%path% broken in 1.7.4.5?

[drventure]

Anyone else experiencing this.

I've got Mala 1.7.4.5 and I'm working on getting multiple emus' working in a single list.

I need to include the ROM PATH on the command line, but when I do, Mala just replaces it with a blank.

Here's the log file..

Notice on the first line, the %path% is there, and on the next line it says it's replaced with the path, but it's just blanked out.

As far as I know the path is good (the rom shows up earlier in the log with it's full path)


2012/08/25  11:28:31.53   Info: CtrlStartGame: MAME: FMameCommandline (config) = "C:\Games\Emulators\Mame129\mamelaunch.vbs" %rom% -skip_gameinfo %path%
2012/08/25  11:28:31.53   Debug **: CtrlStartGame: MAME Command Line replaced %path% = "C:\Games\Emulators\Mame129\mamelaunch.vbs" %rom% -skip_gameinfo
2012/08/25  11:28:31.54   Debug **: CtrlStartGame: MAME Command Line replaced %rom% = "C:\Games\Emulators\Mame129\mamelaunch.vbs" targ -skip_gameinfo
2012/08/25  11:28:31.54   Debug **: CtrlStartGame: MAME Command Line replaced %parent% = "C:\Games\Emulators\Mame129\mamelaunch.vbs" targ -skip_gameinfo
2012/08/25  11:28:31.54   Debug **: CtrlStartGame: MAME Command Line replaced %ext% = "C:\Games\Emulators\Mame129\mamelaunch.vbs" targ -skip_gameinfo
2012/08/25  11:28:31.54   Info: CtrlStartGame: MAME: Converted Commandline = wscript.exe "C:\Games\Emulators\Mame129\mamelaunch.vbs" targ -skip_gameinfo
2012/08/25  11:28:31.54   Info: Saving game list: C:\Games\FrontEnds\Mala\All Games.mlg

[BadMouth]

I'm not as knowledgeable about programming and log files, but I'll take a crack at this.
It works fine for me in v1.745

If you highlight the game in your gamelist, right click and select "show game info" (or something like that....I'm at work and can't reference it),
does it show a path there?

When I had this problem, it turned out that the path info stored in the gamelist was blank for roms that were in sub-directories.
I had to change one of the options where you set the rom directories in MALA.  I think I had to include non-working roms, even though I had modified the xml to mark them as working.  I'll have a look at my settings when I get time.

Check out mlgconverter.exe from this thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,101104.0.html
It will convert Mala gamelist files into text files so you can see exactly what info is stored there.
If the path isn't there, that's why it's not getting passed.
You can also make changes and convert them back.

[drventure]

Ah, Well, that was the first thing I checked (opening the MLG file a hex editor). There's no paths there anywhere. Yet mala seems to be able to load the roms properly, which seemed odd, but I figured that Mala just wasn't storing paths in the MLG file.

If it's actually supposed to be, then it's entirely possible that my settings for how it scans for roms isn't quite right (or really, it sounds like there may be a bug in that code, but I'm not privy to those internals  )

I'll try rescanning with some different options to see if I get a path stored.

Thanks!

[BadMouth]

Keep in mind that Mala is not loading the roms, only inserting the rom name into the command line.
The emulator then looks for the rom where it expects roms to be (usually based on the path set in its own .ini or .cfg file).

In my setup, the "roms" in my other_emus folder that mala is pointed at are just dummy zipped text files. 
I wanted the real roms kept in the folders with their emulators.

[drventure]

Right, I'm actually basing my setup around some of the posts that you did on the subject, so I've got a similar situation.

But even the real mame roms don't have paths in the INI file.

I pulled mlgconverter. Boy, it doesn't seem to like large list files. It seems to get exponentially slower on each entry it processes. But, I'm just trying it out, no big deal for now.

[BadMouth]

Finally found it!   
(I think so anyway)
 
Reply #111 in the SGT thread.

When you tell Mala to refresh the main game list and unckeck the says "only include games found in the rom directory", Mala adds all the games from MAME's xml file but does not add the paths so all games from your "Other Emu" subdirectory will be sent to your main MAME executable which is not what I wanted.If you have a merged MAME rom set and want to apply SGT's method, here is what you must do:

I pulled mlgconverter. Boy, it doesn't seem to like large list files. It seems to get exponentially slower on each entry it processes. But, I'm just trying it out, no big deal for now.

I've only ever converted a small gamelist just to see what info was stored there.
One thing that I found interesting is that it has Horizontal and Vertical for orientation, where the MAME xml has 90, 180, 270
The latter could be more useful to someone with a 4 sided cocktail cab.

[drventure]

Whoa. Damn. I'm gonna have to read through that a few times, but I believe I understand what he's saying.

Grrr. I was really hoping to work out a simple way to just drop an XML (and maybe a zero len ZIP file) into a fake-roms folder, and have Mala pick them up. The process appears to require a lot more work than that though.

Thanks for the heads up!

[drventure]

@Badmouth

Many thanks. Checking that "Include only Roms that can be found" option did the trick. Now I've got paths for all the mame roms as well as the fake roms.

You do have to create the empty fake zip files so that mala is happen, but that's a minor issue.

But the good thing is, assuming you +want+ mala to filter out any entries where the roms can't be located anyway, the tack I'm taking still seems to work ok.

I'd just already filtered my rom list out via ROMLISTER so that mala would import it a lot quicker (I generated the full list from mame, then backed it up, and used ROMLISTER to get rid of mature, mahjong, and any games that I didn't have appropriate controls for, plus any games that I didn't actually have roms for. That left about 2500, which Mala processes much faster than the original list of 8000+.

[BadMouth]

For the benefit of anyone following this, using dummy files isn't necessary for emulators that use zipped roms (most emulators).
It is possible to just put your real roms in the other_emus folder and point the path in the emulator's cfg file to there.
It's done that way on my main setup.
 
When building my new rig, I wanted the roms kept in the emulator's folder, so I used dummy files for everything.

[drventure]

One more point for future ref on this.

Mala has the ability to search for ROMs in up to 3 base folders, and of course all subfolders of those folders.

This allows you to point Mala at

1) your Base MAME roms folder as one path
2) a "FakeRoms" folder for everything else.

in the FakeRoms folder, create subfolders that contain zero len stub ZIP files for all other games you'd like to include.

Couple points about this
1) you +could+ just throw everything into the single FakeRoms folder, but it keeps things more organized to have subfolders like

FakeRoms
    PCGames
    Doujin
    Mess
    Atari2600
    etc etc

Then, it's fairly easy to write a bat or script to generate all your stub ZIP files from the list of real rom zip files stored wherever you want to keep them.

Doing that, you can also keep small XML files to describe each fake rom, and use a pretty simple bat file to merge them all together into one MAME.XML really easily, so that Mala can scan that for the rom to put in it's master game list.

I'll write that up as soon as I've got it all down.