MAME importer not importing all games

[GiSWiG]

I've updated my MAME set to 0.220, although I don't believe that changes anything other than Launchbox won't recognize new additions until the next LB update. This also involves a game that has been part of MAME since the 0.030's versions.

I follow a process that I found on Youtube that works quite well for stripping out games that either don't work or are mechanical, fruit, casino, etc. I import the full set in a full non-merged state and I choose to import all games as separate apps and uncheck Skip Mature Games (only because some are quite fun even though they might be a little sexist, most of the time they are japanese uncovering women in swinware you would see at the beach, anyway...) After that is imported, I export/Copy the resulting games to a different folder, use scripts to copy the matching CHD folders, remove the existing MAME import in LB and then import the exported set with clones as additional apps. 

After the first import, I get 6,000 and change games. MAME reports over 8,000 working, non-mechanical games. I'm sure that might include some casino, playchoice, etc. games but I found one that works in MAME but doesn't get imported into Launchbox; 280zzzap. Its really nothing special, probably won't play it but it is just an example. In Launchbox's mame.xml, the game is false for all categories so it should come through. What could be stopping it, and I'm pretty sure it is, is it's Imperfect status. That doesn't make it 'Not Working' in MAME's eyes but most likely does in LB. It does work in MAME and in retroarch mame_libretro. It is imperfect because of sound but it plays.

I guess it's Imperfect status in LB's MAME.XML is what is stopping it from importing. I could replace the word Imperfect with good in the mame.xml and it would import it but I'm sure I'd get a lot of games that have some real problems, working but barely playable. 280zzzap is playable, just no sound.

Maybe this is an enhancement request but I think instead of having just 'exclude all not working games' maybe LB could have the various levels of 'working' available to be checked? How about having checkboxes for each level of status so not-working can be excluded but imperfect could be included? Maybe some people are picky enough to include only games better than good? For now, you could just work around this by replacing all instances of imperfect with good and roll the dice.

[neil9000]

15 minutes ago, GiSWiG said:

I follow a process that I found on Youtube that works quite well for stripping out games that either don't work or are mechanical, fruit, casino, etc.

The Launcbox fullset importer does this automatically. If you leave all the options at default it will only import known working games, and it will exclude all the mechanical, mahjong  etc. You will have around 2800 games after import, all of which will work.

[GiSWiG]

1 minute ago, neil9000 said:

The Launcbox fullset importer does this automatically. If you leave all the options at default it will only import known working games, and it will exclude all the mechanical, mahjong  etc. You will have around 2800 games after import, all of which will work.

I should have said that I use this process to copy out only the working roms. The full set including all the undesirable games is almost 800GB. Using this process, I get it down to 300GB. After the initial import of from the full set, I use LB to Export/Copy the roms to the folder that LB will ultimately be using and copy the matching CHDs. Then I remove the 500GB of excess rom files.