MAME Rom Not Imported

[Drybonz]

I did a full MAME set import today, and as I was checking through it after it was done I noticed that the original 1978 Space Invaders parent (rom name "invaders") did not import.  I did a manual import for that single file and then it imported properly.  Have not checked any other individual games yet... but is this a glitch, or did I somehow filter it out during the full MAME set import?  If so, what would filter it out as it is the parent rom?

Thanks for the help.

[sundogak]

At least on a World or North America import, LB picks the clone Cosmic Monsters as the default for the large group of Invaders games rather than Space Invaders.  Going to the additional Apps and setting as default fixes it.  So next import, look for Cosmic Monsters and then under Additional Apps should see it.  Looks like it is picking alphabetical versus the parent for some reason in LB. 

Edited August 10, 2020 by sundogak

[Drybonz]

Thanks for the reply.  So, this is affecting other roms as well?  That's probably something that should be looked at to be fixed for the MAME importing.

[sundogak]

Suspect there may be others but I haven't really looked/ran into them.  Just noticeable for something "famous" like Space Invaders.  Jason would have to weigh in on question of fixing. I did see in the beta thread he mentioned looking at how betas/prototypes get prioritized in additional apps where betas get set as default. But that wouldn't necessarily fix this issue since related to parent versus clone priority. 

[Jason Carr]

@C-Beats and I dove into this. For some reason, the MAME metadata for "invaders" does not have any region attached to it, whereas "cosmicmo" has North America, so that is why it's being prioritized over the original Space Invaders. From what I can tell, this is a pretty rare issue across the data, but I do see the problem here. The question is whether we can change that logic without screwing up other things. We don't control or manage the MAME metadata (of course), so we have to use and follow what we have.

The only idea I have is to ignore the region prioritization specifically when a clone's parent does not have a region, but unfortunately I suspect that that is likely to mess up some other currently properly prioritized games.

[mcfilmmakers]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

@C-Beats and I dove into this. For some reason, the MAME metadata for "invaders" does not have any region attached to it, whereas "cosmicmo" has North America, so that is why it's being prioritized over the original Space Invaders. From what I can tell, this is a pretty rare issue across the data, but I do see the problem here. The question is whether we can change that logic without screwing up other things. We don't control or manage the MAME metadata (of course), so we have to use and follow what we have.

The only idea I have is to ignore the region prioritization specifically when a clone's parent does not have a region, but unfortunately I suspect that that is likely to mess up some other currently properly prioritized games.

Or leave the choice up to the user to determine priority order in the import wizard.

I also noticed in 11.2 that the metadata for more obscure platforms are assigned to whatever game launchbox thinks is best, even if the title is singificantly different.

Example: Amstrad PCW is set to scan as Amstrad CPC. Launchbox assigns a game called Flip 'Em to game ID 175809, which is called Super Flippard for Amstrad CPC. While I do expect it to look for the game in Amstrad CPC, it shouldn't have matched the two games at all.

[Drybonz]

4 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

The only idea I have is to ignore the region prioritization specifically when a clone's parent does not have a region, but unfortunately I suspect that that is likely to mess up some other currently properly prioritized games.

I would take another look at the old "lightspeed" app, which nailed the MAME importing and filtering perfectly, and see how he did it.