Importing MAME and creating playlist of non-arcade games

[wallmachine]

Each month I delete MAME and the auto-generated playlists and re-import (settings below) the new version so that newly added games or no longer working games are correct, this part works fine because of the checkbox "Skip games unplayable in MAME". However, at the same time I want to import a select few non-arcade games (121), for example Handheld / Electronic Games that fall under the category "non-arcade games" and exclude the rest of the non-arcade games as well as utilise the "Skip games unplayable in MAME".

The solution I run with at the moment is to create a platform for the Handheld / Electronic Games which points to the MAME folder and then each month manually check the channel log and confirm added/no longer working games and either import manually or mark as Broken and Hide.

An option could be to create my own Smart Playlist for Handheld / Electronic Games and filter out the games I don't want however I still need to import ALL the non-arcade games, which I'm trying to avoid.

 

Maybe something like this but has checkboxes to select all or a few games and at the end an option to "Skip games unplayable in MAME" as well as all the other options.

 

Its also similar for the Arcade Vector Games playlist which I have to repeat the same thing however they are not under "non-arcade games" so some steps can be left out, tried smart playlist however they can't search for the word "Vector".

 

Any ideas or am I stuck with the solution I have currently?

Edited August 25, 2021 by wallmachine

[JoeViking245]

15 hours ago, wallmachine said:

Any ideas or am I stuck with the solution I have currently?

MAME doesn't innately make it easy to 'weed out' say, handheld games.  Which in turn makes it nearly impossible for Jason to incorporate a filter such as that.  ("nearly"... anything's possible.  But not everything's probable.)  

Not to 'pimp' my own plugin, but the MAME Custom XML Importer used in conjunction with the awesome site Arcade Database (Adb) may at least help a little.

Adb seems to stay current with the latest MAME official releases to within, at most a few days.  And you can just about filter anything in MAME.  And of course from there, have it create an xml for you to import.  Once you found the filter settings that you want, you can save that link 'to the filter' and recheck it anytime.

Example:  "Vector" Video -  http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/?search=mame&display_type=2  This will bring to the list of the 100 machines that MAME has listed as the video type Vector.  You could even narrow those down to ones being CRT 15khz, 25kHz or 31kHz.  And from there, have it give only Working machines.  Point is, that "Link" will search whatever the current revision of MAME is (and Adb is caught up to).

This ain't no end-all, cure-all solution by any means.  But it it is a means to a solution.

 

 

[wallmachine]

3 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

MAME doesn't innately make it easy to 'weed out' say, handheld games.  Which in turn makes it nearly impossible for Jason to incorporate a filter such as that.  ("nearly"... anything's possible.  But not everything's probable.)  

Not to 'pimp' my own plugin, but the MAME Custom XML Importer used in conjunction with the awesome site Arcade Database (Adb) may at least help a little.

Adb seems to stay current with the latest MAME official releases to within, at most a few days.  And you can just about filter anything in MAME.  And of course from there, have it create an xml for you to import.  Once you found the filter settings that you want, you can save that link 'to the filter' and recheck it anytime.

Example:  "Vector" Video -  http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/?search=mame&display_type=2  This will bring to the list of the 100 machines that MAME has listed as the video type Vector.  You could even narrow those down to ones being CRT 15khz, 25kHz or 31kHz.  And from there, have it give only Working machines.  Point is, that "Link" will search whatever the current revision of MAME is (and Adb is caught up to).

This ain't no end-all, cure-all solution by any means.  But it it is a means to a solution.

 

 

Yeah, been using adb as well. I'll try the plugin you created in conjunction with it to create platform to reimport. I'll be honest I don't like using plugins because eventually newer versions of LB/BB will break them and if the developer has no interest in updating then I might as well not go through the effort, but thanks for the effort in making the plugin and I'll definitely try it.

Edited August 26, 2021 by wallmachine

[JoeViking245]

10 hours ago, wallmachine said:

I don't like using plugins because eventually newer versions of LB/BB will break them

"Not MY plugins."  lol  [famous last words... ]