Author Topic: Romlister Help (Read 6283 times)

Knightlore · « **on:** April 08, 2012, 09:42:39 am »

** Please read last post

Louis Tully · « **Reply #1 on:** April 08, 2012, 11:29:34 am »

Knightlore · « **Reply #2 on:** April 08, 2012, 12:57:31 pm »

Thanks for the reply. The "Only Working Games" was already ticked in the options. Unfortunately as soon as the rom :Aleck64 PIF BIOS is highlighted in the list window, I get the error message and the only option is to close Mala (everything else is non-responsive).

I had a look at Mala's gameslist editor and can find it in there now but removing it seems fruitless it still remains in the list.

Louis Tully · « **Reply #3 on:** April 08, 2012, 01:15:27 pm »

Knightlore · « **Reply #4 on:** April 08, 2012, 02:33:42 pm »

No worries, it's all appreciated

I can't really see any other way myself other than having a look at Romlister. I just don't want to balls everything up, I finally managed to work out compiling Mame with no-nag/hiscore and then this pops up.

I'm unsure what's going to happen in terms of getting all this working with LedBlinky either, I'm hoping using Romlister won't affect it.

Anyway, will give it a try and post back!

Yenome · « **Reply #5 on:** April 08, 2012, 08:58:14 pm »

make a folder named bios in the mame folder. then edit the mame.ini roms path line to "roms;bios" move all your bios files to the bios folder you made and then if you need to remake your game list in mala. mame will check both the bios and roms folder for the needed files. i do this for the same reason as you to keep my bios files out of my game list without having to do any extra steps.

Knightlore · « **Reply #6 on:** April 09, 2012, 06:49:08 am »

I've actually managed to sort this issue using Romlister, but that is very handy to know anyway for future reference, thankyou.

My new problem is now that when I make a new list in Romlister, I noticed for example that "Space Harrier" isn't in the list (it's working fine using the full xml in Mala) - I only noticed this because it's one of my fave games so I checked it's in there.

So what is going on? I have checked all the correct options, (presumably Space Harrier is "Shooter" hell I've even tried checking 10 buttons and every controller type but it's not in the list.

Does anyone know why this is? I also wonder what else is not there....

Knightlore · « **Reply #7 on:** April 09, 2012, 10:10:12 am »

Cheeky bump, been trying this all day long without success. I simply have no idea why Spaceharrier (and possibly others) wouldn't be included in the list.

Just to verify I have a complete set of 0145, nothing missing. It only dissapears once I put it through Romlister regardless of what options I choose...

Yenome · « **Reply #8 on:** April 09, 2012, 01:20:56 pm »

i belive it uses analog stick so i would say try that

Knightlore · « **Reply #9 on:** April 09, 2012, 02:12:29 pm »

Quote from: Yenome on April 09, 2012, 01:20:56 pm

i belive it uses analog stick so i would say try that

Unfortunately I've already tried that, I've ticked everything but it's still not there. What is odd is if I look at the whole list from within the Romlister UI, is shows Spaceharrier in there - just doesn't come out in a new outputting xml file.

NOP · « **Reply #10 on:** April 09, 2012, 08:30:56 pm »

I think this is the current question, but it's not obvious with the thread edits.

Quote

I simply have no idea why Spaceharrier (and possibly others) wouldn't be included in the list.

Any time a game that you're expecting in a list doesn't show up, do this:

1) create the all games list by hitting the button on the main UI.
2) locate the game in that new list
3) 2x click on that game and romlister will show you the XML for that game. There is probably something in that XML which you're telling romlister to filter OUT of your current list.
4) If you can't figure out what it is, post the contents of your -find: window here in a message and the XML for that game and I'll step you through it.
5) (optional) while you're in the "all games list" view, you can right-click on any game in that list and "throw" it into your working list. Useful really only for single games (like pacman) that you've filtered out but want to add in without changing your search criteria.

edit: also, posting this question in the software forum would have gotten my attention earlier, likely. i hang out there more...

edit2: my guess for why space harrier doesn't show up is that the control is tagged as:

Code: [Select]

      <Controls>
        <Control Name="Flightstick (Analog)">
          <Constant Name="stick" />
          <Button Name="P1_BUTTON1" />
        </Control>

but there isn't actually a "flightstick" option for romlister's checkboxes, so those games were never getting pulled into your list. You can do this by getting your hands a little dirty:

In the -find: window, change the text that looks something like this:
& (joy2way | joy4way | !'control type=')
and change it to say this:
& (joy2way | flightstick | joy4way | !'control type=')

that is, insert the keyword "flightstick" into the list of acceptable controls you're looking for.

Knightlore · « **Reply #11 on:** April 10, 2012, 02:43:04 am »

Thankyou so much for your help, I will look into this later today - unfortunately I'm just off to work.

The reason it wasn't posted up in the software forum was that this post was previously another question that I edited when the problem with Romlister came up, noted for future though.

Knightlore · « **Reply #12 on:** April 10, 2012, 05:53:10 pm »

You had it spot on. Worked a treat, thanks again

Trying more to understand Romlister, I can't seem to get RedEarth to show up in my list. I had a look through the xml data for it and can't seem to find anything that I could add in. If needs be I can post it up later, failing that I will do as you suggested and just manually add in some games.

NOP · « **Reply #13 on:** April 10, 2012, 07:56:33 pm »

red earth says it's a 6 button game. do you have that many in your romlister criteria?
The only other control is joy8way, which you probably have checked.

it shows up when I have at least those 2 selected.
==========
At its core, romlister is nothing more than a search engine. You tell it what you want or don't want with the -find text, and it checks each game xml's data looking for text matches of that criteria. It does absolutely nothing more than matching text against text. It does not make any decisions for you that are not present in the -find text. (It has been accused of being too strict in what it filters in and out, and that's not actually up to romlister!) The GUI controls just change the text for you to make it easier, but it's impossible to come up with a GUI control for every conceivable search that someone would want to do.

