Mame and Adult Games Filter?

[creepfactory]

I have an 8 year old and want to get rid of any rom that has any nudity etc. Is there a list of all offensive games nappropriate for children? I am not talking about girls in bikinis, but like Gals panic etc. Honestly the Mame team looks like hypocrites for banning gambling games, but allowing porn games, and some even have simulated underage porn also, sick those Japanese, huh? So why ban gambling games that you can't even win anything on your pc, but allow softcore and sometimes possibly illegal images in porn roms in Mame? I am sure this topic has been beat to death but it is really too bad. I see some puritanical group killing Mame one day for the porn content, so why not take it out? Or at least have a built in feature or filter in Mame.

[elfman12]

I have an 8 year old and want to get rid of any rom that has any nudity etc. Is there a list of all offensive games nappropriate for children? I am not talking about girls in bikinis, but like Gals panic etc. --- Or at least have a built in feature or filter in Mame.

I agree with you - I wish there were a simple way to have a field in the database or whatever to designate the adult games from the others. Makes sense to me. It wouldn't censor a thing, just give people an option of filtering it out.

[JLR2000]

Mame Content Manger - allows you to rename (i.e romname.zip to romname.xxx) or delete by adult, mahjong, etc...

http://www.mameworld.net/mcm/

I'm guessing the gambling roms were removed because of the ease of building a working gambling machine with the code.....

Anyway, if you don't want the roms, use the MCM to filter them out for you....

[Howard_Casto]

Also simply make a gamelist in lazarus and put a
"*mature*" in the filters entry.  If you have catlist's latest catver.ini (not the offical catver, but better) then adult games are removed from the list.

 

[MinerAl]

You could always go to a site that lists roms (like the one in Denmark), do a search for "adult,"  and throw the few dozen zips out manually.  Not an elegant solution, but it'd keep anybody from playing them.

[menace]

I went to mame.dk and did a search by adult games, copied down the filenames and made a batch file to delete them all--including all those bloody mahjong ones--i have it if you want it--its pretty simple really!

[gtjoe]

go to http://www.mameworld.net/catlist/

and download the cat32 for mame32 or any of the other releases.  in the zip file you will find a file called mature.ini

open the file, the first section contains all mature roms, the second section all others.  So, there's a list of all the roms you can delete.

Or, if you put this file in the folders directory of mame32, you will get a new folder on the left broken into mature roms and no nudity roms.

have fun.

[madk]

You could just not be a pervert and not get the games to begin with.  I have found that this solves the problem.

[Tiger-Heli]

As stated above catlist has a good feature for this.  Another option is to load EmuLoader (www.mameworld.net/emuloader), place the catver.ini file in it's home directory, and then use the parental lock manager.  It searches the catver.ini file for nude, nudity, adult, and mature and will find 178 games in MAME 0.62.  You could them remove the roms for these games.

You could also recompile MAME so the games aren't even recognized anymore.  Just edit driver.c and change the offending games entry from "DRIVER" to "TESTDRIVER" and recompile.

So why ban gambling games that you can't even win anything on your pc, but allow softcore and sometimes possibly illegal images in porn roms in Mame?

FYI, I was one of the few people probably still around when the gambling games were removed.  Mame uses some odd logic, but it's Nicola's baby and overall the program is awesome.  Just to set things straight, I dug up the whatsnew from MAME r36RC1 (the release that removed these games).  Here's what Nicola had to say:

"A few drivers which didn't strictly fit MAME's purpose have been removed.
First of all there were a few drivers which, just like consoles or computers,
don't fall into the category of "arcade video games" that MAME attempts to
emulate. They should have never been added in the first place, and that mistake
is now being rectified.
One of the removed drivers is Street Fighter Zero for the CPS Changer, which
is not an arcade game even if it runs on arcade hardware. The source is left
in, commented out, because it could be useful as a reference for people
attempting to emulate CPS-2 (which, before you ask, won't happen anytime soon).
The so-called "home" versions of NeoGeo games have not ben removed because
there isn't anything in them suggesting that they are home-only games: they
accept coins just like all the others, and might just be different revisions
of the code.
Other removed drivers are four gambling machines. Note that a "gambling
machine" is different from a "video game with a gambling theme". The
discrimination is strictly a technical one, not a moral one (a gambling
machine gives back money/tokens/tickets, a video game does not).
The "Sente diagnostic cartridge" has not been removed because, even if it is
not a game, it is equivalent to the diagnostic tools that are built-in in many
other games - it's just that instead of pressing a service switch you had to
insert this special cartridge to test the board.
The last driver removed is Pong, which at this point was too much of a
simulation and too little of an emulation. It didn't really fit into MAME's
architecture which is CPU-based and targeted at accurately reproducing the
gameplay of the original.

