My Launchbox "Lite" Build

[Mozzers101]

Hello all,

I am wondering if the collective minds of the forum can help me with some suggestions. I have a large Launchbox build (which I'll call "OG Launchbox") which has pretty much every game I can throw at it installed and I am currently working on a "lite" edition which will only contain games that I have rated at 3.5 stars or above.

I am looking for a less labour intensive way of achieving this. Currently I am adding roms manually by picking them out from the "OG Launchbox" Games folders by eye and adding them to the "Lite" versions Game folders and then importing them which is taking a long time. In addition I am trying to do the same with MAME which is even more labour intensive as I am trying to get all variations of the ROM for the build (for example importing both the 2-player and 4-player Simpsons game). Currently it involves looking into the "Additional Apps" section of the game properties and picking them out individually from the Roms folder. A huge task.

What I am asking for is if anyone has any idea of a tool I can use to scan my Launchbox games and copy & export any ROM files that have been rated at 3.5 stars or above so I can just drop them into the games folder of my "Lite" Launchbox build. Alternatively if anyone has any suggestions of how I can achieve the same goal with a different method from the one I have stated above I would be really pleased to hear it.

Thank you to anyone that takes the time to read this. I post rarely but have read the forum plenty and this is a great community.

[CriticalCid]

Honestly, the easiest way I could think of would be to copy your entire "OG LB" setup to another destination / drive.

Go to the LB options of your copy and activate “Allow deleting ROMs when deleting games”. Now sort your games by star ratings and delete all games you don’t want in your lite setup.

Once you’re done, I would run the “Scan for Added ROMs” and “Clean Up Media” tasks to identify any potential leftovers. In case of the ROMs you'll have to delete them manually from your folders, unfortunately.

A platform that will most definitely cause issues is MAME, if you don’t use a non-merged set. In this case I would either just stick with the full set or grab a non-merged set and replace it with your current MAME ROMs. Handpicking / Deleting MAME ROMs from a split or merged set can cause missing BIOS and game files. Keep in mind that you'll still have tons of casino, mahjong, etc. stuff in your MAME ROMs folder if you have skipped them on import. The cleanest way would be to re-import a non-merged set and don't let LB skip anything. With this method you can also delete those unwanted casino ROMs inside LB as well.

An alternative would be to use the All Killer no Filler batch files to filter your non-merged set and then re-import just those ROMs: 

 

Also CD-based platforms can be tricky if you store them unzipped in a multi file format, like .bin+.cue. In this case it would be faster to stick to your current workflow for said platforms.

 

Be aware that this approach only works if you have all your games inside your LB folder and not anywhere else! Otherwise you will delete the ROMs from both of your setups!

[Mozzers101]

Hiya there @CriticalCid.

Thanks very much for your thoughts - I'd come to some similar conclusions myself. I will definitely look into the NoFiller Mame setup though - might be just the comprmise I need. Now, to set about my task.

Thanks again for the response - it is appreciated.