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Possible to shrink MAME full set size?


rowdyreverb

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I have the full 60 GB set of MAME roms on an external HDD. I'd like to be able to copy just the parents to my LaunchBox folder while skipping the casino games, fruit games, handheld games, etc. so that I'm not wasting a bunch of space on my internal drive. Is this possible in 8.6 premium? I couldn't find an option in the MAME full set import feature to copy to library. 

Thanks!

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11 minutes ago, rowdyreverb said:

I have the full 60 GB set of MAME roms on an external HDD. I'd like to be able to copy just the parents to my LaunchBox folder while skipping the casino games, fruit games, handheld games, etc. so that I'm not wasting a bunch of space on my internal drive. Is this possible in 8.6 premium? I couldn't find an option in the MAME full set import feature to copy to library. 

Thanks!

MAME is very complicated in that regard with lots of the files needing other files in the set in order to function. So unfortunately that's not easy to manage, and LaunchBox doesn't offer that option for that reason.

There are custom smaller sets of MAME ROMs available, but you might have a hard time customizing your own set (though I'm sure it is possible).

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19 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

MAME is very complicated in that regard with lots of the files needing other files in the set in order to function. So unfortunately that's not easy to manage, and LaunchBox doesn't offer that option for that reason.

There are custom smaller sets of MAME ROMs available, but you might have a hard time customizing your own set (though I'm sure it is possible).

 

16 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

Yeah doing this for Split and Merged sets would be extremely difficult. Non Merged would be much easier to do this with but that full set is 110 gigs to download and store.

Thank you for the quick response. What about moving the full set into my LaunchBox folder, importing the full set with the non-casino, non-handheld, etc. restrictions, and then running some kind of clean up to delete those files from my LaunchBox folder which are not in my library? Is that possible?

 

Edit: Oh, I see what you're saying. The Split set is already a pared down version in a way, and picking and choosing could break certain games if I understand correctly

Edited by rowdyreverb
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The problem is that the Split and Merged sets have files that aren't actual game roms but are required for certain games to work. Neogeo.zip and Qsound.zip are just 2 examples, these 2 bios files are required for NeoGeo and Capcom CPS2 games to work, there are others as well but that's the main obvious ones.

It is possible to do what you are asking I am sure but it would be an annoying task to do. If you want a pared down set I would suggest getting a Non Merged set and pull individual rom files out of that and build your customized set, I have done this for my No Filler project.

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1 minute ago, Lordmonkus said:

The problem is that the Split and Merged sets have files that aren't actual game roms but are required for certain games to work. Neogeo.zip and Qsound.zip are just 2 examples, these 2 bios files are required for NeoGeo and Capcom CPS2 games to work, there are others as well but that's the main obvious ones.

It is possible to do what you are asking I am sure but it would be an annoying task to do. If you want a pared down set I would suggest getting a Non Merged set and pull individual rom files out of that and build your customized set, I have done this for my No Filler project.

Yeah that makes sense, and maybe I could look into making my own smaller non-merged set down the road.

As an alternative, how does LaunchBox handle ROMs on removable media? Would LaunchBox throw a bunch of errors if it opens and the MAME set is missing? And would it welcome the files back into the fold if I reconnected the drive?

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2 hours ago, Kondorito said:

3000 roms, reducing the size substantially. 

I dont know if sharing my LB data file or my process (it involves custom a XML file and Hyperspin tools) will help you. 

Let me know. 

Thank you for the offer, very kind. It sounds a bit beyond my skill level though. For now, I think I'll just keep my MAME library on an external drive and plug it in when I want to play something

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I used a few tools as well from the hyperspin days.  don's list thing to get all the weird crap out, then some program that looked for the files that matched that xml in my mame directory and copied them out into another folder.  Then i could delete everything (minus the bios stuff) that didn't get copied (didn't match the xml) and then re-copy the small set back into the mame directory.  It was a merged set too, and haven't run into any troubles in I think 3 years now.  But yeah, it definitely is a process.  They really should break out all the mahjong, casino, etc., out into it's own set from the beginning. 

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I've thought they should break out genres in the download for MAME also but then thought the reason they don't do that is because then no one would be downloading them so they make sure that all the files are getting distributed by keeping them all in the same pack.

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