That was a difficult decision to make, but thankfully I won't have to bother
about these things anymore in the future. Gotta go now! *waves*"

Hope this helps

[creepfactory]

Hey guy as for being a pervert and NOT downloading adult games, I didn't do it on purpose, and delete a rom with ANY nudity if it pops up. and those damn Japanese like to trick you a silly kiddie looking arcade games can suddenly show a giggling girl flashing panties, and sometimes just plain unexpected nudity. That's why I posted for help here I was shocked and embarrassed for my kid when these games came out and my point still stands; they shouldn't be IN mame, or a completely different mame like AMame.exe for people who like that sort of crap. I am not a prude, but it defies logic to draw unwanted attention to Mame by having adult games in. Isn't the goal of mame fans to AVOID trouble and problems? What if mame is killed because some mom's kid plays adult games etc. and she hires a lawyer and comes after the Mame team for Illegal Porn charges? It happens, and I would not want it to. I love Mame and am grateful, but it seems wreckless to include these games. Also it seems counter to the point of Mame; to recreate the arcade experience. These adult games were in Bars and sleazy Japanese restaurants.

[Tiger-Heli]

I thought I'd clarify a few things here.

and those damn Japanese like to trick you a silly kiddie looking arcade games can suddenly show a giggling girl flashing panties, and sometimes just plain unexpected nudity.

True, an example is Bouncing Balls in MAME 0.62.  The game features Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian, and . . .  nudity.  I tend to rely on catver.ini for filtering, b/c the screenshots and even KLOV often won't mention this, but I agree, sometimes you don't know until you play the games.

That's why I posted for help here I was shocked and embarrassed for my kid when these games came out and my point still stands; they shouldn't be IN mame, or a completely different mame like AMame.exe for people who like that sort of crap. I am not a prude, but it defies logic to draw unwanted attention to Mame by having adult games in.

Personally, I would agree with having an Amame build except that everyone has a different opinion of what is acceptable and unacceptable.  Some of the games are obviously adult, but gal's panic and peekaboo use animated sketches with nudity.  Should this be moved or not?

To see my point better, what about the violent video games.  Personally, I don't like fighting games with blood spattering all over the place and I comment them out of the custom compiles of MAME that I play.  I also don't like fighting games with men beating up female characters.  Metal Slug is a little gory, but I left it in.  I should have removed skull 'n' crossbones, but now it's one of my son's favorites.  And I don't mind Robocop (where a good hero is blowing away criminals) or Top Gunner (where you drive a Jeep over enemy soldiers), but some one probably would object to these games as well.

Everyone will have different opinions and you can't please them all, so in that sense I agree with the MAME team's decision to include the games and let users remove them if they want to (which I do).

 
What if mame is killed because some mom's kid plays adult games etc. and she hires a lawyer and comes after the Mame team for Illegal Porn charges?

Unlikely, and I don't think the MAME team is too concerned about it.  I assume you are American?  I don't know if MAME is covered under U.S. law b/c the program is developed largely overseas.  Even so, there is NO legal or other Porn in MAME.  All the porn content is on the ROM files which are not supplied with MAME and are illegal to possess anyway.  And I don't know that a mom would want to bring litigation for the results of computer files which were illegal for her to own in the first place.

Kinda like the woman in Panama City Fla, who called the police b/c someone had sold her some sugar when she tried to buy some crack cocaine.  The police showed up, it wasn't sugar, and she got arrested.

Also it seems counter to the point of Mame; to recreate the arcade experience. These adult games were in Bars and sleazy Japanese restaurants.

Again, I think you have an American bias coming through here.  From what I read on the Mameworld message boards, these games are very popular in Japanese arcades, right next to the classic games.

I'm not saying it's right, just saying the way I understand it to be.

[Howard_Casto]

You know if you are offended by nudity that's fine, down download the ILLEGAL roms and play them.  However, censorship in any form is WRONG!!!  I find it silly that you are morally objected to having adult games in mame but obviously you have downloaded them illegally as you have never played them before.  

And in terms of content.... Japaneese adult games are extremely tame.  If your kid is scarred for life by a pixelated nipple or some girls underwear then I feel for you as he/she is going to need some serious consuling in the future.

What it sounds like to me is YOU enjoy these games but are ashamed to admit it and you want to have your cake and eat it to.  Either that or you are a real stick in the mud, either way get over it and don't complain about a FREE program that several people spend much of thier free time to create just so lazy bumbs like you can play pacman for free.    


Why am I so harsh?  Because censorship is the most evil form of manipulation in the history of this planet.  If you want to censor ANYTHING then there is something wrong with you.  MAME isn't a kid's product, if it were then it would obviously be more user friendly and wouldn't be so illegal.  If you want to use it as a kid's product then that's your business, but don't bring you kid a playboy home and complain about all of the naked pictures.

As we said catlist has a very accurate list of adult games, it's YOUR responsiblity to remove then, or better yet don't download them to begin with.  

