11.7 Beta Testing

[neil9000]

1 hour ago, mcfilmmakers said:

I really don't like that it's called MAME fullset importer... I don't have a fullset so it throws me off every single time.
That said, the fullset importer imports 0 games.

So i HAVE to use the regular import:
Import as roms
Platform: Temp
Scape As: none
Emulator: MAME
Use file sin current location
Search for game info in LBGD checked
Import all media
Force import duplicates
Import all clones
Skip nothing

Finds only 34 out of 130 roms.

If I drag the files into launchbox and import as none of the above using the same settings as above, I get the same result. Disabling search for game info gives the same result.

What are you actually trying to import? Cause if they dont work in MAME they will be skipped in the importer just like in a fullset import id expect as they are using the same metadata, also Platform as "Temp" and scrape as as "none" probably really isnt helping matters here either.

[mcfilmmakers]

9 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

What are you actually trying to import? Cause if they dont work in MAME they will be skipped in the importer just like in a fullset import id expect as they are using the same metadata, also Platform as "Temp" and scrape as as "none" probably really isnt helping matters here either.

With all due respect, a user can name their platform whatever they want. It should never prevent a rom from importing. If it does or even might, it's a problem. The same for the scraping as. Also, I already explained that I've tried scraping as arcade without any greater success.

If they don't work in MAME, that's fine. I want to import them anyway. I should add that some of those 30 games that are imported are identified as not working in the first place (such as a couple of electromechanical roms) so it still doesn't make sense. I've tried importing as non-mame files and they STILL won't import. I'm not sure why we're focusing so much on mame when they won't even import at all.

But to answer your question, I am importing the 225 update roms. I have ALWAYS imported the update roms into a Temp platform to cross reference against my existing MAME platform to merge new clones as there is no native way to "update" mame in Launchbox. This issue has only comue up with 225 and 11.7 so i'm stuck on being able to update my platform. I cannot simply reimport the platform as I would lose HUNDREDS of playlists and apparently, games, because Launchbox isn't letting me import everything in the first place.

Edited November 6, 2020 by mcfilmmakers

[neil9000]

2 minutes ago, mcfilmmakers said:

I'm not sure why we're focusing so much on mame when they won't even import at all.

Because MAME is different to all other systems with its romsets and its implementation into Launchbox, so its a valid thing to focus on.

[JoeViking245]

"Temp" and "none" worked on my 'test' of 54 MAME roms (dated April 2019. So whatever versions those came from).  [All 54 were imported properly]  Using LB 11.7.

Just thinking out loud.. maybe a [partially] corrupt data file or something?  Maybe reinstall 11.7 (over the top of your existing one)?  If you select a different emulator, will they "import" (all 130)?  Obviously they won't be named properly...

 

[mcfilmmakers]

15 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Because MAME is different to all other systems with its romsets and its implementation into Launchbox, so its a valid thing to focus on.

Except they should import even when I tell launchbox they are NOT mame roms but they don't.

[mcfilmmakers]

2 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

"Temp" and "none" worked on my 'test' of 54 MAME roms (dated April 2019. So whatever versions those came from).  [All 54 were imported properly]  Using LB 11.7.

Just thinking out loud.. maybe a [partially] corrupt data file or something?  Maybe reinstall 11.7 (over the top of your existing one)?  If you select a different emulator, will they "import" (all 130)?  Obviously they won't be named properly...

 

When i select a different emulator and a different platform (Temp 2), they finally import... but now the names are wrong (obviously).

Is there no way to import EVERYTHING from mame whether they work or not? The user should be allowed to do this. My guess is launchbox DB hasn't updated to the latest mame hence part the issue (for the names anyway + finding at least new working games)...

But why rely on launchbox DB updating to the latest set? Launchbox should be looking at the user's mame hash file to compare against the user's actual mame set. It should at least be a choice provided to the user. I'll submit a feature request on this.

I mean, I expect that when I import using mame metadata but tell it NOT to skip unplayable games, it should import everything, but it doesn't.
If I import without using mame metadata, it will import everything but I won't have any of the names that mame recognizes.

Surely there is a way to import everything, working or not, using mame metadata...

Edited November 6, 2020 by mcfilmmakers

[JoeViking245]

24 minutes ago, mcfilmmakers said:

the user's mame hash file

This is not generated by MAME by default.  LB would need to do something like "mame64 -lx >list.xml" to generate the 236MB file, then parse from that.

Are the 'missing' 100-ish files all 'brand new' to MAME 0.225?  As in maybe the LB data file is still on a previous version?

[mcfilmmakers]

Just now, JoeViking245 said:

This is not generated by MAME by default.  LB would need to do something like "mame64 -lx >list.xml" to generate the 236MB file, then parse from that.

Are the 'missing' 100-ish files all 'brand new' to MAME 0.225?  As in maybe the LB data file is still on a previous version?

I doubt the file is that large... Perhaps I am not using the right terminology. The user should be allowed to use the file they use with clrmamepro. Mine is 68MB.

They likely are, it is the update set. I have that assumption, that LBDB isn't up to date (two versions behind?) which is why the user should be given the option. I don't think launchbox should be bearing that responsibility in the first place to be honest... just make the user use the dat file on import.

[DOS76]

is LB even working off of 225 yet maybe that is the problem

 

[darreldearth]

been trying to figure it out all night but I cant get the theme specific views to work. Been using the unified theme, but when trying any other theme downloaded through the website if I change the views within the new theme then it messes up the views within the original Unified theme. do the themes need to be installed through the theme manager within bigbox to have theme specific settings? kuz so far ive just been downloading the themes through the website and dropping the folders into the themes folder.