The only trick is getting to understand its parsing language of &, !, |, (), etc.
To help with that, I put together these tutorials:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/RL_tutorials

Yenome · « **Reply #14 on:** April 10, 2012, 09:52:27 pm »

huh seeing analog on the line with flightstick i would of fig'ed analog being checked would of added it. oh well too picky as they say.

NOP · « **Reply #15 on:** April 10, 2012, 11:27:18 pm »

Agreed.

The "analog" checkbox inserts "'Analog Stick" into the -find box, and we were looking for "Flightstick (Analog)" which explains why it was missed.

That is probably something I should fix in future revs of RL.

Knightlore · « **Reply #16 on:** April 11, 2012, 05:38:14 pm »

Quote from: NOP on April 10, 2012, 07:56:33 pm

red earth says it's a 6 button game. do you have that many in your romlister criteria?
The only other control is joy8way, which you probably have checked.

it shows up when I have at least those 2 selected.
==========
At its core, romlister is nothing more than a search engine. You tell it what you want or don't want with the -find text, and it checks each game xml's data looking for text matches of that criteria. It does absolutely nothing more than matching text against text. It does not make any decisions for you that are not present in the -find text. (It has been accused of being too strict in what it filters in and out, and that's not actually up to romlister!) The GUI controls just change the text for you to make it easier, but it's impossible to come up with a GUI control for every conceivable search that someone would want to do.

The only trick is getting to understand its parsing language of &, !, |, (), etc.
To help with that, I put together these tutorials:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/RL_tutorials

Hi, yes I have those two checked - I've just been messing around with for the last couple of hours with no luck. It's definitely in my romlist (with chd's) works directly with Mame etc but won't show up via Romlister. I did try re-merging my xml in case that made a difference but no joy.

I will have a look at your tutorials on Romlister though, thanks

NOP · « **Reply #17 on:** April 11, 2012, 09:19:11 pm »

Copy-n-paste your -find: window here and I'll see if I can reproduce what you're not seeing. 100% illogical that I can get it and you can't if we're using the same inputs...

Knightlore · « **Reply #18 on:** April 12, 2012, 12:32:56 pm »

NOP · « **Reply #19 on:** April 12, 2012, 06:49:28 pm »

Dunno man, red earth shows up when I search with your -find data:

Code: [Select]

...
Red Baron
Red Clash (Kaneko)
Red Clash (set 1)
Red Clash (set 2)
Red Earth (Euro 961023)
Red Earth (Euro 961121)
Red Hawk (bootleg)
Red Hawk (Excellent Co., Ltd)
Red Hawk (Italy)
Red Hawk (US)
Red Robin
Regulus (315-5033)
...

I got 4566 roms.
I'm using MAME 145's xml file, merged with garwil's controls.xml from v134, which seems to be the latest version I can locate. (admittedly, sourcing up the various controls and catvers from around the net is a PITA)

I'm guessing that controls.xml may be your missing link. This is the one I'm using:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=98241.0

related to this discussion is that MAME changed the way controls are displayed in its XML. This was just updated in 145 I believe and is something I need to address:

Code: [Select]

	<input players="2" buttons="6" coins="2" service="yes">
		<control type="joy" ways="8"/>
	</input>

It used to be "joy8way" instead of the way it appears now.
controls.xml uses the old method still, thus if you are searching for "joy8way" and you have no controls.xml data to work with, you'll miss out on anything that only says "joy" ways="8". I will attempt to fix this soon.

A fix for this would be to load in the xml and do a global search replace to put "joy" ways="8" back to "joy8way". You'd have to do this to all the possible 2way, 4way, etc.

Thanks MAMEdevs for making my job difficult.

Knightlore · « **Reply #20 on:** April 13, 2012, 03:23:24 am »

Arrrgh how frustrating for you... well, thanks for looking into it once again I really like the app and appreciate your time on it.

Well, I'm not sure what is the weakest link here but I have :

Mame 145 xml + controls.ini 0141.1 + a catver from here http://www.progettoemma.net/?catlist < which according to the site is the latest 0145.

Anyway, I will try and build a new xml with your controls.xml and my bits and then see what happens. Failing that I will give your fix a try.

Knightlore · « **Reply #21 on:** April 14, 2012, 04:23:00 pm »

Just thought I'd let you know it was the controls.xml for some reason your one was bigger although showing as an older version

But anyway it's worked and I think I have everything I need now, once adding in "flightstick" for Space Harrier. Can now get on and get this cab finished

NOP · « **Reply #22 on:** April 15, 2012, 03:48:28 pm »

sweet!

all this talk of romlister is making me feel like putting some more work into it, so i'm hoping this week I can brush off the old code a bit and make some updates for supporting the new XML at a minimum...

NOP · « **Reply #23 on:** April 17, 2012, 11:47:01 pm »

FWIW, here's a new beta to test out. I'll make it official after I sleep on it a few days and if no feedback/bug reports come in.

history.txt has the details on what's new.

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister_25b.zip

Yenome · « **Reply #24 on:** April 18, 2012, 02:17:13 am »

woot downloading now. I was just thinking bout how i wish it was updated for the new xml format

NOP · « **Reply #25 on:** April 18, 2012, 08:44:41 am »

to take advantage of the new xml stuff, you have to re-merge your file. all I do is change the new joy, ways=8 back to "joy8way" etc. it may not be the best option, but it's the quickest to get backwards compatibility...


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