Developer wanted (for Hire) for Standalone "MAWS like" application

[2600]

It's been a long time since I've regularly visited this section of the forum, but thought this might be a good location to post a want ad.  Most developers here should be used to parsing this data or at least understand where it is coming from.

I've always wanted to write a portable "MAWS like" application.  I've thought about it a lot and even written parts, but have come to the realization that I'd probably do a half baked application before I find something new and shiny.  With MAWS down for possibly a while, I'm trying to get something done about it.  If money, parts, etc are a motivation for some then we can talk about that and I'll front the costs.  Others may be interested in this application so I may see if they want to contribute to the fund as well.  By fronting the costs, I'm also allowing fewer cooks in kitchen.  I'm always open to suggestions, especially from the developer(s), but I've found that whenever someone comes up with a suggestion or starts something here a million people chime in with different requirements and the core idea is lost. 

Now enough with my babbling and down to the basic application requirements:
1. Basically, implement something similar to MAWS.  If you are unfamiliar with MAWS, it basically allows you to search the information in the MAME XML file and returns a list of games and info that match your search criteria.  Then when you select a game all the information from the MAME XML file is presented nicely as well as information from a few other sources, like screenshots, PCB pics, and some of the other dat files.  That is the just the basic idea search the file present the information.
2. It takes too long to parse the XML file directly for the searches so the XML file will have to be sucked into a DB.  I'd prefer sqlite, but am somewhat flexible as long as it is portable and doesn't require additional software.
3. The only other feature that I'd like is to open this information up in tabs.

My own requests and requirements:
1. If I'm helping front the costs, then I get the source code which I then will promptly give out to everyone.
2. I'd really like it to be portable across different OS's, but if it is Windows only I'm not going to complain.
3. I'd prefer something written in C#.

Basically, that is it.  Let me know if you are interested or have questions.  If you are interested in this, then we can start talking more about specifics.

[stu33]

Just FYI, C# kind of limits you to Windows, unless you're using something like Mono.

[lordnacho]

Web based?

[2600]

Web based?

Not interested in a web based solution.  Others may.

[2600]

Just FYI, C# kind of limits you to Windows, unless you're using something like Mono.

I have no problems with using Mono. 

I was going to list other languages, but decided to see what the general feedback is.  If you want to write it in something else, that's most likely fine.  Back in the day here, people really wanted to use things that were a bit dated and I wanted to prevent that.  C# was listed as anyone can use that.

[Howard_Casto]

Well from what you are telling me you just want a searchable database right?

I don't think you really need a program for that.  Mind you a program would be nice, but it isn't necessary.  Most of your popular database programs (access..ect..) support xml parsing and mame's xml file comes with it's own schema.  You should be able with some effort (sorry I'm not a database guy, I can't tell you exactly how) load the whole thing into a database.  Excel and some of these other applications are pretty advanced these days.... you can probably get them to display the individual entries like you wanted.  I think you can even display images via a url as well, so that would work for the game artwork.

[2600]

Well from what you are telling me you just want a searchable database right?

I don't think you really need a program for that.  Mind you a program would be nice, but it isn't necessary.  Most of your popular database programs (access..ect..) support xml parsing and mame's xml file comes with it's own schema.  You should be able with some effort (sorry I'm not a database guy, I can't tell you exactly how) load the whole thing into a database.  Excel and some of these other applications are pretty advanced these days.... you can probably get them to display the individual entries like you wanted.  I think you can even display images via a url as well, so that would work for the game artwork.

A searchable database is a main part of the application and you are correct it is not that hard.  I've written command line utilities that import the xml file into an sqlite db.  Then I've used other applications that allow you to open and search the database.  The next half is displaying the information in a way similar to what MAWs did which was presented very well. In addition to displaying the information, you could click on one of the results for say the 'driver' and it would display all the games in that driver.  I could try to find some examples if that would help.  It would be extremely useful to have a stand alone application that did this instead of using the web.

