Arcade importing,...seems daunting

[damageinc86]

Arcade is the only "platform" I haven't added to my Launchbox setup.  Coming from Hyperspin, where I used don's xml tool to create all my arcade databases, I'm curious how the import process is for arcade?  It took many hours to get my xml lists just how I wanted them in Hyperspin, so that's why i'm procrastinating on that.  Do you really just look up your MAME roms folder and sit there inside the import window to delete every game you don't want out of however many thousand there are?  I haven't even looked into it, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Lordmonkus]

The default import process for the Arcade platform at the end will give you several filter options to remove all the mahjong, casino and clones and that will get you down to about 2800 games out of the full set. From there it isn't too much more work to go through it and remove anything that slipped by, this is what I did on my main gaming system with everything.

On my HTPC I used a batch file which is available here on the site in the downloads section to pull out a "good" list of games which totals around 640 games plus all the necessary bios. In the download package there are several batch files, one will pull all the games out into a single folder and the other batch files will pull out games based on genre into individual folders if you wish to import them by genre.

You can then build off of that if you choose.

 

[damageinc86]

Ok so there are at least some filtering options.  That's cool.  Is there any way to get the exact games that one already has in their xml file?  Or, in those filters, is there the ability to filter by manufacturer? and do not show clones?  Maybe I should just go through it and see lol.

[Lordmonkus]

I don't believe there is an easy way to import an xml from a HyperSpin setup, maybe someone knows of away. I never tried since I don't use HS and have only used it for a very brief moment before ditching it. The Arcade game importer will let you ignore clones so they don't import.

Basically when it comes down to Arcade and Mame there really is no easy way to do it. The above methods I suggested is about the best you are going to do for at least a starting point.

There was the lightspeed import tool that a user here was working on but I really have no idea how the progress is going on that, I never used it and I haven't paid any attention to it.