sad thing happened importing a mame fullset on 279 🥲

[ryangroth5]

What to do? I see no valid path forward except a patch.

[JoeViking245]

52 minutes ago, ryangroth5 said:

What to do? I see no valid path forward except a patch.

Try rerunning the Full MAME Arcade Import Wizard.

[ryangroth5]

still the same error, there's not much to the error to really guide what's wrong or what's next. 

[JoeViking245]

3 hours ago, ryangroth5 said:

still the same error, there's not much to the error to really guide what's wrong or what's next. 

Is your mame.exe from the official MAMEdev site? Or some variant (no-nag or otherwise)?

The error message is saying it can't parse [correctly] the xml file generated by running mame.exe -listxml.  Rerunning the importer would recreate the xml, fixing any glitches.

[ryangroth5]

nope, it's from mame.dev, I ran the command on the command line, looks clean. I can post it the generated file. 
I ended up using the launchbox installed mame, something that makes me a bit nervous since I don't want  to loose all the controller mappings and per-game overrides. It DOES import correctly. 
I need to google about to figure out what I actually want to do, which is update my mame set from .261 to .279 preferablly without reimporting art. 
 

[JoeViking245]

1 minute ago, ryangroth5 said:

I ended up using the launchbox installed mame, something that makes me a bit nervous since I don't want  to loose all the controller mappings and per-game overrides. It DOES import correctly. 

Using the LaunchBox Install MAME (emulator) I think installs it into /LaunchBox/Emulators/MAME 0.2xx/.  Where 0.2xx is the version installed.  And if my recollection is correct, a 'new' version/release will get installed into a new folder (MAME 0.2xy). (this may have been changed since I last checked quite-a-while-ago).

Either way, you will NOT lose any custom configs.  A new MAME installation will only have the base files of the app, leaving all custom changes/additions/configs intact when installed over the top of an existing one.  (Unless you're a power user and have gone in and modified something like crt-geom.json)

When you say "it DOES import correctly", I assume you mean "install" [the emulator] correctly.  (vs. "import" the ROMs correctly?)

 

10 minutes ago, ryangroth5 said:

I need to google about to figure out what I actually want to do, which is update my mame set from .261 to .279 preferablly without reimporting art. 

The afore mentioned updating procedure will [also] not change/delete the artwork (if you're talking MAME's /artwork/ folder [aka bezels]) nor will it mess with any images or videos you've downloaded in LaunchBox for your Arcade platform.  But I don't think you have the latter because of the issue with the MAME Arcade Fullset Import Wizard.

RE: updating your MAME set, get the 0.279 (actually, may as well get 0.280) fullset.  Essentially replacing your 0.261 set.  (As opposed to updating 0.261 to 0.262 to 0.263 etc. which is how it'd need to be done if you wanted to update your physical existing set. And is a PITA not a fun task.)

As for updating the emulator, if you're happy with the one LB installed for you, you can just copy from your existing MAME install the folders: artwork (if you have bezels in it), cfg, ctrlr (if you created a custom controller.cfg file. Not to be confused with the game-specific ones in the cfg folder),  ini

If you made custom changes to MAME (like ROM path), you probably have a mame.ini file that should be copied over as well.

 

IF you tried running the MAME Import Wizard and pointed to your 0.261 MAME install (accidentally or on purpose), that could be the problem.  Some things were changed in how the xml that gets produced [quite] a while back.  I forget when exactly.  But Nov. 2023 (0.261) in MAME terms, to me falls under "quite a while back".