Also, you'd be surprised at how many applications hang on opening the MAME XML file.  Maybe it is the size, maybe it is something else, but it can bring down a lot of applications.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah it's the size....  They aren't actually hanging.... without optimizations it can take upwards of 20 minutes to properly parse the xml file.  The schema isn't the best either and program has to really understand how to read schemas to load info xml properly. 

I still think you could use some of the presentation modes of the popular database program to get something that looks like maws.

I've got enough things on my plate, but I'm trying to see if I can get your ducks in a row so that you can get somebody to write this for you.  I think it is a needed utility.... if nothing else so that the people who manage the artwork packs have a nice way to determine which games lack art.

[headkaze]

Parsing the xml is not too bad as long as you extract it from MAME and then only re-load it when the MAME version changes. Once the data is in memory it's quicker than any database.

ControlsDat might be a good start for such an application. It was designed with control data in mind but could be expanded. It's written in C# too.

Anyway check it out and see what you think.

[bdam]

I've done a fair amount of importing XML into a program called FileMaker (think MS Access).  I spent a couple of hours working on a XML tranform and was able to parse the list of games and their roms.  I got far enough to prove that it could work.  Does anyone know if the XML schema is documented somewhere?  The general structure is listed at the top but not the number of times each element must or can appear.

[Howard_Casto]

I've done a fair amount of importing XML into a program called FileMaker (think MS Access).  I spent a couple of hours working on a XML tranform and was able to parse the list of games and their roms.  I got far enough to prove that it could work.  Does anyone know if the XML schema is documented somewhere?  The general structure is listed at the top but not the number of times each element must or can appear.

Well that's the thing right there....

For most of the stuff in the xml, the minimum amount is 0 and the maximum amount is infinate  (of course there is a practical limit, but you get my point).  The only two real exceptions being the rom name and description.  A couple of things are fixed and required, like the driver status and the controls info, but for the most part everything is optional and there can be multiple entries.

Myself I've always ignored the schema.  It isn't particularly helpful due to that fact.

If I were going to make a generic database and wanted to be able to search ANYTHING, here is how I would handle it......

A line like:  <game name="xfilesp" sourcefile="whitestar.c" ismechanical="yes">

Would get divided into columns like so:

game:name|game:sourcefile|game:ismechanical
-------------------------------------------------------
 xfilesp       | whitestar.c      | yes

See?  You generically combine the node name (game)  with the variable setting (name, sourcefile...ect) and get the unique column name.

For node values that don't have variables you simply use the node name so adding to our entry:

<description>X-Files (3.03)</description>
<year>1997</year>
<manufacturer>Sega</manufacturer>

would translate into the columns:

description     | year  | manufacturer
X-Files (3.03) | 1997 | Sega

The only tricky bit would be duplicate node names.... you would have to keep a list of the node names you've already printed for each entry and rename as needed.

Like the rom entries:

<rom name="xfcpu.303" size="131072" crc="c7ab5efe" sha1="dcb4b89adfb5ba39e59c1118a00b29941d3ea4e9" region="user1" offset="0"/>
<rom name="xfildspa.300" size="524288" crc="03c96af8" sha1="06a26116f863bb9b2d127e18c5ba500537923d62" region="dmdcpu" offset="0"/>

The first set of columns you add would be rom:name, rom:size ect... BUT upon finding a new rom node you would probably want to rename the new one to rom2:name, rom2:size ect....

Or at least that's how I would do it.  Basically parse the xml as it's loaded, one node at a time.... deal with the results generically if at all possible. 

[demeth]

Howard: or use a two-pass approach -- populate a list of unique nodenames and fields, skip the values.
Use that list to generate the DDL queries (create table, ...). Repeat the process and switch out the queries. There's probably some generalist freak that has done that for any arbitrary XML.

Or, quick and dirty, patch (resources/scripts/romman_base.rb, resources/scripts/importers/mame.rb) from arcan to include all the data that you need and -- tada -- SQLite db completed ;-)

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah that would work as well. 

