All MAME games in Launchbox default categories are gone...??? (2 Player games, 4 Player games, Atari Classics, Fighting games, etc.)

[vince16]

Hi,

To my surprise yesterday, I noticed that plenty of categories were suddenly missing as I was browsing my arcade games categories in Bigbox: 2 Player games, 4 Player games, Atari Classics, Fighting games, Sega Classics, SNK MVS, etc. When I reverted back to Launchbox, to my horror I realized that's because all the categories which were missing in Bigbox are suddenly devoid of games.

MAME category (or "Arcade" as it was called by default) still has its games (as seen in last pic), but it seems Launchbox has forgotten where each one belongs. The games are still in MAME and can be played fine, AFAIK, but they're not sorted in all those categories that Launchbox has by default anymore. What the hell's up with that?

There is zero way I'm going to bother sorting some 40,000 games by myself of course, and I shouldn't have to, since Launchbox had done the job for me, and well done. But I need to refill those categories to see them again in BigBox. I don't know what I should do. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some scans (as you can see there's no query for a particular game in the search window):

[C-Beats]

I'm pretty sure those playlists are all auto-populate playlists and use the platform name as one of the credentials. When you changed it from Arcade to MAME it broke the connection. Options would be either rename the MAME platform BACK to Arcade, or edit each playlist and change it to look in MAME platform instead of Arcade

[Retro808]

15 minutes ago, vince16 said:

MAME category (or "Arcade" as it was called by default) still has its games (as seen in last pic), but it seems Launchbox has forgotten where each one belongs.

 

Did you recently change the "Arcade" name to "Mame"?

Doing so would cause what you are seeing.  You can easily fix. 

If you are going to keep the "Mame" platform name:

1. Close LB.

2. Go into your \Launchbox\Data\Playlists\ folder and delete all the playlist xaml files that start with Arcade (such as "Arcade Light Gun.xaml). For safey I would not delete but move them to an external folder for now). 

3. Open LB then right click on "Mame" and choose "Create Missing Arcade/Mame Playlists" and run the wizard again. All your playlists should return and be filled properly. 

At least this is how I fixed it when I did this a while back. 

Or if you simply rename "Mame" back to "Arcade" the existing playlists will repopulate. 

Just tested both these steps and they worked. 

 

[vince16]

Thanks a lot for your prompt help guys. As it turns out, I did try reverting the name back to "Arcade" even prior to reading your replies, and it seems to have solved the problem.

I didn't wait for Launchbox to move all the media though. I did it when I changed the name to MAME and, man, for over 40,000 games it took HOURS on end! I'm not sure what the risks are...

[neil9000]

4 minutes ago, vince16 said:

didn't wait for Launchbox to move all the media though. I did it when I changed the name to MAME and, man, for over 40,000 games it took HOURS on end! I'm not sure what the risks are...

You could of just renamed the image and video folders and the move wouldn't've of been necessary, also its worth adding you dont have 40,000 mame games, if you used the fullset importer you have more like 2900 , a mame romset can have 40,000 files, but thhat does not equal that in games, and even less than that even work in mame.

[vince16]

Yeah I know of course, those 40,000 games are for the most part different versions of one same game.  The first time I used Launchbox some 2-3 years ago, I imported my MAME full set, but LB got me something like 4000ish games, which was a far cry from the 37571 games displayed in my (split) version of MAME 0.223. So I deleted it and ticked some boxes in the LB import wizard to make sure I would have a 1:1 reflection in LB of what was in MAME, and... somehow I got more. 42,000ish games (or different versions). Mind you, I did that also because I wasn't sure if BigBox, when I would have it, would give me the option to select which version of a game I'd like to play, and I have sometimes different bezels for different versions of a game. Now that I know LB, and indeed BB, let me choose that, I regret importing the MAME set the way I did. It doesn't look good, it takes too much space on the HDD due to LB downloading several times over the same set of media for the different versions of one same game, and worst of all it seems to make the software hang, react soooooo slowly, and perhaps even bug...

Like, what are all those zeros doing there?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or, how come when the app is in english instead of "ALL" the games it says "TOUT" (all in french), and vice versa, when LB has the language set to french, there are many things still in english?

[faeran]

Just now, vince16 said:

Or, how come when the app is in english instead of "ALL" the games it says "TOUT" (all in french), and vice versa, when LB has the language set to french, there are many things still in english?

The "ALL" text can be adjusted under Tools > Options > Visuals > Filters Side Bar. I think the initial concept was that if someone were to switch to another language, the text would get updated (if available in that language), with the idea that the user wouldn't then want to switch back to another language, so it doesn't switch back to English if you change it back.

All language packs are done by the community, so if you are using the French language and you see English, you can help contribute over on this thread:

 

[vince16]

I was wondering what were the risks of not letting Launchbox move all my media, since it takes forever in this case due to the huge number of arcade games, well here I am: most of my arcade games don't have any media at all. Not even a box, when you can see one when browsing, but when clicking on the game and going to "Media" -> nothing!?

Any suggestion, anyone?

Do I have to just remove the arcade category and erase all the media from Launchbox and reimport my MAME set to start anew, or is there some folder's name I can change to solve this quickly?

[Rlad]

Can you go here and tell it were all the folders are?

 

[Retro808]

1 hour ago, vince16 said:

I was wondering what were the risks of not letting Launchbox move all my media, since it takes forever in this case due to the huge number of arcade games, well here I am: most of my arcade games don't have any media at all. Not even a box, when you can see one when browsing, but when clicking on the game and going to "Media" -> nothing!?

Any suggestion, anyone?

Do I have to just remove the arcade category and erase all the media from Launchbox and reimport my MAME set to start anew, or is there some folder's name I can change to solve this quickly?

If you had images when the platform was called "Arcade" you can just rename the folder.

With LB closed.....just go into the \Launchbox\Images folder and look for the folder named "Arcade" and rename it "Mame". 

I would also go into the \Launchbox\Images\Platforms folder and rename the "Arcade" folder "Mame".

This should allow LB to relink to the images when you reopen it. If it does not. Select all the games in the "Mame" platform and hit "F5" this will refresh the image cache. 

[vince16]

4 hours ago, Rlad said:

Can you go here and tell it were all the folders are?

 

You want a snapshot of the folders section of my arcade category? Not sure why but here you go:

Edit: just renaming the folder to Arcade did the trick, my arcade games now have their media again.

Edited September 29, 2023 by vince16

[Rlad]

38 minutes ago, vince16 said:

You want a snapshot of the folders section of my arcade category? Not sure why but here you go:

Edit: just renaming the folder to Arcade did the trick, my arcade games now have their media again.

No I didn't want a screenshot😁. I meant if you selected the media folders in the platform edit then launchbox shouldn't need to move them, but you fixed it now anyway 👍

Edited September 29, 2023 by Rlad