Import Arcade games skips Pacman, Double Dragon, and others, unless "import all clones"

[Domarius]

I have MAME archive 183 and am trying to import all games with these fairly default settings;

• Skip clones and prioritise North America
• All "Skip" check boxes ticked (except Mature games, because why not)
• "Create playlists" is unchecked though

But after it's complete, a large number of popular games are missing, notably Pacman and Double Dragon, to name a couple.

Afterwards, if I manually try to drag in some of the games I noticed missing (eg. all zips with "pacman" in the title, and all zips with "ddragon" in the title), with the same default settings, they still don't show up.  It says 0 games imported, I guess it filtered them out again.

Strangely, if I delete all Arcade games and start from scratch, and just drag in "pacman" and "ddragon" zips again, with the default settings, they show up correctly - I get Pacman, Pac Mania, and Double Dragon 1, 2, and 3.  But that doesn't solve the problem, because again, if I import all the games I have, a large number go missing.

I found the only way to ensure the missing games show up when dragging in all the games at once, is change the default setting from "Skip clones and prioritise North America" to "Import all clones" - but then of course I get like 10 identical versions of each game...

Edited May 2, 2018 by Domarius
simplification

[Domarius]

I've edited my original post to make it clearer.

Edited May 2, 2018 by Domarius

[spycat]

With a very small LBox games collection I prefer to do everything manually and haven't used the import features in ages, so I can't help with that. As regards the two games you mentioned.

Pac-Man (pacman.zip) is a clone of the parent Japanese game Puck Man Japan Set 1 (puckman.zip).

Double Dragon US sets 1, 2 and 3 (ddragonu.zip ddragonua.zip ddragonub.zip) are clones of the parent Japanese game Double Dragon (ddragon,zip).

[Kondorito]

I had a similar problem, so I used my MAME custom xml, and with a tool called Hyperchecker I moved out all unneeded rom zip files from the folder (the ones not present in the xml), and then i dragged and dropped all the wanted rom zips in LB, imported with no skips, no prioritizations, forced duped names, etc.

That way I got my wanted full parents set + clones worth playing, and reduced the 34k zip files whole set to over 3k only, and no missing games. 

[Domarius]

2 hours ago, spycat said:

Pac-Man (pacman.zip) is a clone of the parent Japanese game Puck Man Japan Set 1 (puckman.zip).

Double Dragon US sets 1, 2 and 3 (ddragonu.zip ddragonua.zip ddragonub.zip) are clones of the parent Japanese game Double Dragon (ddragon,zip).

Thanks spycat, OK I went away and tried to educate myself on this, I've been using Mamedb.org and Mame UI to browse clones, but there's still no way to find out the parent rom for a specific rom if you don't already know it.  Also if the Launchbox filter was working as it should, if it saw Pac-Man as a clone of Puck Man, it should have prioritised the "North American" version "Pac-Man" and ignored Puck Man... but if it saw them as different games, then it should have both Puck Man and Pac-Man, and not cull the latter... very strange.

45 minutes ago, Kondorito said:

I had a similar problem, so I used my MAME custom xml, and with a tool called Hyperchecker I moved out all unneeded rom zip files from the folder (the ones not present in the xml), and then i dragged and dropped all the wanted rom zips in LB, imported with no skips, no prioritizations, forced duped names, etc.

That way I got my wanted full parents set + clones worth playing, and reduced the 34k zip files whole set to over 3k only, and no missing games. 

Thank you, that is good to know that exists.  But from what you're saying, it seems you still need to go through some manual curation, and then Hyperchecker will just cull out the roms you haven't selected?  I was kinda hoping LaunchBox's filter would work as designed, filtering out clones, fruit games, etc. leaving all the games I know, and also lots of playable games I hadn't heard of so I can explore the library.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Domarius

[Kondorito]

The xml i have is one of the many that come zipped in a monthly release (in sync with every MAME release) by the user phulshof over the RetroFE and Hyperspin forums. It is a zip file with ALL the possible game combinations (genres, players, etc). There are also some combinations that have the "clones worth playing" added which among others, have pacman, double dragon, all the 4 player games that come in a 2 player mode (tmnt, ssriders, simpsons, etc). Highly recommended and worth checking (until at least LB finds a better way to import MAME sets).

[Domarius]

I just checked that out, and man, that's a really impressive amount of work.  I see that he wrote a custom C++ program to help him compile all the variations of XMLs.

I think I worked around my current situation in Launchbox by checking the "Combine games with identical titles into one game" on the screen before the arcade import options, and then specifying "Import all roms regardless of clones", I THINK that's done the trick, because I can see all the games that I think should be there, and at the same time, I only have one Pac-Man, etc.  But if I have any more problems, I'll be looking into your method.  It may be a bit more tedious but it has a high level of control and reliability, so I know that way will always work if I need to go that way.  Best part is I can see how it works - I have no idea what LaunchBox is doing under the hood to filter them!

By the way, your animated avatar, did you model that in Qubicle or something? It looks awesome

[Kondorito]

The avatar is a gif I found years ago and when making the LB profile saw it laying there and used it; not my creation. 

Glad you sorted it out Domarius  Even though you might never play all the MAME games in a lifetime, it messes your OCD knowing you are missing games there. 

 

[Domarius]

The main reason is I'm making an arcade interface that randomly plays different games on a timer, and you can jump in and play one if it looks good (and the timer will cancel), plus it has a list of games randomly shuffled - the idea is it makes it fun to see what kind of wacky games are out there, and it's starting to work.

I have a crappy basic site up at the moment at www.domariusgames.com but I'll make a dedicated site for the software within the month hopefully.   It's going to be an add on for LaunchBox.

[Mr. RetroLust]

Thank you all for this information, I'm in the same proces myself figuring out how this all works, this was quite helpful.