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better way to manage ROMs?


dizny71

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After some messing around, I was finally able to get my ROMs to work with MAME. I loaded in the ROM set and the games work really well but the problem is I have 28,000+ titles where a lot of them are either garbage or games I don't want. I don't want to delete any of them just in case I need them for some reason (parent ROM, ect) so I've been going through them and hiding them. The only problem is I am doing this one at a time. Is there a better way to manage my ROM set? What do others to do clean up these massive sets? Thanks.
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When you import into LB using the import wizard if you specify the emulator as MAME it should have an extra form that lets you filter out a lot of junk. I believe I got around 3K games with the filter last time I ran it. If you already have your own MAME metadata you can also you Lightspeed importer. It was created by another user and there is a long thread about it on the forums it may help. The users name is Antropus so if you search his name you will see it in his posts. Also check out the YouTube tutorial on MAME as Brad show what I was talking about in the first sentence
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Do you recommend I re-import my ROMs or is there a way to clean them up after they have already been imported? I'd love to do the second option since it's taken me a while to get everything working but if I have to re-import I figure that would be better than having to go through every ROM file.
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It is going to require a reimport and while it does suck because of the time you spent the time you save will be astronomical. Also as long as you don't delete any of your folders all of your images will still be there after the reimport.
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I re-imported everything and it cut the list down considerably. Thanks for all the info. One thing I was wondering, if I tell it not to import clones and everything and choose to prioritize the North American games over world ones, will it also get the parent ROMs if they are needed even if the parent ROM isn't a North American ROM file? Right now I have a much smaller list but it has a lot of duplicates and clones. I was thinking of doing another re-import to try and cut down on all the duplicates but I want to make sure I get the parent ROMs and any extra files I might need with some of the games. I cast my net pretty wide and it worked but I'm wondering if I can tighten things up and have it still work for me.
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LB doesn't need the parent ROM only the emulator does so as long as your ROMs are all together in the same folder the game will work. You should really look at Lightspeed by Antropus it lets you filter really deeply and add the specific clones that you want during the import its really maximized if you have all the right data in your MAME folders but it filtering capability is more sophisticated than what is allowed in LaunchBox. I do however suggest that you try to make a removable version of LB to run it on before you try on your main install or just make sure you make a copy of your XML before running it. Yes LB makes backups and Lightspeed does too (I think) but if you make a copy right there in your folder and name it LaunchBoxXML1 and something goes wrong all you have to do is delete the 1 and your back in business which to me is just easier to do. Sorry it got a little long winded.
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ok, I hadn't thought of it that way. I've been telling it to copy the files into the LB folder but maybe I should keep them in a separate folder that both LB and MAME look to for the ROM files. I haven't really messed around with the Lightspeed yet. I'll look into that.
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I got everything working really well. Lightspeed did the trick. No more clones or duplicates so that's great. I think my problem before was telling it to copy into the LB folder. This time I kept it in a separate folder that everything looks to. That seems to have fixed most of my original problems. Thanks for all the help from everyone. Smile
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