[Tiger-Heli]

Hi Howard,

I assume most of your comments were directed to CreepFactory, but I want to point out a few things.

You know if you are offended by nudity that's fine, down download the ILLEGAL roms and play them.  However, censorship in any form is WRONG!!!  I find it silly that you are morally objected to having adult games in mame but obviously you have downloaded them illegally as you have never played them before.

Many people nowadays get roms from Tombstones rather than trying to download them.  I haven't tried, but I think it might be difficult to contact tombstones and say "Burn me a complete set of ROMS except for the following 200 games: . . . "

What it sounds like to me is YOU enjoy these games but are ashamed to admit it and you want to have your cake and eat it to.  Either that or you are a real stick in the mud, either way get over it and don't complain about a FREE program that several people spend much of thier free time to create just so lazy bumbs like you can play pacman for free.    

I guess I'm a stick in the mud too, but I agree, the best solution is to let the official build have all the games and delete what you don't like from a custom compile.

Why am I so harsh?  Because censorship is the most evil form of manipulation in the history of this planet.  If you want to censor ANYTHING then there is something wrong with you.

I disagree, I think some censorship can be a good thing, but I don't really want to go there.  I'm happy to leave this as "You have your opinion, I have mine, and neither of us is likely to change the other's mind."

. . . but don't bring you kid a playboy home and complain about all of the naked pictures.

However, Creepfactory has a point, in that, (in spite of the excuses about reading the articles), there isn't a lot of extraneous content in playboy, while there are a lot of non-adult games in MAME.

As we said catlist has a very accurate list of adult games, it's YOUR responsiblity to remove then, or better yet don't download them to begin with.  

We agree on this!

[creepfactory]

Hey Howard, look, on thanksgiving I want to have my arcade cabinet running for my whole family to play the games. Imagine the parents of the kid playing softcore japanese porn agreeing with you it's tame or harmless. It would cause an awful scene. I am for free speech etc. but the Mame team should be cool and allow people to filter adult content even in the .exe,  mame.exe -noadult   and each game that is adult will have a tag added to filter it out. As for the roms being illegal, you too use them I am most sure, but older roms from companies who dont even exist anymore seem silly to peg as illegal. But that's a whole other topic. As for a child seeing nudity in a porn context, yes it is bad. As for a child going to the museum and seeing a Rembrandt Nude, that is acceptable. These are the standards set by MY feelings, not Pat Robertson or some goofy church. Children seeing nudity, even drawn nudity, that is obviosly crossing the line from art to softcore porn and even hardcore, is unacceptably to any good parent. Saying they will be scarred for life is silly, they wont, but it's my job to protect my kid from inappropriate things. I don't take my kid to rated R movies do I? No, and avoid tv shows like Friends where sex is casual and insulting, FOR A KID, adults can enjoy friends, or Porn movies for all I care. All I am saying is that it would be nice to avoid porn or overt sexual images in mame, as an option.

[Tiger-Heli]

Hey Howard, look, on thanksgiving I want to have my arcade cabinet running for my whole family to play the games. Imagine the parents of the kid playing softcore japanese porn agreeing with you it's tame or harmless. It would cause an awful scene.

Agreed, which is why you should use catver.ini to remove the adult games.

I am for free speech etc. but the Mame team should be cool and allow people to filter adult content even in the .exe,  mame.exe -noadult   and each game that is adult will have a tag added to filter it out.

Ermmm, no coprendo . . .  What would that accomplish?  you have to type "mame.exe galpanic" to run the game anyway, and if the rom isn't found it won't work (and if you don't know the name is galpanic, you can't get that far).  If you are using a Frontend, Emuloader and many of the others have a Parental Lock to block these games.

As for the roms being illegal, you too use them I am most sure, but older roms from companies who dont even exist anymore seem silly to peg as illegal. But that's a whole other topic.

The companies may not exist anymore, but they and their intellectual property were undoubtedly sold to other companies who, AFAIK did not release them to the public.  All the ROMS are copyrighted except Gridlee and RobbyRoto, but as you say, that's a whole other topic.

As for a child seeing nudity in a porn context, yes it is bad. As for a child going to All I am saying is that it would be nice to avoid porn or overt sexual images in mame, as an option.

Agreed, and all we are saying is download catver.ini, delete the ROMS, adjust your frontend, and you won't have to worry about it anymore.

If MAME were my project, I don't think I would emulate adult games, or I would spin it off into a different program, but it's not my project and if Nicola were going to be convinced to go this way he would have done it by now (you're not the first person to mention this).  Bottom line is . . . you can't change the official MAME, but you can change how YOU use it.

[SNAAAKE]

What is the big deal ?
Use command windows mame and emuloder and it filters the nude games then write down the rom names and delete them manually.But is it really necearry?..what the heck...i watched porn when I was like 12..been to strip club when i was 15(in canada,I was kinda tall and old looking)..who REALLY cares.If anyone sees those games just say "its just video games thats all".

