Gamelist

[Cas80]

How do i setup mala so gamelist is in order of year made.

Cheers

[big10p]

You can probably do this with ROMlister. I haven't used it in a while, though.

https://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

[BadMouth]

I don't think there is a way short of changing the game name to include the year first.
That would be done in mame.xml and then you'd have to refresh the all games list.

I did this on the "real" pinball tables on future pinball.

[Cas80]

I do it through romlister but wen i open in mala its is still in order of name not year.

How do i do with mame.xml?

[NOP]

romlister does output the list in year order, if you click on the year column header to sort it that way before outputting the list.
The problem here is that mala by default in its own code, is sorting the list alphabetically before displaying it.  Short of getting into the mala code, you are not going to do it.

IIRC, the workaround suggested by badmouth is to hand edit the XML file that romlister uses as its input source, and hand edit the XML fields to add the game's year into the rom description line:


change:
   <machine name="puckman" sourcefile="pacman.c">
      <description>Puck Man (Japan set 1)</description>
      <year>1980</year>
      <manufacturer>Namco</manufacturer>

to:
   <machine name="puckman" sourcefile="pacman.c">
      <description>1980 Puck Man (Japan set 1)</description>
      <year>1980</year>
      <manufacturer>Namco</manufacturer>


etc, etc, etc.  and then your list will show up in year order, but only because the game's name now has the year in it. 

BTW: if you ask me nicely, I can build you a version of romlister which can do this for you automatically.  That might save you about 4 years in hand edits in notepad.
That's only if you think that will solve your problem- it's kind of ugly if you ask me.  Your guests who are going to be playing your arcade machine don't really care what year a game was available in, only the name of it, if they can even remember that!

[Cas80]

Please please pleassssssssse NOP could you build me romlister to do this pleaseeeeeee?
could it be setup to list latest games on top and oldest games on bottom please?
As in:
2015
2014
2013
etc

That would be awesome and thank you for your help!!!!!!!!!!

[Cas80]

Sorry NOP

Does the year need to be shown in title on gamelist? if possible i rather not see year but only if it can be done.
If not you have help me immensely and thank you

[NOP]

Yes, the year itself would show up in the title- the title is what is mala is using to sort the contents of your list.
I can understand if that's a deal breaker.  I'll hold off on doing that in romlister for now.

I suggest you play around with the enhanced mala list editor app.  (see stickied topic in this subforum).  I think that list editor may let you edit the game name field, and you might be able to add/remove characters to that field to change the way games appear in the list.  It would at least be a quick way to experiment with the list itself and see how altering the text alters the list.

[Cas80]

Its all good NOP, i would still appreciate u makin a version of romlister to do this please as ultimately thats how i like my list to be done...by year.

Cheers again mate!!

[NOP]

here ya go:
https://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister_Cas80.zip

Very lightly tested.  Only in mala list output mode, it will insert the year of release before the rom title.

[Cas80]

You are a legend!!!. How do i set it so it starts from 2015 not 1975?

[NOP]

glad it's working!

Getting 2xxx to show up before 1xxx takes us all the way back to your original problem.  The list is SORTED before being displayed.  1 is always going to come before 2.
the only thing I can think of now would be to create a list and then open it in the mala list editor program and change (for example)

2008 Game Title

to

'08 Game Title

the apostrophe (') would come before any numbers in a sorted list.

You're on your own for that one.  I'm not doing that in romlister.