[mcfilmmakers]

On 11/6/2020 at 1:42 PM, DOS76 said:

is LB even working off of 225 yet maybe that is the problem

 

That's what we're getting at - users who want to keep mame up to date have to do so by updating through every version between their current set and the latest set. Without a way of knowing what the current launchbox supported set is, users have to guess. Most of that time, the guess would be wrong. In this case, Mame is at version 226 and launchbox would appear to still be at 224. If a user updates to 225, such as I did, they can't know that they went too far without running into this problem I experienced. That's where letting the user use their own dat file comes in handy.

I don't want to have to update through 3 iterations of mame updates at once. I also don't want to have to guess when to do it either. It's an issue.

 

Edited November 7, 2020 by mcfilmmakers

[Grila]

9 minutes ago, mcfilmmakers said:

That's what we're getting at - users who want to keep mame up to date have to do so by updating through every version between their current set and the latest set. Without a way of knowing what the current launchbox supported set is, users have to guess. Most of that time, the guess would be wrong. In this case, Mame is at version 226 and launchbox would appear to still be at 224. If a user updates to 225, such as I did, they can't know that they went too far without running into this problem I experienced. That's where letting the user use their own dat file comes in handy.

I don't want to have to update through 3 iterations of mame updates at once. I also don't want to have to guess when to do it either. It's an issue.

 

I'm going to have to agree. As far as I can tell, there isn't even a way to see what version of MAME LaunchBox is currently on so you're left guessing.

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, Grila said:

As far as I can tell, there isn't even a way to see what version of MAME LaunchBox is currently on

Where there's a will, there's a way.  The current LaunchBox MAME metadata is for MAME revision 0.224.

Spoiler

Search mame.xml (by FileName) for new working machines for a specific revision.  0.224 - success. 0.225 - fail.

But you're all correct, nowhere is it spelled out which release LB is currently using.

[DOS76]

Yeah I could see this being something that could be added in the about page or somewhere else but users might find that data helpful.

[Drybonz]

On 11/6/2020 at 1:42 PM, DOS76 said:

is LB even working off of 225 yet maybe that is the problem

 

It does... I'm using a full 225 set now.  (I should add I'm not on the beta, though).

Edited November 8, 2020 by Drybonz

[JoeViking245]

@Drybonz  You did a MAME Arcade Full Set Import using 0.225?   Did it import "Super Bubble Bobble" by Sum Mixing using the Parent rom "sbubsm"?

[Drybonz]

1 hour ago, JoeViking245 said:

@Drybonz  You did a MAME Arcade Full Set Import using 0.225?   Did it import "Super Bubble Bobble" by Sum Mixing using the Parent rom "sbubsm"?

I just checked.  It did not import Super Bubble Bobble... however, there's been problems with incomplete MAME imports well beyond 225.  There was discussion about it earlier in the beta thread.  I don't know if it's the same issues, but the MAME imports have been incomplete for a while.  It's a small number of games, so it's easy to overlook.  My MAME set hasn't been the same since Lightspeed was broken when the directory structure all changed a couple years ago.

[Grila]

That's the point of this discussion though...LaunchBox shouldn't be dependent on whatever version it's own database is on and we shouldn't have to wait for it to be updated. It should use a user generated list.xml like almost every other front-end uses.

For example...

Right now I'm on MAME 0.225. I use Arcade64 with a non-merged romset. In Arcade64 it shows I have 9545 working and available games. I wrote a batch file to copy all 9545 files to a different directory. When I import that directory with 9545 files into Launchbox, I uncheck all the boxes (non-working, casino, mahjong, etc.) and set it to import all clones. Launchbox only imports 9508 because it's depending on it's own, modified metadata for MAME (which we don't know what version it's on). If LaunchBox didn't try to re-invent the wheel and instead just used a list.xml that I would generate myself from my chosen romset, I would have all 9545 imported.

And I get it, so what is a few roms don't import. But that's not the point...if I want to import 9545 roms and LaunchBox won't do it, then it's a problem.

 

And just to add, I've been a community member here for some time and have contributed plenty. This isn't an attack on LB or Jason. I love the software and use it daily as many of us do and I appreciate all the hard work he puts in providing features that the community wants.

Edited November 8, 2020 by Grila

[Retro808]

Here is a quote from Jason taken from this thread. Figure I would post it so you can see the process Jason takes as it pertains to the Mame file LB reads. Jason is not simply using the Mame data alone.

My recommendation if you have further responses related to this topic please post there since it is not a beta related issue/concern.

On 5/20/2020 at 3:26 PM, Jason Carr said:

We do need a good way to communicate with users what the current supported MAME version is, yes. The hardest thing that we have to deal with is the fact that we rely on several other data sources (such as catver.ini from Progetto-Snaps) and these are all manually updated by humans, after each MAME release. Some of them are updated sooner than others (some of them take a week or more to update, for instance).

What I generally do is wait a day or two after the official MAME release each month, and then update all the files that are available. It is possible to just update the data from MAME itself, and then the rest of the data can be updated when they're available. This means that for new games, the new games may be available, but might be missing some metadata until after the third-party sources update their files.

I know this seems like a big mess (and it is), but trust me, I put tremendous amounts of research into this when I built it; it's really the best option for accurate MAME data, and the code that we built to combine it all together is gold.

[Grila]

2 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

Here is a quote from Jason taken from this thread. Figure I would post it so you can see the process Jason takes as it pertains to the Mame file LB reads. Jason is not simply using the Mame data alone.

My recommendation if you have further responses related to this topic please post there since it is not a beta related issue/concern.

I get it...but the code being "gold" doesn't matter if the update process on the dev's end doesn't happen (which appears to be the case here, since MAME is up to 0.226 now and the database is seemingly at 0.224). Also, those files are readily available to the public, so just let the user define their list.xml, catver.ini, etc and it won't matter what version of MAME they are trying to import...