aramis Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 HI all, I discovered LaunchBox today and jumped in with both feet by purchasing the "forever" license. But, I'm having some issues that I haven't been able to fix even after searching here and watching as many relevant tutorials as I could find. Hopefully my purchase allows me a stupid newbie question or two. I swear I searched first though! I've been using MAME since version 0.38 but am brand new to LaunchBox. My MAME is updated to MAME 0.199 My issue: When selecting MAME as the emulator for Software List roms, Launchbox seems to only import those software list-type roms that ALSO have a zip file name that exactly matches a MAME arcade rom zip name. I've been focusing on the Apple IIe system as an example, and the game Oregon Trail specifically as a test case. It appears that Launchbox is using some internal MAME list or database, perhaps limited to arcade games only, and not referencing MAME's built-in xml's (either generated by the binary or from the MAME\hash folder) for games supported per system? Probably important details: 1) I have confirmed that I have MAME 0.199 configured properly. From a command prompt, entering: mame64 apple2e -flop1 oregontr.zip launches the game properly through MAME bringing up the game on the Apple 2e system. 2) MAME itself is configured with 2 ROM paths: one that includes arcade game roms and systems, and the second is just the software list roms folder. (MAME requires that or it can't find the Apple 2e system to "boot" with.) 3) I created a "custom" named emulator in LaunchBox, named MAME-SL, before importing ROMs in case the reserved emulator name "MAME" forced a focus on arcade games only. That didn't seem to make any difference. 4) My "MAME-SL" emulator is associated to the built-in "Apple II" platform as the default emulator per my Edit Emulator/Associated Platforms dialog window. 5) Under Edit Emulator/Associated Platforms for my "MAME-SL" emulator, the Apple II platform has been given command line parameters: apple2e -flop1 6) Having the MAME-SL emulator set up (or picking the standard MAME emulator) and then Importing my Apple 2e roms (pointing the importer to just the apple2 rom folder), not even 10% of them are imported. 7) The ones that are imported seem to coincidentally have zip names that exactly match MAME arcade rom zip names (arkanoid.zip, asteroid.zip, pacman.zip, etc.) Only 54 are imported. 8. Launching any of those 54 that did get imported does launch the Apple2e system & game properly. 9) During import, I turn off all scraping / metadata and also tell it to take all clones, no skipping, etc. Am I missing something? Is there a way, during import, to point LaunchBox to a specific xml for that system? Or, can LaunchBox be modified to do a "real time" mame64.exe -listsoftware <system> or mame64.exe -getsoftlist <system> list generation so that software list roms can be imported properly? (-listsoftware may just regurgitate the same .xml from the standard MAME\hash folder, I haven't confirmed that yet. Or, maybe -getsoftlist is the right parameter...I haven't found documentation explaining the difference between the two parameters yet). Thanks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 There is currently no support for Software List though it is on the list of things to be done to overhaul MAME which is outdated and using data from 0.174 or 0.175 I can never remember which one it is. Hopefully this will be changed soonish be until then you will have to hang on and wait patiently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aramis Posted July 16, 2018 Author Share Posted July 16, 2018 Ah, OK...thank you. I assumed that since I was able to import SOME of the Apple2e games relatively easily, that I must have been missing the option that would allow ALL the games to be imported. The games that did import all worked fine. I'll have to do some more reading...I'm curious why there is a reliance on old MAME data to begin with, as opposed to using the MAME binary that the user points to...since MAME includes or can always generate it's own xml's. Maybe it's all the other metadata that's the issue? Thanks again for letting me know I wasn't missing something... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thegreatiandi Posted July 17, 2018 Share Posted July 17, 2018 On 7/15/2018 at 5:36 PM, aramis said: HI all, I discovered LaunchBox today and jumped in with both feet by purchasing the "forever" license. But, I'm having some issues that I haven't been able to fix even after searching here and watching as many relevant tutorials as I could find. Hopefully my purchase allows me a stupid newbie question or two. I swear I searched first though! I've been using MAME since version 0.38 but am brand new to LaunchBox. My MAME is updated to MAME 0.199 It appears that Launchbox is using some internal MAME list or database, perhaps limited to arcade games only, and not referencing MAME's built-in xml's (either generated by the binary or from the MAME\hash folder) for games supported per system? 9) During import, I turn off all scraping / metadata and also tell it to take all clones, no skipping, etc. Welcome to the fold...I'm with you as a newbie myself. So i just updated to MAME 0.199 myself a few hours ago. I did the none merged set ( Not sure which one you did ). I just noticed that there are SOOOOOOO many more files this go-round and so much of it seems to differ when i cross reference with the old set i have. Have you noticed any newer games with this update, any games that appear to run better or perhaps any issues? Take a look at the snap i took of what i mean: The scraping you are referring to....this is for game data, yes? Coming from building 4-5 raspberry pie units, thats a term i associate with emulation station. If it's the same thing-esq, then it gives you either still images of the games or a video snap, yeah? And you have the ability to skip clones??? So like, street fighter 3... there is usually 6 different versions downloaded of the same game....but some are from Brazil, Japan, USA, etc. Are you saying it allows you to not even see these other versions, or it only gathers images/video for one of the versions, but you still see them all??? By the way, the forums are awesome here. Moderators that are super active and jump in to help out all the time. I should know...i feel like a case study by now?? lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eustonr Posted April 27, 2020 Share Posted April 27, 2020 I realise that this is an old thread from 2 years ago, but this is still a problem. MAME SLs still dont seem to be supported as yet. I can create launchers for specific games by hand of course, and import some of the available games - but thats not great. I suppose I could code a script to generate a launchbox playlist from a mame software list xml as a workaround - that seems possible at least - maybe someone cleverer than me has already done that? Does anyone know? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted April 27, 2020 Share Posted April 27, 2020 6 minutes ago, eustonr said: I realise that this is an old thread from 2 years ago, but this is still a problem. MAME SLs still dont seem to be supported as yet. I can create launchers for specific games by hand of course, and import some of the available games - but thats not great. I suppose I could code a script to generate a launchbox playlist from a mame software list xml as a workaround - that seems possible at least - maybe someone cleverer than me has already done that? Does anyone know? Correct, software lists are not officially supported. However there is a plugin in the download section that should do what you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eustonr Posted April 27, 2020 Share Posted April 27, 2020 Thank you so much! It works a treat, and exactly what I was after... 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.