Playlist auto-populate based on Emulator?

[Zaphod54]

"Emulator" is not an available criteria to use for auto-populate playlists.  Does anyone know of some other way to create an auto-populate playlist based on emulator?

I was able to do one for TeknoParrot since the "application/rom path" is the .xml files under the UserProfiles directory where the TP program is.

But that won't work for my other emulators that use the same MAME roms as MAME (Model 2, Supermodel, Flycast).  At least not unless I wanted to have separate copies of the MAME roms for each emulator, but I'd rather keep them all in one place to make it easier to update the MAME rom set periodically.

"Platform" also won't work in my case.  I have a dedicated arcade cabinet and the only games I put in it are "Arcade" games, so everything is under the Arcade Platform.  Then after importing the full MAME rom set, I created playlists for all the Sega stuff and simply updated the emulator on those for the appropriate emulator.  I didn't create a separate Platform for each emulator.

But for ongoing management, I'd like to have Playlists for each emulator.  I wouldn't have them show in BigBox, but they'd help me organize things.

[Retro808]

There should be a couple way you might do this. One is you can create a "Custom Field" and call it "Emulator" then enter the emulator name. You would then need to bulk edit your games (> select all games for a particular emulator >right click then choose "Open Bulk Edit Wizard" and apply the new field) . This would take some leg work, but once done the new custom field becomes a selectable option in the auto-populate choices when making a playlist. 

[JoeViking245]

For emulators that are geared towards MAME ROMs from a specific source, you can use the Advance Search functionality to filter those out, then 'select all' and then either, bulk-add a Custom Field or bulk-add to a playlist.

i.e.  For Sega Model 3 (Supermodel), in Search type in source:model3.  (Where here, the source is model3.cpp)

Maybe not an end-all, cure-all. But a start, nonetheless.

[Zaphod54]

Thanks to both of you!

I did try the custom field, but the custom field didn't appear in the criteria list for auto-populate after I added it.  Maybe I did something wrong.  I'll try it again.

 

I DO have playlists created by using the source: tag for Model 2, Model 3, Naomi, etc.  I just don't always remember which emulator goes with which "source", so I was thinking about also creating playlists based on emulator.  I mean, yeah, Model 2 is obvious, Supermodel is kind of obvious, but Flycast isn't so much.

It's mainly for ongoing management and curating the list.  The playlists based on "source" are the ones I leave visible within BigBox.  The playlist by emulator would be hidden from BigBox but let me easily know and manage games associated with a specific emulator without having to remember which "source" goes with which emulator.

[skizzosjt]

1 hour ago, Zaphod54 said:

I did try the custom field, but the custom field didn't appear in the criteria list for auto-populate after I added it.  Maybe I did something wrong.  I'll try it again.

Give it a try again. It does work. For example, I have a custom field called "Aspect Ratio" shown here in Auto Populate

 

 

There is a quirk where you need to actually add a VALUE to the custom field. If you only added the "Name" but left "Value" empty then the Custom Field was never really created/saved and would not show up in another drop downs for use. If you opened the Edit > Custom Fields window up again for the game where only a Name was entered you would notice that whatever you entered into Name is no longer there due to no value was assigned

At least one entry needs to have a value assigned to the custom field for the custom field to exist for use. Note those other three above it exist OK because there are other games that have values assigned to them

[JoeViking245]

17 hours ago, Zaphod54 said:

I DO have playlists created by using the source: tag for Model 2, Model 3, Naomi, etc.  I just don't always remember which emulator goes with which "source", so I was thinking about also creating playlists based on emulator.  I mean, yeah, Model 2 is obvious, Supermodel is kind of obvious, but Flycast isn't so much.

It's mainly for ongoing management and curating the list.  The playlists based on "source" are the ones I leave visible within BigBox.  The playlist by emulator would be hidden from BigBox but let me easily know and manage games associated with a specific emulator without having to remember which "source" goes with which emulator.

This may help with what you're wanting to do.

 

[Retro808]

Leave to good ole' @JoeViking245 see a need and create a plugin. 👍

[Zaphod54]

Adding the custom field did work.  I'm not sure what I did wrong the first time.

But thank you for the plugin!  I'm excited to give that a try!!  Unfortunately, it'll be a few days before I'm able to try it out.