Lists of Lists?

[CalaveraX]

Hi Everyone!!!

I've just discovered Launchbox this weekend, and fall in love with it! 
Being using hyperspin, and now seeing the easy use of launchbox i'm amazed, almost everything configures itself! Databases, Images, all. Amazing work!!!

I've just had an idea and i dont really know how to get it done. maybe you can point me in the right direction? (Should i put generation as Plarforms? or as playlists?)

 

I want to separate my playlists by Consoles Generation

So i want to have like 

First Generation

Console 1, Console 2, Console 3 

With all his games inside

 

But speaking of Arcades, how do you suggest i list them? i saw launchbox generates all the lists for like CPS, etc,

But Naomi and that stuff? 

 

Im a little bit confuded, i've always used emulators and roms, but just learned a few weeks ago about the arcades subsystems, naomi, cps, taito, cave and all of those.

 

Thanks in Advance!

[Lordmonkus]

It's up to you how you organize and sort your systems or platforms.

3 hours ago, CalaveraX said:

I want to separate my playlists by Consoles Generation

This is easy to to do. First create a custom category and then right click a platform on the left hand side and edit. Then change the platform you want it under using the category drop down menu. It,s near the bottom..

3 hours ago, CalaveraX said:

But speaking of Arcades, how do you suggest i list them? i saw launchbox generates all the lists for like CPS, etc,

But Naomi and that stuff? 

Again, this is up to you and how you sort them, personally I don't bother with it but that is just me. Some arcade boards had quite a few games while others had very few and when I want a game I would rather just scroll through my list to find it rather than sit there and think what arcade board it was or who made it.

Have go at toying around with the playlist generator and see what you can come up with combined with custom categories. If you find you don't like what you did simply right click and delete the playlist on the left, you won't be removing your games from Launchbox so no damage done.

[CalaveraX]

Nice, Thank ill check it when i get back home from work.

 

Is there any diference with all those systems? i was looking to Sega Model 2, and other, and i dont really understand how its all separated.

Can all be emulated by mame or retroarch? i dont fully get if those "Classifications" are diferent platforms while "Mame romsets" are another one O_O

 

 

[Lordmonkus]

From an actual end users perspective they are all "Arcade" games but of course it was unlike consoles. In the early days every machine for the most part was a one off, occasionally you had some games reuse a board a chip set with some modification to make a new game. Later on companies like Capcom and Sega and others started to use a base board and chipset to use for multiple games to save costs. It was SNK and the NeoGeo that really was the first arcade game manufacturer that essentially plopped a "console" inside the machine and used cartridges. Maybe someone else did that before but it was the NeoGeo that really popularized it.

As an example you can read up on the "Sega System" boards used in the mid 80s to produce many of the classic Sega games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards#Sega_System_series

If you want to read up more Capcoms stuff look up their CPS, CPS2 and CPS3 boards, these were the ones used for the Street Fighters, Final Fight, Ghouls N Ghosts and others of the time.

Mame can emulate a great percentage of arcade stuff but once you get into the "32 bit" era of 3D games it starts to run into some troubles and its emulation can be wonky. For a lot of the later stuff such as Sega Model 2 you will want to look outside of Mame for now for actually playable emulation.

Retroarch itself is not an emulator but rather a single UI for a bunch of "cores" which are they emulators. The cores are built using the source code of open source emulators so Retroarch uses Mame and Final Burn Alpha (which is another arcade emulator)  to play arcade games.

[CalaveraX]

Great!

Thanks for the info!
Is there any website that list those systems? i want to download a complete romset for mame (i think 189 is out now) but i dont know if that romset will have newer sistems like as you said, sega model 2.

If that's the case i would have to look for those, and i kind of like having the categories separated, Cave / CPS1 / CPS2 / CPS3 and so on.

Consoles are much easier to group

[Lordmonkus]

I'm not sure how far up the Mame romset goes but I know it goes further than the emulator actually emulates well enough to play so with a full set you will have everything it emulates well and then some.

As for a list of the systems you can give this a look (http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Arcade_system_board) but you will see pretty quickly that if try to start categorizing every thing you will have an absolute mess of a time trying to do it.  Most people tend to stick to the more popular and well known categories.

[DOS76]

The MAME full set is on version 0.189. A lot of the other Arcade emulators use MAME roms for the games in their emulator too so while not compatible with MAME the roms work in other emulators and thus worth having if you are interested in those systems.