[Tiger-Heli]

What is the big deal ?
what the heck...i watched porn when I was like 12..been to strip club when i was 15(in canada,I was kinda tall and old looking)..

And look what it did to your avatar!!!  

[hyiu]

I would also like to jump in and express $0.0002 cents of my opinion...

for kids... I DO AGREE that they need to be protected, and some knowledges needs to be fed in a "right" way when they're small.... you can call it censor, but I'd call  it protection / teaching... remember kids (or even some teenagers) are small and it means that they don't really have enough "experience" to make a decision on what is good and what is bad.... it is up to their parent... (school will do a small part... mostly parent) to show them a "model" to follow.... teach them their needed "experience" in day to day life....

Some people might find adult games offensive.... (that I completely agree...) some stricter parents might even find fighting games offensive... (like MK... with guys pulling heads off... bloody scene... etc...) That depends on each parent... and its impossible for Mame to cater to everyone's need..... so.... its up to the parent to delete or hide the "unwanted" roms from their kids..... yes... deleting and reconfiguring is tedious work... but nothing about being a parent is simple.... right ??.....

Since Mame is "Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator".... it means its going to emulate different type of arcades.... so... normal games... fighting games.... adult games... or even gambling games... (whatever games the original writer wants to include...) is up to them.....

Since its FREE, we did NOT pay for it.... we cannot expect them to tailor our needs.... (we have to work around them when needed...)

so... Mame has or has not a list without adult games is out of the question... I don't think we have the right to ask.... (we can request, but they do it or not is none of our business....) if you want, you can re-compile the program and add-on that option... and from previous replies... seems like some other people had done part of the job... (which means to me that there ARE people out there that DO care....)

[SNAAAKE]

And look what it did to your avatar!!!  

I know man..too much porn watching...eyes are messed up ..LOL

[Nailz]

I'm gonna throw in my $.0000002 late into the mix as well.  I  have been looking for a way to get these games exluded from my hard drive as well.  I have gone through and found quite a few of them, but it isn't always easy to weed them out with thousands of games to go through.

Don't call me a pervert because I have them, I got them through Tombstone and as such get them ALL.  I don't object to the nudity but have a youngster in the house and would like to keep it fairly clean so any program that can take them out for me and make my job easier is welcome.....

I don't expect the MAME team to edit the .exe just for me, I can get off my dead ass and do the work myself    Just nice to see someone else out there is helping.

I also noticed that within EmuLoader, my front end of choice, they do have a games filter, does that work off of catver as well?

[Tiger-Heli]

I also noticed that within EmuLoader, my front end of choice, they do have a games filter, does that work off of catver as well?

You are in luck, I use EmuLoader as well.  Yes, it works off Catver as well.  If you have the latest version, I wrote a lot of tips for hiding adult games in the El-tips-tricks.rtf file in the EL/docs version.

here are the steps you need to follow:  Download the latest catver.ini http://www.mameworld.net/catlist/ and place it in your main emuloader folder.

Start Emuloader and select File-Create Games List (default).  This will read the catver.ini info into Emuloader.  Now select Advanced Tools - Parental Lock Manager and click ok.  The default keywords are Adult, Mature, nude, and nudity, but you can add others if you want.  Click begin search and EL will list all the games in these categories.  

(I recommend writing down the titles and deleting the roms or commenting these out of mame (the parental lock can be bypassed without figuring out the encryption, but I won't say more), if you're kids are computer-savvy, beware).

Either way, click add games to list, ok, type in and confirm a password, and click ok again.  Now, click Advanced Tools and Parental Lock and the games will disappear from EL's game list.  When you update MAME you will have to get a new catver.ini and repeat to pick up the new games, but previously blocked games will stay blocked.

P.S.  Personal Message me (Nailz only), if you want to know how the Parental Lock can be bypassed.  I don't want to post more details here in case any children are reading this thread (or find it in a search engine).

[Psyklops]

Some of this is probably re-hash of what others have said:

MAME is designed to keep the "arcade" experience alive.  Like it or not these games are a part of that experience.  I have seen more than a few Fantasia machines tucked away in the dark corners of arcades open to all ages, not just seedy bars.

What MAME is not designed to do is to be a babysitter for your kids.  Same as TV, Movies, etc.  If you can't be bothered to do a little leg work to filter out the games YOU consider innapropriate for YOUR children, why should someone else?  These people are already giving up a lot of their free-time to work on MAME for free.  The source code is readily available to those who wish to modify MAME to suit their own puposes.

You want to play illegal roms (unless you own every board for a complete set of MAME roms) which is "okay", but the porn roms are bad.  If you want to talk about instilling morals in your kids, did you happen to mention to them the about the legality of copyright infringement while you were lecturing from your soapbox?

[eightbit]

Wow what a responce...  

