogg]

After 46 pages worth of comments hopefully that question is answered!  

[Retrofrogg]

Or perhaps not....! 

So what is the best way to import a full MAME set and all the extra artwork into LB at the moment? 

[Pacman56]

14 minutes ago, Dan said:

So what is the best way to import a full MAME set and all the extra artwork into LB at the moment? 

Hey Dan.

Just like @CriticalCid mentioned in his post above, you could try version 0183_Beta9 against a new installation of LB (to avoid problems) and see if your happy with the results.
I have personally been using Beta9 ever since @Antropus posted it last march to update my full MAME rom sets every month.
If you decide to give it a try, you may want to download and replace the support files (catver.ini, series.ini, languages.ini, nplayers.ini and history.dat) yourself. I've personally had some issues letting Beta9 download those files. This problem started happening a few months ago. You can find the link to those files in the "LightspeedManual.pdf"

Where things will become interesting is if you decide to use the generated Arcade.xml file of that new installation of LB to update your existing LB installation.
If you are a developer or have some skills with Power Shell,  you could write some code that will parse the newly created Arcade.xml (the one created with LightSpeed) to update the Arcade.xml of your existing setup. It is worth automating the process by writing some code if you plan to update your MAME sets every month like I do.
If you are interested on having more details about migrating those xml elements from one file to the other, let me know and I could post more information.

I hope that will be of some help to you!

[Retrofrogg]

Thanks very much Pacman! But isn't there an easier way to import MAME into LB? The above all sounds very complicated!

 

[Retrofrogg]

Do I have to unzip the MAME artwork packs? MAME says to leave them zipped, but lightspeed doesn't seem to recognise the files in the zips.

[Pacman56]

1 hour ago, Dan said:

Do I have to unzip the MAME artwork packs? MAME says to leave them zipped, but lightspeed doesn't seem to recognise the files in the zips.

Good evening Dan

MAME supports those packs in zipped format but lightspeed and launchbox requires these images to be extracted.

 

[Sylvester]

I read the manual for the parts I need help with but I still don't know what I'm doing.

I was able to point LightSpeed to my rom folder and also my mame folder. I started with all the check boxes at their default point.

What I'm trying to do is output roms that fit a particular genre to a separate folder.

Under the FiltersA tab, for the genre section, I only checked off vertical and horizontal shmups.

Under the Export tab, I clicked on the Filter button, and then checked the Filtered tab on the left side of the screen. I don't see a difference? There are still games that are outside of shmups. What am I doing wrong?

[Retrofrogg]

In the export tab in Lightspeed, there is a picture of an arcade machine on the right. When I click on the games which have marquee/control panel/etc, nothing happens to the arcade machine. Is this normal, or should the art be displayed on the arcade machine?

[Retrofrogg]

Well, I went ahead and imported around 3500 MAME roms via Lightspeed, split into separate systems. And Launchbox (and BB) have become unuseably slow! I thought that maybe it was a cacheing issue, but after leaving it overnight, the issue remains. LB keeps becoming non-responsive every time I try and do something with it

[Pacman56]

2 hours ago, Dan said:

Well, I went ahead and imported around 3500 MAME roms via Lightspeed, split into separate systems. And Launchbox (and BB) have become unuseably slow! I thought that maybe it was a cacheing issue, but after leaving it overnight, the issue remains. LB keeps becoming non-responsive every time I try and do something with it

Not sure why you are experiencing these issues Dan. A few weeks ago I imported MAME 0.192 and used most of the default settings in regards to filters and did not combine the roms. This resulted in 7102 games under the Arcade platform (clean LB installation). LB and BB was running without issues. I then migrated the resulting arcade.xml to my arcade cabinet which has something like 50K games and the performance of LB/BB was still exellent. I'm away from home for a few more days but I will repeat this exercise for MAME 0.193 which will be released this Wednesday.

Let me get back to you when I return and I can send you my test data folder via PM so you can test it on you PC and see if you are still having issues.

Till then, enjoy the holiday. 

Edited December 26, 2017 by Pacman56

[Sylvester]

On 12/24/2017 at 9:07 PM, Sylvester said:

I read the manual for the parts I need help with but I still don't know what I'm doing.

I was able to point LightSpeed to my rom folder and also my mame folder. I started with all the check boxes at their default point.

What I'm trying to do is output roms that fit a particular genre to a separate folder.

Under the FiltersA tab, for the genre section, I only checked off vertical and horizontal shmups.

Under the Export tab, I clicked on the Filter button, and then checked the Filtered tab on the left side of the screen. I don't see a difference? There are still games that are outside of shmups. What am I doing wrong?

Hi, is this even possible?

My goal is to organize my Mame roms and separate them by genres and put each genre in a separate folder.

I'm using LightSpeed  v0.183_Beta 10

 

After clicking (1)Filter, it populates the "Filter" tab with games. Does that mean those roms are the roms that are held back or let through during the filtering process?

In the lower left corner of the screen, I select XML File from the drop down menu. I press the "..." button and give a name to the exported list.

I then click the FILE MATCH button, and put a check on "ROMS" and  select a destination folder under MAME ROMS.

I press the "GO!" button and it says, "The outputview listview is empty so there are no games to be copied. Please add some games to the output listview and try again."

 

I click on (2)Output. There are 3 fields to be filled out: -Emulate these games with. -this command line. -this Platform Name.

I tried both the "Add all" button and the "Add selected" button. The output tab still has roms outside of the genres I selected on the FiltersA tab.

 

So I don't really understand how this works. I read the manual.

 

[Lordmonkus]

Just in case it was missed in the original post of this thread I will post it here again.

READ THIS BEFORE DOWNLOADING AND USING

Just as a warning to anyone wanting to use this, do so at your own risk. It appears to have not been updated in a long time and is reported to cause serious damage to your xml files. The original author of this has also not been on the forums sine April 10, 2017. If you do download and use this and it causes problems please be advised that you will most likely not receive any support for it at all. I won't lock the thread just in case the author returns and updates or if people have something to add to the discussion.If someone can confirm that this is working as intended and not messing anything up please let me know and I will remove this warning but it is HIGHY RECOMMENDED NOT TO DOWNLOAD AND USE THIS IN ITS CURRENT STATE.