Cover art for MAME games

[ckp]

I am just starting to use LB 6.7 in hopes to replace my Hyperspin front end. I use Rocketlauncher with both since it's already setup for my 24,000+ games.

With Hyperspin, all my games show art and other stuff.

In LB, my platforms do show the cover art, but not for MAME. I have 5000 MAME games in LB now with no cover/box art.

What is the easiest/best way to get it?

Should I just try selecting all 5000 MAME games , then choose LB menu item "Tools->Download Metadata and images " option?

Thanks.

[DOS76]

You can definitely do that but when you imported the games it should have found the files what did you name the platform for your Arcade games.

Edited August 17, 2016 by DOS76

[ckp]

I pulled the trigger on the download all. Didn't choose music yet, because I didn't know how much space that would take up. It's been downloading for a while now, which is ok.

My friend setup LB and RocketLauncher on this usb drive for me for all my many platforms. I'm guessing he chose not to let it download for MAME since it would take up a lot of his time. I don't know. 

I'm sure liking LB over hyperspin for my personal game computer, although HS is nice for a cabinet (but i think bigbox probably is too, but i haven't built a cabinet yet. can't wait to do it later with LB Bigbox now that I see it has a similar wheel to HS). LB is nice and clean and easy to navigate. I like that on my desktop.

I am hoping LB gets a little bit faster when loaded up with 24k+ games, like I have.

I will try adding my regular PC Steam games next, which is just awesome.

[ckp]

Well that was a major mistake, all it did was download tons of videos that i already had but almost no cover art. And even worse than that, now I have tons of Mame game names like gal-0017 and many other non human like names and those do not even have rom files to run an actual game.

I haven't found a single game that will launch since doing this download and they all worked before.

Wow, I wish I never did that download. No idea what to do now. It's all messed up.

[ckp]

only thing i can think of is delete all Mame games from the LB Mame platform and try importing them again. at best i might get back to where i started which is having working Mame games but no art.

[Zombeaver]

When you imported them did you tell it to "Use MAME names/metadata" in the import wizard? There's a special checkbox for it. It should recognize all the MAME file names and rename the game title appropriately.

[ckp]

i am about to import all the Mame roms again using the import roms wizard and hopefully not include videos/music. i'll watch for that and will be eyeing everything very carefully. keeping fingers crossed. thanks for helping. 

[Zombeaver]

Sure thing. Yeah it's really important that you use that option otherwise you're going to just end up with a bunch of gibberish titles with nothing properly connected to the right metadata (which includes the cover art).

[ckp]

in the wizard it's asking if i want to copy, move, or leave rome in current location. i do not want to copy or move. but it says if i leave them in their current location it will not attempt to organize the files. so that doesn't sound too good? what does it mean?

[ckp]

ok, i just finished the import wizard and it is busy importing.

there is no setting "Use MAME names/metadata" in the import wizard. maybe in an older LB version? I am using the very latest..

but at the last screen in the wizard it showed me the game names it would use, and they looked right so i clicked finish.

just waiting now as it imports almost 23k games...

[Zombeaver]

The verbiage may be slightly different, that was just from memory. It's definitely there. It should say something like "use MAME names".

[ckp]

I saw nothing like that, but it looks like it came out ok. Maybe I chose it somewhere without realizing it? 

In any case, the names are correct now and the games launch again.

But it barely got any box art  =(

That's a bummer. I did not choose to include any emu movie or wiki scrapes. I was afraid that would cause it to get massive amounts of videos again.

[CriticalCid]

You could also download a complete flyer pack from Progetto Snaps here: http://www.progettosnaps.net/flyers/

It should cover most of the flyers which are available on the internet. They also have all kinds of other media for MAME.

[ckp]

Thanks. What is a "flyer" image? Will that be sued to represent the game with an image above the Mame game titles shown in LB, because that's the image I'm hoping for so games don't appear blank with default LB icon. Where would I put these files in which specific LB folder? Thank you.

[Zombeaver]

The images don't come from emumovies/wiki anyway - they come from the games DB which is included in the basic scrape.

Keep in mind that there are going to be MAME titles that simply have no cover art (especially considering the number of games you're talking about). Some may have cover art but aren't in the games DB yet. I normally use The Arcade Flyer Museum to help fill in gaps along with Google images to a lesser degree.

[CriticalCid]

13 minutes ago, ckp said:

Thanks. What is a "flyer" image? Will that be sued to represent the game with an image above the Mame game titles shown in LB, because that's the image I'm hoping for so games don't appear blank with default LB icon. Where would I put these files in which specific LB folder? Thank you.

The majority of all arcade games don’t have any Box Art because they didn’t come as cartridges and were directly built-in the respective cabinets instead. So these flyers were basically advertisement flyers for arcade cabinets but are working really well as Box Art alternative.

You could put them either in the folder “Box - Front” or “Advertisement Flyer - Front”. Both would be appropriated.

[ckp]

I see. Launchbox displays the games only with Image type choices: Boxes, 3D Boxes, Carts, 3D Carts, Screenshots, Clear logos. It's a drop list for the display. So I guess this is where I'm confused.

Will the flyers show up, if say, image type "Boxes" is selected if i put these flyer image files inside the "Box - Front" LB folder?

And which set download should i get from http://www.progettosnaps.net/flyers/, because I see several with names like "Full Set 0.170_8". I don't know if it matters which one? I'm running MAME 0.175 and 176 now in case that matters.

I only selected box related options in the LB import wizard so maybe that is also why I didn't get much and I should have selected some other image options too.

Sorry for all the questions. I think I'm almost there thanks to you guys.

[Zombeaver]

Yep, what @CriticalCid is correct. That's why I say to keep in mind there are going to be gaps. It's not like a SNES game where you've got actual box art. For arcade games you're basically dealing with posters.

2 minutes ago, ckp said:

I see. Launchbox displays the games only with Image type choices: Boxes, 3D Boxes, Carts, 3D Carts, Screenshots, Clear logos. It's a drop list for the display. So I guess this is where I'm confused.

Will the flyers show up, if say, image type "Boxes" is selected if i put these flyer image files inside the "Box - Front" LB folder?

Yep, if you select Box - Front, it'll show up if you're showing "Boxes". The reason there are multiple categories beyond what's in the view options is because of image priorities. You can choose to prioritize certain types of boxes over others in the priority list.

[CriticalCid]

You have to download them all, including the update packs. Because there are too many flyers they had to split the whole set into smaller parts.

If you put them into the „Box - Front“ folder will LaunchBox show them to you without any problems.

[ckp]

I'm thinking game screenshots may be nicer to use than advertisement flyers. I suppose there is no "good" set of "nice" Mame game screenshots that can be used easily?

Can LB grab something like this for my existing Mame games by re-running something and choosing something specific in a wizard?

Too bad it doesn't do this by default for Mame. People can always change things later, but it's kind of a bummer for newbies like me to come out of a big Mame import with mostly empty Mame game boxes with text titles.