Don't forget what mames stated purpose has always been, here is a quote from the official Mame FAQ-
MAME's purpose is to preserve these decades of video-game history. As gaming technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents these important "vintage" games from being lost and forgotten.

Here is a quote from the alt.games.mame faq-
MAME stands for (M)ultiple (A)rcade (M)achine (E)mulator. MAME is a strictly non-profit, free source, emulation project directed by Nicola Salmoria. Its purpose is to document the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines and to preserve the historical aspects of the arcade games for future generations.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic but as others have pointed out, where exactly would you draw the line? Nudity would be obviously out, where would chicks in bikinis be? What games are you going to choice to preserve and which ones are you going to let go?

There seem to be many easy ways to remove the adult games so whats the big deal? For those that are objecting isn't it worth 15 minutes of your time to permanently remove them?

Just so you know where I'm coming from I am what most would call a overprotective parent but I feel Mame is just like the internet, tv, movies, or most things, if your going to let your kids use it then you are responsible for what they see and it is up to you to filter the content.

[Howard_Casto]

I'm not trying to be sarcastic but as others have pointed out, where exactly would you draw the line? Nudity would be obviously out, where would chicks in bikinis be? What games are you going to choice to preserve and which ones are you going to let go?

Exactly!  This is why ANY form of censorship is evil.  Why? Because some people are much more easily offended than others.  

Now if mame was a childrens product that was legal then there wouldn't be any nudity, but it wouldn't be because of censoring, it would be because of marketing.  No parent would buy a child such a product and thus the makers wouldn't be stupid enough to include questionable material.  There is a big difference between censoring and mis-labeling things which some people don't seem to get.  Take Mortal Kombat for example.  A lot of paren't found it offensive when it came out.  Did they pull the game?  No, what they did was make an international rating system that rates the questionable nature of the game.  MK was given a mature rating for gore and thus parents immediately knew to watch out before buying the game.  The catlist does exactly this, giving you a list of all mature games.  And it's free no less, so you really can't complain if it isn't 100% accurate.  

I hate to go on and on about this, but after somone saying that some censoring is good then obviously I have to.  Even the poster said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.... well if there is censoring then what we are doing is essentially saying the opposite by not allowing those who think it's acceptable to view the material the option to.    Btw this goes for anything not just mame... tv, movies, everything should all be censored.  Of course proper ratings and time slots would have to be given but that's obvious.

Remember there is no such thing as a "little"  censoring.  If you remove some things because of public reaction then it is only fair to remove ANYTHING that ANYONE finds offensive.  And trust me there are some people out there that find 95% of the games in MAME offensive in some way.  In other words it becomes a lot of censoring by default unless you appoint someone to make the decision of what goes and what stays, and quite honestly I think that is impossible.    

I'm not trying to be an ass here, it's just in this way and age it seems that our freedom is getting taken away from us in the name of "non offensive material" and "politically correctness."  These are terms people with power invented to get what they want in the name of doing "the right thing."  I just want everyone to realize this and not buy into the b.s.  

For us americans....

We founded this country, simply put, so we could do whatever the hell we wanted without being judged or persecuted for it.   We inspired the world to ratify their goverments to do the same.  NEVER loose site of that.  

[Nailz]

For us americans....

We founded this country, simply put, so we could do whatever the hell we wanted without being judged or persecuted for it.   We inspired the world to ratify their goverments to do the same.  NEVER loose site of that.  

Whoa!  A whole other topic for us to argue altogether!  

I think a summary of this go around is in order:

1.  Censorship=bad

2.  MAME Team= performing exactly what they say they are on their mission statement, I wouldn't expect them to change it for us.

3.  Adult games=For adults, if you want them, fine.  If you don't, then take the damn responsibility to remove them, one by one if you have to with no whining.  Too many people are too lazy to do these things since it's easier to point the finger elsewhere.  Just once I'd like to see people own up to things and say "you know what?  I was a ---smurfy--- parent and let my TV babysit my kids instead of me being a teacher and a mentor and it's no ones fault but my own!"

4.  Filters=Looks like there are some out there, I will be looking at them and then probably going through my game list one by one as well, no matter how painful because my kids are that important.

5.  Freedom to choose=Yeehah!  

Peace!

[Superdude]

Moral of this thread:
I Liek B00BIE5!!!!!

[elfman12]

Why am I so harsh?  Because censorship is the most evil form of manipulation in the history of this planet.  If you want to censor ANYTHING then there is something wrong with you.

No offense, but that's just silly. You are making a blanket statement about something that has proper uses. No, I don't think government should censor something like this, it should be up to the people concerned. But you seem to not even want that, following your logic.

All I would ask for is a FIELD in the database, to classify "adult" oriented material. (and come on, it's not THAT hard to define, is it? really?) Ok, maybe even have grades of material, like movie ratings. Then let the user decide what to filter. Don't keep the games, out, just have a filter available. And if you think that THAT's censorship, then the Mame32 developer is ALREADY censoring things like manufacturer, trackball, raster/vector, year, clone of.... etc.

