MAME History.xml Viewer

[JoeViking245]

MAME History.xml Viewer

View File

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View game specific history from MAME's history.xml

Inspired from MAME's built in feature in the main UI and via their in-game Tab menu

 

Prerequisites

• Requires LaunchBox 13.3 or newer
• MAME or MAMEui set as the game(s) emulator
• "history.xml"  (download it from https://www.arcade-history.com/)
  • MAME users:  Place the file in the "history" subfolder of your MAME emulator.
    • i.e.  D:\Emulators\MAME\history\history.xml
  • MAMEui users: Place the file in the "dats" subfolder of your MAME emulator.
    • i.e.  D:\Emulators\MAMEui\dats\history.xml

Currently only available in LaunchBox (not BigBox)

Installing

• Download and then open the plugin file using 7zip.
  • if you don't use 7zip, first unblock the file (Right click, select Properties, and click Unblock) then open it as you normally would.
• Extract the main folder from inside the zip file into ..\LaunchBox\Plugins\
  • i.e. D:\LaunchBox\Plugins\MAMEhistoryXml\ 
• Start LaunchBox

Using
Right-click on a game and select View MAME History.

Updating history.xml
When loading the plugin, it will check your local version of history.xml against what's available on https://www.arcade-history.com/.
If a newer version is available, you will be given the option to Update your local copy.
    Updating will attempt to download and then replace your existing file.

As always, all thoughts, views, opinions, suggestions, comments and accolades are welcome. 😎
 

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• Submitter
  JoeViking245
• Submitted
  12/19/2024
• Category
  Third-party Apps and Plugins

 

[Joe35car]

Seems like the updates don't work anymore. It stopped at .275.

[JoeViking245]

2 hours ago, Joe35car said:

Seems like the updates don't work anymore. It stopped at .275.

That must be about the time this plugin was depreciated and replaced with the 'new and improved' all-in-one MAMEdatsViewer plugin.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

See here for the replacement plugin:

 

[Joe35car]

Cool. I remember you were talking about merging them all together but haven't been keeping up with LB lately. Thanks again.

[Doodah]

This is cool. Well done. I was hoping to find a frontend that showed history info per game for MAME. They don't seem to exist. Is one possible?

[JoeViking245]

2 hours ago, Doodah said:

This is cool. Well done. I was hoping to find a frontend that showed history info per game for MAME. They don't seem to exist. Is one possible?

Thanks.  To answer your question, you could try the frontend called LaunchBox and then install this plugin to get what you're after.

But you may want to install a different plugin instead (see below) that give s you 3 viewers in one.  It lets you view game specific commands from MAME's command.dat, the specific games history using MAMEs History.xml (just like this plugin) and/or initialization procedures of games emulated by MAME that require some setup which reads from MAMEs gameinit.dll.

 

[Doodah]

That is so kind of you to get back to me, and so quickly! I was hoping to mimic Mame a bit more and just have that info available on-screen to scroll through when the game comes up in the standard interface rather than right clicking every time. I probably should have mentioned that more clearly. I Have LaunchBox/BigBox license and will probably try and integrate everything else, like home console and Amazon and Steam into that but maybe I will use an alternative frontend for Mame arcade stuff. Thanks for your help and advice!

[JoeViking245]

23 hours ago, Doodah said:

That is so kind of you to get back to me, and so quickly! I was hoping to mimic Mame a bit more and just have that info available on-screen to scroll through when the game comes up

You're welcome. 😎 Yeah, for something like that (see it for each game, on-the-fly), you're probably stuck with MAME or one of it's derivatives (i.e. MAMEui). 

If you're super ambitious, you might be able to create a Theme, that calls a plugin (similar to, but not this one) to grab the history info, and then squeeze that into the panel on the right side of the screen.  But that'd be kind of a pain. But I'm sure it could be done.

But you know, eventually will have to play these games too.  

[Doodah]

19 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

You're welcome. 😎 Yeah, for something like that (see it for each game, on-the-fly), you're probably stuck with MAME or one of it's derivatives (i.e. MAMEui). 

If you're super ambitious, you might be able to create a Theme, that calls a plugin (similar to, but not this one) to grab the history info, and then squeeze that into the panel on the right side of the screen.  But that'd be kind of a pain. But I'm sure it could be done.

But you know, eventually will have to play these games too.  

Yes man! All about the playing. Thanks for your help. Easy to get sucked into t ge set up! We got a mini PC to play o  the big tv the other day and I am excited to put together stuff to play on there. I just want everything at the same time. I really appreciate people putting time in to make stuff better. Happy gaming bud!