Making a new gamelist based on a master list and controls available (MaLa)

[jimmer]

So, I'm a noob at front ends.  I've just started using MaLa and quite happy with it so far. I thought I'd ask this question in the main forum though because it might involve tools that aren't specifically MaLa.

For myself I'm using swappable panels and a menu per panel which I build up as I add more games. Already it's a little tedious when I add a bunch of new games, and I'd like to be able to create them from scratch.

Here's a situation I can foresee already. I build my friend a cabinet and he starts off with a Streetfighter panel and the 50 or so games that I play. He adds lots more games to his set-up (single menu, all played with 8way SF panel). Then he wants to add a 4way panel.

The question is, how do I take his MaLa gamelist and pull out from it all the 4way and 2way games ?

[NOP]

what you need is romlister. 
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

it's a tool that helps create lists based on your control panel and genre of games you want.

It is not designed for your specific need of taking a mala list of 8way, 4way, 2way games and extracting things out of it, but it can absolutely help you build up 2way, 4way 8way lists for your exact control panel needs and button counts.  Same goal, slightly different method of achieving it.

It may take a bit of learning to understand what it does and what it can be used for, but we're here to help.  Or at least I am- I wrote the thing!

[jimmer]

Thanks, I though I had it all worked out, but not quite.

I used ROMlister to create my list of 4way games (about 4000), and saved it as a MaLa gamelist.

Then in Mala configuration I checked 'Only collect games found in ROM listwith ROM found in ROM folders'.

But it still shows all 4000 odd. 
Am I missing something? like what a collection is.

[NOP]

there's no need to adjust anything inside mala dealing with configuring/changing your list.  if you are building your list with romlister, you are supplying everything mala needs to know.
whatever option you picked is trying to help you build a list using mala, which you don't need/want to do.

so what you're describing to me (it is always showing you the same list of 4000 titles which you supplied to it) sounds like it is correct. 

----
I did think of a way to do what you originally wanted (pulling out all the 2way and 4way titles)

1) create a full list in romlister of 2,4,8 ways. - i think that is what you've got now with your 4k titles.
2) save that list as a mala game list
3) save that list as an XML file too. 
4) now go to settings/tools in romlister and load that XML file in as your main input file.
5) now create a list of just 8 way --> this new list is everything from your original list minus the 4 and 2way titles.  Save that as a new mala game list.
6) in mala, just right click on the main screen and switch to this new list when the control panel is swapped.

[jimmer]

I've edited my previous post.

That MaLa option looks like it should be dynamically building a list of the ROMs that are in both my list and my ROM folder.  Which is the obvious way to do it really. Buit it doesn't work

[NOP]

well, you could post for help in the mala forum, but the quicker answer is to get a full set of roms, then whatever game that romlister comes up with for your list, you'll already know you have.  that makes things way simpler.  sorry that not much help, but it gets you to where you want to be...

[jimmer]

Yeah, I'll repost in Mala forum.

Getting all the ROMs doesn't help me, I don't want 4000 games on my menu. I want the menu to dynamically adjust to the ROMs it can find.

[NOP]

well, you could do that with romlister...
if, instead of 4000 roms, you have say, 200 in a separate folder as zip files, then start up RL, go into settings and tools and click the rom scan utility.
Point it to your folder with 200 roms in it (they must be in zip format, not 7z- if you have 7z's let me know).

RL will take your master input XML file and pare it down to just the 200 entries matching the filenames of the roms in your folder.
then it will create a new XML file based off that data.  If you make that new XML file your main input file, then in the main screen click on the "list all roms" button.
It should show you a list of your 200 games.  select all the games in that list, right click and select "add to your list".  From your list, you can export that out as a mala list.

maybe that feature is supposed to work in mala- I don't know.  I'm rather biased toward making all of my lists with RL- it helps with the debugging if I use it too.

[jimmer]

Thanks NOP

That would work but it's too slow, and I'm also thinking of a system I can set up once for other people.
So it's got to be a single button press to update everything.

I see 2 solutions at the moment:

1.
Command line ROMlister would work for me.

When I make them a new control panel, eg missile command. All I'd have to do is give them a new batch file which runs one additional ROMlister list creation.  Oh, and add a new gamelist node to their MaLa tree.


2. A little program like this would work:

For every gamelist in folder C:\master_gamelists
Compare to the ROM names in C:\roms
and create (from the matches) new MaLa gamelists in C:\mala_working_gamelists

Then when I make them a new control panel, all I have to do is give them a new master gamelist for those controls. Oh, and add a new gamelist node to their MaLa tree.

I could probably work 2 out myself (given time), if it wasn't for the .mlg format.