[Rocky]

Why am I so harsh?  Because censorship is the most evil form of manipulation in the history of this planet.  If you want to censor ANYTHING then there is something wrong with you.

I couldn't disagree more.  Censorship isn't even in the top 100 evil things in this world.

In fact, censorship is everywhere and it is needed. I guess that means there is something wrong with me, because I think censorship can be good.

- This message board censors our messages (if we use words they don't want us to)
- Teachers censor what students can say or write. Certain words or subjects are taboo
- TV censors content. You can't have live executions (yet), and no live sex shows on the networks.
- All child Pr0n is censored.

Those are just a few examples.

So, lighten up.    Mame is just a game, you don't have to flame someone just because they want a tool to weed out the adult games.

Rocky

[elfman12]

What MAME is not designed to do is to be a babysitter for your kids.  Same as TV, Movies, etc.  If you can't be bothered to do a little leg work to filter out the games YOU consider innapropriate for YOUR children, why should someone else?

Quick question: Did you "do some leg work" and download all of your Roms one at a time, from more than one source? If not, then I guess I could call you lazy (but I won't! ) Most of us get our ROMS enmasse, and all we need is a bit of advice on how to filter out a particular type of game.

You know, this whole hobby involves helping each other out with things we want to do, what to create and how to do it. What I'm saying is that if we were to take your attitude on ALL questions asked on this forum, we see things like:

"Hey, if you want to cut a slot for T-molding, do a little leg work yourself - it's your responsibility to figure this out".....

[elfman12]

As stated above catlist has a good feature for this.  Another option is to load EmuLoader (www.mameworld.net/emuloader), place the catver.ini file in it's home directory, and then use the parental lock manager.  It searches the catver.ini file for nude, nudity, adult, and mature and will find 178 games in MAME 0.62.  You could them remove the roms for these games.

Hey, thanks for the info. These look like they'll do the trick.

(See, it's all about helping each other... thanks to all who supplied solutions to the problem..... now, let's all hold hands together and sing kumbaya...)

[Tiger-Heli]

All I would ask for is a FIELD in the database, to classify "adult" oriented material. (and come on, it's not THAT hard to define, is it? really?) Ok, maybe even have grades of material, like movie ratings. Then let the user decide what to filter. Don't keep the games, out, just have a filter available. And if you think that THAT's censorship, then the Mame32 developer is ALREADY censoring things like manufacturer, trackball, raster/vector, year, clone of.... etc.

Some final thoughts:

SortInfo http://hem.passagen.se/robert.palmqvist/Downloads/downloads.html by Robert Palmquist will also allow you to read the catver.ini file and sort by category, for those not using a frontend.

Elfman12 - I found your comments interesting, but here are my thoughts.  Mame32 is basically just MAME with it's own frontend.  It's been a while since I used it, but I downloaded a copy and it does have a sort by genre feature.  The problem is:  Let's say he added a "Adult" genre.  If you have teens or pre-teens, they would definitely look in this genre first.  And now they would know which were the "naughty" games in MAME and could search the internet for the roms to play them (if you had deleted them).  I don't think the MAME32 developer wants to build in a "lockout" feature and without it, you are doing more harm than good.  Sure, you could compile your own MAME32, but it is more difficult than compiling standard MAME and standard MAME with a frontend does the same thing.

Also, remember, even with a frontend with lockout, and a custom compile, your kids could still look in catver.ini and find the "bad" games, then download a straight mame binary and find the roms and play the games without your knowing about it.  You really aren't stopping them from getting into trouble, but hopefully you are making it more difficult.

What could be done is to add another category to the MAME -listinfo output for game category and have a designation here for nudity.  Perhaps this would fly with the dev team, but I don't know.

OTOH, TriggerFin puts an awful lot of work into catlist and it is out within days of a new MAME release and I don't know that there's much point in bothering the dev team about something TriggerFin's already building.

I don't know if you remember back to R36B14 when hi-score support was internal to MAME and some drivers were broken because adding hi-score saving to this game messed up other ones.  Looking back, it was a good decision to move this to an external hi-score.dat file.  I think the same thing is true of the catver info.  TriggerFin can keep up the file (and make periodic updates, between MAME revisions, if necessary) and the dev team can concentrate on bringing us new games and improving the existing ones.

[Chris]

Hey Howard, look, on thanksgiving I want to have my arcade cabinet running for my whole family to play the games. Imagine the parents of the kid playing softcore japanese porn agreeing with you it's tame or harmless. It would cause an awful scene.

This is not meant to be criticism, it is just that I am suprised...

Do many people really just take a whole ROM set and dump them in their cabinet?  Each of the games in my cabinet is hand-picked: games I will play, games my wife will play, games my daughter will play, other popular games that guests will play.  I pick one version of each game; what's the point of having three sets or four clones for each game?