I noticed something odd in the xml output that has recently been added.  Because of the EM games I'm guessing, some games have TWO game nodes.  The first one is the oen we all know and love and the other one is a mystery to me.  It appears to be a "device" entry and has a "isdevice=yes" flag in the game section.  I'll be that'll break a lot of fes. 

[demeth]

It appears to be a "device" entry and has a "isdevice=yes" flag in the game section.  I'll be that'll break a lot of fes. 

The tautology department at mamedev is hard at work -- seems like a fun bug possibility, gotta test ;9

[bdam]

So here is what I came up with last night, just a simple proof of concept without any thought towards aesthetics. Usage: export the XML from MAME, run Mame Info.exe, click the Import button, and select the xml file.

This was created using the developer version of a program called FileMaker Pro which allows me to create a stand-alone executable.  It is a sort of Access-like program that marries a relational database, a presentation layer, and a scripting environment. It supports importing XML with an transform applied.  By writing multiple transforms and doing multiple passes I can turn the XML into a fully relational database.  Right now it only includes the game, ROM, drive, and chip records but importing those took less than three minutes.

There would be some limitations to this approach in terms of what is possible with the layouts but it would be pretty very easy to maintain provided you have the IDE (not free).  If someone's willing to put in the time to create something from scratch that would provide the greatest flexibility.  If not, I could finish this off without too much hassle.

Mame Info.zip [MediaFire.com]

[2600]

Parsing the xml is not too bad as long as you extract it from MAME and then only re-load it when the MAME version changes. Once the data is in memory it's quicker than any database.

ControlsDat might be a good start for such an application. It was designed with control data in mind but could be expanded. It's written in C# too.

Anyway check it out and see what you think.

That does look like it would be a good starting point.  It loads up the data pretty fast and by accident, I double clicked on a game and it brought up some additional info quickly as well.  My worry would be searching through the data quickly, but so far it definitely is fast enough.  The application gave me some other ideas as well.

[2600]

Another app that looks like it could work was QMC2.  It does a bit too much and isn't as clean as it could be, but it is the currently it is the closest working app and works on multiple OS's.  The downside is I think it would be more of kludge to display what I want instead of how I'd like the whole application to be, plus it is cpp which isn't as friendly to some people.


Also, just for record keeping here are some bad screenshots I found of MAWS:

Example 1 This one has MAWS in a window.

Around the 6:30 mark.

Example 3 Small screen shot but shows the standard search section nicely.

[2600]

Meant to reply to this sooner.  I tried it out, but I just don't think this works.  By it's very nature I think this type of application will be as responsive and look as nice then a dedicated app.  I do appreciate the time you took though for the proof of concept.

So here is what I came up with last night, just a simple proof of concept without any thought towards aesthetics. Usage: export the XML from MAME, run Mame Info.exe, click the Import button, and select the xml file.

This was created using the developer version of a program called FileMaker Pro which allows me to create a stand-alone executable.  It is a sort of Access-like program that marries a relational database, a presentation layer, and a scripting environment. It supports importing XML with an transform applied.  By writing multiple transforms and doing multiple passes I can turn the XML into a fully relational database.  Right now it only includes the game, ROM, drive, and chip records but importing those took less than three minutes.

There would be some limitations to this approach in terms of what is possible with the layouts but it would be pretty very easy to maintain provided you have the IDE (not free).  If someone's willing to put in the time to create something from scratch that would provide the greatest flexibility.  If not, I could finish this off without too much hassle.

