MichaelBolton Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 First off, hello! I built myself an arcade cabinet using hyperspin and rocket launcher and had a lot of fun. Weeks later I'm itching for more and I discover launchbox. This interface is beautiful and feels much more polished! I immediately bought it (and emumovies) and have not looked back. My last system to import is arcade! Let's say I have the 0.183 complete mame set. When I set that complete folder to be a ROM folder in mame, everything works. I then used the launchbox import tool and chose to copy Roma to games folder because I loved how launchbox weeded out all the games I wouldn't want. Problem is I have no idea what BIOS files from that ROM folder I need to copy over. How can I tell what files are BIOS and what are Roms? Does launchbox have a way to export a list of rejected files during an import? Am I doing this all wrong? Thanks for the help! Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 When you chose to copy the files in to the LB Folder, it moved only the games it was importing and not all the other required files. I personally don't let it move things, but in the case where a game requires multiple files, and you choose that, it's only going to move the 1 file it found. In MAME's case, move the rest of your roms to the folder it copied the games to. You're also going to need to edit MAME to point towards the place where your roms are going to be, since they're no longer in the default location. In cases like DOS, or systems where cue sheets are required, it may be a bit more complicated. As long as LaunchBox, your emulators and games are all on the same drive, it will also have the same portable effect as they'll user relative paths instead of absolute paths. So, if I needed to move all my stuff from my 8TB drive to say, a 10TB drive, as long as I keep the paths the same, the move will happen easily as LaunchBox will still know where everything is. If you do want all of your stuff in your LaunchBox folder, then try moving it first, then importing it. As long as you move it to the proper folder, it should stay where it's at. That's probably only useful for DOS or systems with cue sheets though. If you're importing single rom files, and you move them, there shouldn't be any issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelBolton Posted February 28, 2017 Author Share Posted February 28, 2017 I understand all of that, and thank you for your quick reply! However, the problem I am having is I don't know which files in that mame folder are BIOS and which are games. There are 11k files in that folder and they all have inconspicuous names and the same extension.Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 That's what I was trying to get at though, sorry for not explaining it properly. There are BIOS in there, sometimes labeled in an easy to understand way, and some are extra files for games, and it's all pretty much needed. It's normal for out of that many files to have imported less than 2k, but it's all more or less required. A single game could require up to 12 or 13 files on it's own. Sometimes, you may only need the parent rom and not the child rom, sometimes you need 1 child rom, and other times you need every child rom in a chain. It depends on what games you want, what region, and what version of the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelBolton Posted February 28, 2017 Author Share Posted February 28, 2017 Okay thank you that makes sense. So I'll move the other 20gb of files in there. I was being lazy because I'm using Amazon drive to back this whole thing up and didn't want to add 7000 more files than it needed, but I get it now. Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 If you do want to separate everything out, you can figure out what any given game will require. In a MAMEUI version, there is a way it will list everything out, and you can go from there if you want. There might even be an automatic way, @CriticalCid or @DOS76 might know, but I think you'd have to go through it manually. If you pair down the files to the ones you'd need for your import preferences, then if you need to re-import you'll be good. You'd have to do it again when you update though. If you want to do a second import (on top of the one you have to add more games / versions), you wouldn't be able to as those files would be gone. It's part of the reason why a merged rom set doesn't work, it has to be split or non-merged. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 In your MAME.ini you can set multiple folder paths so you could leave what you have imported to LB and just point the .ini to both folders and it would all work fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 Yea, I guess if you're gonna have to set the new path to begin with, that does work. I forgot about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spycat Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 Hi @MichaelBolton If you run MAME itself outside of LaunchBox and then select BIOS in the left panel, the main panel will list all bios by name, and the right panel (Infos tab) will show more information including the romset name. You can also export the bios list to an xml or txt file. Unfortunately, there seems to be no option to identify the MAME Devices files which will also be mixed in with your games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelBolton Posted February 28, 2017 Author Share Posted February 28, 2017 (edited) 2 hours ago, spycat said: Hi @MichaelBolton If you run MAME itself outside of LaunchBox and then select BIOS in the left panel, the main panel will list all bios by name, and the right panel (Infos tab) will show more information including the romset name. You can also export the bios list to an xml or txt file. Unfortunately, there seems to be no option to identify the MAME Devices files which will also be mixed in with your games. thanks for the help. I simply moved the entire collection into the rom folder in mame. Then I imported into launchbox without moving the files and set the correct rom path in mame and all is working now! I'm wondering though, is the mame rom path relative? It seems to say z:\launchbox\games\arcade\ and that isn't relative so I'm afraid it won't be portable unless the other computer uses the same drive letter. Edited February 28, 2017 by MichaelBolton Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 If LaunchBox is on the same hard drive, then it should be relative. If you need to move them in the future, it is solved easily by editing the MAME.xml in the Data folder with Notepad++, and replacing the old drive letter with a new drive letter, but yea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.