Most importantly, games that can be played with the controls on my panel.   You won't find any Capcom fighting games on my machine.  Why not?  They all require 6 buttons per player, and I have only four buttons per player.  I have no majhong games either, again because I don't have the proper controls. No analog stick, so no Afterburner.  

Each game was play-tested as it was put in to find the best resulution, frameskip, and sound quality settings, and the controls configured appropriately. Am I just insane?  Does everyone just dump all the ROMs into their cabinet and configure and fine-tune as they go?

My cabinet has, at this point, 170 games in it, but they all play well, and I don't have to worry about any of them.  Okay, there's the ridiculous breast-bouncing of Mai in KOF 98 (one of my daughter's favorite games) that makes me cringe when other parents are over... and that would likely not even be caught by the proposed "adult" filter!

That being said, I don't see anything wrong with the suggestion that an adult content tag be added to MAME in the future; therre are already cocktail mode tags, non-working ROM tags, etc.... it's not censorship to tag them!

--Chris

[Nailz]

I can't speak for the others, but it was easier for me to just dump every single ROM onto my system versus picking out what I may or may not like.  I definitely like the old school games better, but don't want to pass up newer ones that may be great to.

It's worth it for me to pick through them.  As for the suggestion of the MAME team adding more tags, it's a good one.  But I imagine these guys have a ton of stuff to do in their real lives besides worry about who gets offended by what games, it's a matter of what culture you are in and how you are brought up...

So in the meantime, people either wait for a tag to be created or they get to work and put it in themselves.

[Chris]

I can't speak for the others, but it was easier for me to just dump every single ROM onto my system versus picking out what I may or may not like.  I definitely like the old school games better, but don't want to pass up newer ones that may be great to.

Ah.  I try out unfamiliar games on my regular PC, then move them to my cabinet once I decide it's a winner...

[Carsten Carlos]

I hope there never'll be a censor-option on MAME - the fear of nudity seems more kind of american problem it seems.
Personally I don't think it would do any harm to children seeing nudity, and as far as I overlook the situation there aren't that many real hardcore-games in there.

and those damn Japanese like to trick you a silly kiddie looking arcade games can suddenly show a giggling girl flashing panties, and sometimes just plain unexpected nudity.

I think you've to accept that the Japanese just have a different culture (like the US, Europe or any country has) - surely they laugh when they play these games and don't have such dirty thoughts that some of us might have!

Anyway, I even would prefer to let the kids see more explicit nudity then brutality, or do you think it's better for them to see how people are killed?!? (How do you explain a kid why one man kills another?)

I don't know how young are the youngest player of the US-army-sponsered ego-shooter, but THIS should be more of interest to be censored!

No offence, but as stated before, I agree that censorship IS a bad thing, anyway, MAME as a historysaver would be absolutely useless when you keep all games out that don't match your political correctness. Noone has to install all the roms that are out there.

[Tiger-Heli]

My comments on the questions below:  (just my personal opinions)

This is not meant to be criticism, it is just that I am suprised...
Do many people really just take a whole ROM set and dump them in their cabinet?  

I do now, here's why:  I used to just pick a rom and download it when I wanted to install a new game.  That was when there were websites with all the roms posted all the time.  Then I updated MAME and the old ROMS wouldn't work and there was no place to download the current one.  A lot of people use Tombstones to get a complete set of roms.  I was given access to a complete set of ROMS and downloaded it so that when I wanted to add a game I knew that the ROM would be available.  Since then, I've found some really cool games to play that I had never heard of and wouldn't have bothered installing, if I waited around to install all the other interesting games first.

I pick one version of each game; what's the point of having three sets or four clones for each game?

Ah, but there's the rub . . .  some of the clones have different features than the originals.  I played a lot of Gun.Smoke growing up.  It turns out GunSmoka was the version in the machine I used to play so that's what's set up on the computer.  But I had to play all the clones to find this was the one I wanted.  And I needed all the Roms to play all the clones . . .

No analog stick, so no Afterburner.

I tried to plan my panel to support as many games as possible.  Afterburner is a great game (but too slow on my Pentium 200).  I would try to find a way to play it if I had to.
 

Each game was play-tested as it was put in to find the best resulution, frameskip, and sound quality settings, and the controls configured appropriately. Am I just insane?  Does everyone just dump all the ROMs into their cabinet and configure and fine-tune as they go?

I keep resolution fixed at 800x600 and let mamew with hardware stretch take care of the screen size.  Frameskip is set to auto and sound at 11025 b/c it's a slow machine.  For about 40 games, I have optimized configuration, but the rest I just run with the default settings.

Okay, there's the ridiculous breast-bouncing of Mai in KOF 98 (one of my daughter's favorite games) that makes me cringe when other parents are over... and that would likely not even be caught by the proposed "adult" filter!

True, it wouldn't be caught!

