"Unplayable" MAME games overlap SoftwareList games

[jan.axhell]

2 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Launchbox gets that info from the mame.exe itself. If the MAME devs consider a game to be unplayable im going to tend to believe that, they know far more than i about how good the actual emulation of a game is. By the way Launchbox imports around 2800 fully working Arcade roms, more than enough to be getting on with, and as i say is exactly how many the MAME devs themselves list as working.

Yes, my confusion comes from the fact that "unplayable arcade games" and "unplayable because not a game but a bios/hw component" fall in the same "unplayable" setting. The first is unplayable because still not well emulated, while the second has no means to be emulated, it's just a passive component of something else.

[JoeViking245]

55 minutes ago, jan.axhell said:

so there is NO way to automatically exclude non-arcade roms from import

Since LaunchBox gets the 'list' of roms from your copy/version of MAME (mame.exe -listfull), you could try using an Arcade Only version of MAME.

I don't know if you can find one that's already compiled for the release you're currently using.  But you could always compile your own.

make SUBTARGET=arcade

 

[jan.axhell]

2 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

Since LaunchBox gets the 'list' of roms from your copy/version of MAME (mame.exe -listfull), you could try using an Arcade Only version of MAME.

I don't know if you can find one that's already compiled for the release you're currently using.  But you could always compile your own.

make SUBTARGET=arcade

 

The DAT file I used was supposed to be Arcade only, but apparently was not (and I wonder then what's the difference with the other DATs in the same archive). Maybe I'll try arcade64, I think it's a precompiled build with that argument. 

[JoeViking245]

I don't know how to use dat files in conjunction with the Full Set Importer.  You could create one though at Arcade Database and filter only for Arcade.  You can also filter for Emulations Status: All, Working Only, Working and Imperfect...   and all sorts of other good stuff.  

The DAT file output is formatted for CrlMAMEPro (if that matters) and you can specify which MAME release/version you need it for.

[jan.axhell]

I have rescanned my set with arcade64.exe (on ClrMamePro): so far it removed about 20.000 out of 30.000+ roms, which supposedly means it cleaned up all the non-arcade stuff. Now I have started a Full Mame set Import based on arcade64.exe instead of mame.exe. When it's finished, I'll see what happens launching the Scan Removed roms. 

 

EDIT

Well, better than before, only 3985 roms imported, but still a lot of non arcade stuff. I honestly don't understand why things like "Amiga 2000 Keyboard" are indexed inside Arcade64. I haven't found the "System / Device" section in LB, I'll try to manually clean what I can. I have applied Scan Removed Roms, but those roms are actually present in the arcade64 set, I have to delete them from HDD.

Edited May 14, 2021 by jan.axhell

[TathanLIVE]

On 5/14/2021 at 6:56 PM, jan.axhell said:

I have rescanned my set with arcade64.exe (on ClrMamePro): so far it removed about 20.000 out of 30.000+ roms, which supposedly means it cleaned up all the non-arcade stuff. Now I have started a Full Mame set Import based on arcade64.exe instead of mame.exe. When it's finished, I'll see what happens launching the Scan Removed roms. 

 

EDIT

Well, better than before, only 3985 roms imported, but still a lot of non arcade stuff. I honestly don't understand why things like "Amiga 2000 Keyboard" are indexed inside Arcade64. I haven't found the "System / Device" section in LB, I'll try to manually clean what I can. I have applied Scan Removed Roms, but those roms are actually present in the arcade64 set, I have to delete them from HDD.

Hey, I've been messing around for that quite a time too now (seeing that some of those "unplayable games" are even easy to play with other emulators, I had done some subfolders with them and .symblinks). But I've to say that I'm pretty tired and it made my updates a little more difficult so I'm gonna start from scratch once again.

Did you find any better solution? Or could I help you with it? Hope you are doing well.

By the way, a lot of those unplayable games don't have media, so what I did once was just to remove all the games that had 0 media, the issue is that even some of those files have Mame screenshots when it's said that they don't work.

[Aevans0001]

I am having this same exact problem.  Except I am using just using a complete romset from PD.  When i uncheck skip unplayable games (there are a lot of games that are playable in this list but not complete or has distortion), it gives me 10,000extra files.  Now most of these files are not GAMES at all.  

 

My question is does the mame.exe itself label these other files as unplayable games or unplayable AND software titles?  Is there anyway Jason could filter these files out as they are not games and should never be added anyway. 

 

or is this  a mame.exe and we need to take this up with them?

 

**Sorry i didn't read second page.  I missed it.**

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Aevans0001
Apologize for missing second page

[Telmo]

2024, still an issue. Games are missing if one skips "unplayable games". If we keep them, all sorts of nonsense is imported like keyboards and printers.

[Johnny T]

2025, still an issue unless I'm missing something? I'm getting things like "Double Density Floppy Drive" in the list... I wish there was an extra filter for MAME that we could select to include 'non-playable games' (which often means games that can be played but there aren't perfectly emulated) and another filter for "Skip devices".

[JoeViking245]

57 minutes ago, Johnny T said:

2025, still an issue unless I'm missing something? I'm getting things like "Double Density Floppy Drive" in the list... I wish there was an extra filter for MAME that we could select to include 'non-playable games' (which often means games that can be played but there aren't perfectly emulated) and another filter for "Skip devices".

When selecting Skip games unplayable in MAME, do you have some examples (3-5 maybe) of games that are not imported but are [to a degree] playable?  This could help narrow down the filtering process.

Or are you saying when selecting Skip games unplayable in MAME, it's still importing things like "Double Density Floppy Drive"?

I'm fairly certain that when checking that one box, only games tagged as "preliminary" are excluded (leaving "imperfect" and "good").

If it's the preliminaries are what you're want/missing, you might should put in a Feature Request to 'add another filter'.

 

In the meantime, there's always the currently available Plan "B".

• Un-check Skip games unplayable in MAME,
• Complete the import
• Select the Arcade platform you just created
• Select Filter - Genre - System - Device
• Select all the filtered "games" and press Delete
• (Do the same for BIOS)

 

Once that's all done,

• Select Filter - Status - preliminary

And see what you've been missing.

[Johnny T]

@JoeViking245 thanks for the great post mate

This is how it all came about... I was watching one of the latest videos from Video Game Esoterica and he was going through all the "Cruis'n" series of games and saying how well they play now in 0.277.

I Googled the game series and found one called Cruis'n Exotica and I saw videos on YouTube of people playing the game. The game was nowhere near perfect emulation - the road was transparent and there were lots of problems with it but I just thought I'd fire it up for a look

I had the rom zip but it wasn't in LB and so I decided to just do a full import (as I've not done one in ages) as I thought there might be games that have gone from "not working" to "working" over the last year or so that I don't have in my LB build so thought it might be interesting to create a new platform and do a full import.

I deliberately didn't select "Skip non-playable" as I assumed that Cruis'n Exotica would come under the "non-playable" category. But the import showed a massive list and when I started checking through it I found all those "Floppy Drive" and lots of random stuff in there... so I Googled how to sort it and found that post... 

And here we are... a small insight into how a man in his fifties with just a little bit of time on his hands can get himself into all sorts of trouble.....  

Edited Friday at 07:46 AM by Johnny T