Retool: a 1G1R tool for Redump and No-Intro

[jaerik]

Wanted to thank you for this!  Been having way too many versions and this is just amazing to me.

 

[unexpectedpanda]

4 hours ago, jaerik said:

Wanted to thank you for this!  Been having way too many versions and this is just amazing to me.

 

You're welcome :)

[BlockABoots]

Any chance of a quick guide how to do a 1G1R dat for Final Burn Neo??. I have created a DAT (arcade only) file from FBN program itself and imported that into the latest build at the time of this post and left everything as default (as it seems to have selected the correct order Region and Languages) selected process DAT bus the command window says,

"No titles in the input DAT match your preferences. No DAT file has been created."

Any ideas?

 

[unexpectedpanda]

43 minutes ago, BlockABoots said:

Any chance of a quick guide how to do a 1G1R dat for Final Burn Neo??. I have created a DAT (arcade only) file from FBN program itself and imported that into the latest build at the time of this post and left everything as default (as it seems to have selected the correct order Region and Languages) selected process DAT bus the command window says,

"No titles in the input DAT match your preferences. No DAT file has been created."

Any ideas?

 

Retool only supports No-Intro and Redump DAT files. Here's why FinalBurn Neo and MAME aren't supported, from another feature request I had:

Quote

There's a reason there isn't a decent 1G1R solution for MAME/FBNeo DAT files -- the data structure doesn't lend itself to that sort of processing. The lack of naming standard in the DAT descriptions makes it extremely challenging to automate anything, meaning the most likely path for filtering is an inflexible, curated, massive, and high-effort list that needs frequent updating.

In short, the DAT files are built to service the emulator, not user customization. Deduping or filtering beyond parent/clone wasn't a thing they had in mind when designing the format, and even then that relationship was only established to facilitate split sets. I don't see the situation changing either -- useful filter tools like catver. ini are still separate from MAME and updated by an external party manually, decades later. I think I've seen some MAME developer resistance too in regards to letting users split arcade from software lists -- filtering just doesn't seem to be part of the ethos.

On a personal note, supporting No-Intro and Redump already takes up significant amounts of my time.

I can definitely understand the desire for this, but the combination of unsuitable source data and time expense makes it infeasible for the foreseeable future.

TOSEC is also not supported:

Quote

Support is technically possible, but largely pointless to implement without also supplying clone lists. This isn't a small effort — with over 3,000 TOSEC DAT files as of 2022, and with TOSEC's tendency to include many, many variants, there'd have to be significant community effort not only to bridge that gap, but to test the clone lists too. At this point in time, the momentum doesn't exist to justify the work.

 

Edited January 7 by unexpectedpanda