That being said, I don't see anything wrong with the suggestion that an adult content tag be added to MAME in the future; therre are already cocktail mode tags, non-working ROM tags, etc.... it's not censorship to tag them!

I don't think you will ever see an adult content tag like that, although maybe.  I was thinking of just having it output to the listinfo file.

There is also the problem in that you don't want it to be set up so that it becomes possible for kids to search "For" the adult content tag and defeat the controls that you're trying to enact.

[Psyklops]

Quick question: Did you "do some leg work" and download all of your Roms one at a time, from more than one source? If not, then I guess I could call you lazy (but I won't! ) Most of us get our ROMS enmasse, and all we need is a bit of advice on how to filter out a particular type of game.

You know, this whole hobby involves helping each other out with things we want to do, what to create and how to do it. What I'm saying is that if we were to take your attitude on ALL questions asked on this forum, we see things like:

"Hey, if you want to cut a slot for T-molding, do a little leg work yourself - it's your responsibility to figure this out".....

You missed the point of what I was saying.  I have no problems with someone asking "how to do something".  What I do have a problem with is someone expecting someone else to do the work for them.  The other messages in this post had already answered how to filter, using catvers or recompiling.  When I said leg work I meant, ok you have your answer so try one of them, not continue to suggest that the MAME team should do something that you want implemented.  To some up, asking for advice=OK.  Asking for someone to do it for you=LAZY.

[Chris]

My comments on the questions below:  (just my personal opinions)
A lot of people use Tombstones to get a complete set of roms.  I was given access to a complete set of ROMS and downloaded it so that when I wanted to add a game I knew that the ROM would be available.  Since then, I've found some really cool games to play that I had never heard of and wouldn't have bothered installing, if I waited around to install all the other interesting games first.

I pick one version of each game; what's the point of having three sets or four clones for each game?

Ah, but there's the rub . . .  some of the clones have different features than the originals.  I played a lot of Gun.Smoke growing up.  It turns out GunSmoka was the version in the machine I used to play so that's what's set up on the computer.  But I had to play all the clones to find this was the one I wanted.  And I needed all the Roms to play all the clones . . .

My PC has three times as many ROMs as the cabinet.  I use that as a proving ground for the games before they get cabinetified...

Each game was play-tested as it was put in to find the best resulution, frameskip, and sound quality settings, and the controls configured appropriately. Am I just insane?  Does everyone just dump all the ROMs into their cabinet and configure and fine-tune as they go?

I keep resolution fixed at 800x600 and let mamew with hardware stretch take care of the screen size.  Frameskip is set to auto and sound at 11025 b/c it's a slow machine.  For about 40 games, I have optimized configuration, but the rest I just run with the default settings.

I'm running DOS in my cabinet, so it's a little more work to get the games looking good, fullscreen and full speed....

There is also the problem in that you don't want it to be set up so that it becomes possible for kids to search "For" the adult content tag and defeat the controls that you're trying to enact.

Oh, I don't believe for a moment this will keep kids from playing adult games; it'll simply be a tool to help people decide what to put in their cabinet.

--Chris

[elfman12]

Elfman12 - I found your comments interesting, but here are my thoughts.  Mame32 is basically just MAME with it's own frontend.  It's been a while since I used it, but I downloaded a copy and it does have a sort by genre feature.  The problem is:  Let's say he added a "Adult" genre.  If you have teens or pre-teens, they would definitely look in this genre first.  And now they would know which were the "naughty" games in MAME and could search the internet for the roms to play them (if you had deleted them).  I don't think the MAME32 developer wants to build in a "lockout" feature and without it, you are doing more harm than good.  Sure, you could compile your own MAME32, but it is more difficult than compiling standard MAME and standard MAME with a frontend does the same thing.

Also, remember, even with a frontend with lockout, and a custom compile, your kids could still look in catver.ini and find the "bad" games, then download a straight mame binary and find the roms and play the games without your knowing about it.  You really aren't stopping them from getting into trouble, but hopefully you are making it more difficult.

True... I probably will switch to Lazarus for my FE on the new cab anyway, either that or one that will give me the flexablility you describe. BTW, if my daughter knows enought to get in and edit the catver.ini file, then I'll have to start billing her out as a systems tech! hehe.  Really though, I'm not that worried about that - most of the time will be supervised - I'm just wanting that first line of defence.

Thanks!

[elfman12]

Personally I don't think it would do any harm to children seeing nudity, and as far as I overlook the situation there aren't that many real hardcore-games in there.

Anyway, I even would prefer to let the kids see more explicit nudity then brutality, or do you think it's better for them to see how people are killed?!? (How do you explain a kid why one man kills another?)

Hey, here's a good example. I personally disagree with you on this issue - but with tags, it doesn't matter - you can filter out the brutal games, and I can filter the nudies. And some people can filter NOTHING. Then we're all happy!

(sound of Elfman12 getting down off of his soapbox...)