Multiple MAME Versions

[Gildahl]

I'm strongly considering moving to BigBox for my arcade machine, but I have one big question.  How does LaunchBox/BigBox deal with multiple mame versions?

I have multiple parallel MAME versions in order to support certain games that run best in older versions; yet I want all of my mame games to appear in a single list.  Can this be done?  In my current frontend, I can just merge the lists from multiple emulators, so just wondering if LB/BB can do this sort of thing.

[neil9000]

11 minutes ago, Gildahl said:

I'm strongly considering moving to BigBox for my arcade machine, but I have one big question.  How does LaunchBox/BigBox deal with multiple mame versions?

I have multiple parallel MAME versions in order to support certain games that run best in older versions; yet I want all of my mame games to appear in a single list.  Can this be done?  In my current frontend, I can just merge the lists from multiple emulators, so just wondering if LB/BB can do this sort of thing.

You can add as many versions of MAME as you like, they will just need to be named slightly differently in each case, so MAME 1 MAME 2 etc or whatever you want.

[Gildahl]

And the games can all appear in a single list?  

Assuming so, does this have to be done on a game-by-game basis, or can I simply combine lists.  So for example if I have 500 games in c:\MAME1\roms and 500 games in c:\MAME2\roms, I can just have it merge the two lists together rather than have to change the game-specific configurations for 500 games?

[neil9000]

30 minutes ago, Gildahl said:

And the games can all appear in a single list?  

Assuming so, does this have to be done on a game-by-game basis, or can I simply combine lists.  So for example if I have 500 games in c:\MAME1\roms and 500 games in c:\MAME2\roms, I can just have it merge the two lists together rather than have to change the game-specific configurations for 500 games?

The easiest way to do what you want would probably be to import them with slightly different platform names, this way you can import the games with the emulator version you want. Then after they are imported you can bulk edit them and change the platform. So you would import say Arcade and then import Arcade 2, when its imported with the different emulator associated you can click a game then CTRL A to highlite all the games, then right click edit to open the bulk edit wizard, choose platform from the dropdown then the platform to change to in the second dropdown.

[garrett521]

2 hours ago, neil9000 said:

The easiest way to do what you want would probably be to import them with slightly different platform names, this way you can import the games with the emulator version you want. Then after they are imported you can bulk edit them and change the platform. So you would import say Arcade and then import Arcade 2, when its imported with the different emulator associated you can click a game then CTRL A to highlite all the games, then right click edit to open the bulk edit wizard, choose platform from the dropdown then the platform to change to in the second dropdown.

neil9000, would the this method also bring all the artwork and videos associate with those games over to the new platform as well?  Or, would using this method require changing the names of those files/move the media over to the other platform?  Thanks.

[neil9000]

2 minutes ago, garrett521 said:

neil9000, would the this method also bring all the artwork and videos associate with those games over to the new platform as well?  Or, would using this method require changing the names of those files/move the media over to the other platform?  Thanks.

You would need to copy those across, you can just highlite all the image type folders and paste them to the other platform and merging if prompted.

[garrett521]

7 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

You would need to copy those across, you can just highlite all the image type folders and paste them to the other platform and merging if prompted.

Great.  Thanks.

[Gildahl]

2 hours ago, neil9000 said:

The easiest way to do what you want would probably be to import them with slightly different platform names, this way you can import the games with the emulator version you want. Then after they are imported you can bulk edit them and change the platform. So you would import say Arcade and then import Arcade 2, when its imported with the different emulator associated you can click a game then CTRL A to highlite all the games, then right click edit to open the bulk edit wizard, choose platform from the dropdown then the platform to change to in the second dropdown.

Thanks.  Sounds reasonable.  I'll give it a try.

[Gildahl]

Ok, I tried this and it worked.  I liked the product quite a bit, so I purchased a lifetime license.  So I have an additional related question now.  

I created my "Arcade" platform list, which consists of a list of games using a mix of emulators (i.e. some using MAME_145, some using MAME_202, etc.), I would now like to be able to filter this list by emulator (say, if I wanted to do a bulk edit of the command line for Mame 202 games, or do a bulk migration of Mame 202 games to a future version of mame), but I don't see "Emulator" as a filtering option in the LaunchBox pull-down list.  Perhaps I'm just missing it?  A work-around is to add a custom field called "Emulator", always fill it in, and create an auto-populate playlist from it. That's fine, but its extra maintenance that I'd like to avoid if possible.

Thanks! 

Edited July 12, 2019 by Gildahl

[Gildahl]

Well, guess I figured it out.  Don't need the custom playlist after all--I just needed to restart LB to see that the custom field and all its values are inserted into the filter list automatically, so now I can easily filter by Emulator.  Cool.

Edited July 13, 2019 by Gildahl