Mame Info.zip [MediaFire.com]

[mathew_123456]

Dang - I had almost forgotten about all the work I have put into my incomplete frontend!
I have implemented all that part - parsing and loading mameinfo.xml, command.dat, controls.xml, history.dat, catver.ini and nplayers.ini. This gets loaded into a SQL Server CE database.
It then takes it one step further and scans the file system, populating all available roms and matching screenshots and movies. (It also does this for other emulators). I have even finished a crappy control panel editor which allows mappings of keys and generation of mame configs.
I just can't get around to finishing the frontend itself and the complete Direct X implementation!!!
Happy to share the code - I can even start a codeplex project, if anyone is even remotely interested (thats if people can read my coding style).
It's all c#, sql server ce (SQL is how I make my living) with heavy Linq usage.
Config part is winforms. Control panel editor is WPF - as is the frontend itself.
Here are some older screenshots - http://sites.google.com/site/mercuryfe/screenshots
I have scrapped those frontend formats a few times now - but it should be easy enough for anyone with WPF/ XAML skills to create something a hell of a lot better than my effort.

Mathew

And yes - I leeched the command dat images from HeadKaze's control panel wizard - he never did reply if I could use them or not 

[2600]

I actually had looked at your FE while I was looking.  I didn't get a chance to fire it up though.
I wouldn't mind taking a look at the source if you don't mind.


Headkaze did you have any interest in adapting your ControlsDat app?

Dang - I had almost forgotten about all the work I have put into my incomplete frontend!
I have implemented all that part - parsing and loading mameinfo.xml, command.dat, controls.xml, history.dat, catver.ini and nplayers.ini. This gets loaded into a SQL Server CE database.
It then takes it one step further and scans the file system, populating all available roms and matching screenshots and movies. (It also does this for other emulators). I have even finished a crappy control panel editor which allows mappings of keys and generation of mame configs.
I just can't get around to finishing the frontend itself and the complete Direct X implementation!!!
Happy to share the code - I can even start a codeplex project, if anyone is even remotely interested (thats if people can read my coding style).
It's all c#, sql server ce (SQL is how I make my living) with heavy Linq usage.
Config part is winforms. Control panel editor is WPF - as is the frontend itself.
Here are some older screenshots - http://sites.google.com/site/mercuryfe/screenshots
I have scrapped those frontend formats a few times now - but it should be easy enough for anyone with WPF/ XAML skills to create something a hell of a lot better than my effort.

Mathew

And yes - I leeched the command dat images from HeadKaze's control panel wizard - he never did reply if I could use them or not 

[Cakemeister]

When I wrote my list generator I had something to read the xml and other files like controls.xml into a database, then you can do an arbitrary SQL select on it. I used the sqlite library.

[headkaze]

Headkaze did you have any interest in adapting your ControlsDat app?

I don't really have much time but PM me and we can talk about it.

[2600]

When I wrote my list generator I had something to read the xml and other files like controls.xml into a database, then you can do an arbitrary SQL select on it. I used the sqlite library.

I looked at your list generator a few weeks ago, but IIRC I had trouble with keeping the database.  It seemed to make the database temporarily before converting to lists and then deleted the database.  It had been so long since I used it that I couldn't remember all of the syntax.

[2600]

Headkaze did you have any interest in adapting your ControlsDat app?

I don't really have much time but PM me and we can talk about it.

Too bad, I will PM you about it though to see what can be done next.

[mathew_123456]

Ok - finally published my code - if anyone is interested
http://mercuryfe.codeplex.com
Do note - I'm not a programmer by trade!

[2600]

Ok - finally published my code - if anyone is interested
http://mercuryfe.codeplex.com
Do note - I'm not a programmer by trade!

Thanks for that.  I was just about to PM you about that.  I'll take a look at it sometime this week.

[IG-88]

So, how goes this little project 2600? I am REALLY missing Maws 

[2600]

So, how goes this little project 2600? I am REALLY missing Maws 

I have two paths to go down and I am going down 1 right now.  It is a lot easier, but I don't know if I'll be able to share it.  Unfortunately, it isn't really the Standalone app I'd like.  After I get the first one running though, it will be easier to do a Standalone.

If some one else wants to tackle the stand alone my offer still stands.  I thought this would be the right forum to find someone interested in working on it, but now I'm not sure if it was.