Front End Authors: Aaron Alert!

[Buddabing]

Removed the following obsolete and/or redundant command line options from
the Windows build: [Aaron Giles]
 -wrongorientation
 -wrongfps
 -gamelist
 -list
 -listgames
 -listdetails
 -listwrongmerge
 -listcpu
 -listcpuclass
 -listgamespersourcefile
 -listnosound
 -listnvram
 -listpalettesize
 -listromdistribution
 -listromnumber
 -listsound
 -listdupcrc
 -listsamdir
 -listmd5
 -listsha1
 -verifysets
 -vset
 -vsam
 -sortname
 -sortdriver
 -[no]clones
 -crconly
 -maxlogsize
 -resamplefilter
 -debug_resolution
 -history_file
 -mameinfo_file

[SirPoonga]

Interesting, in otherwords, get everything form listxml.  Which I hope it means they add more info to listxml as there's a bunch more info that could be added because the old listinfo was akward and couldn't handle it.

[Minwah]

I don't use any of those options anyway (at least IIRC!), other than verifysets (for checking what roms people have in merged sets).

Edit: how else can one check for clones in merged sets?  verifyroms would be a very long winded way of doing it surely...  Mind you, I never saw the point of merged sets anyway...but MAME supports it so FE's should too.

[Howard_Casto]

Man that really sucks.... the only way those options can be removed is if they "fix" listxml and allow it to show data for just one game. 

Why?  Well listxml takes a while to generate, so if you need to get data quick you are screwed.  Also some of the data is absolutely absent from listxml.  For example -listdetails gives far more accurate driver status info than that default junk in listxml.  Or at least the last time I checked it did. 


I use about 5 of those calls to mame when parsing mame cfgs in the j5 controls.dat viewer.  These changes have essentially killed the app.

[Howard_Casto]

Just went through my apps to check for problems.  and.....

Warning!!!!

As of this posting the changes added in .99u4 Break:

Dragon King (list generator crashes)
Johnny 5:  controls.dat viewer.  (all data has to be sent manually)
Any and all apps that depend upon the dk list generator.

[Howard_Casto]

I'm compiling a list of old command lines that were removed and newer ones that can be used as a work around.

-listdetails ==> -ls (if you only need the driver name, otherwise you must parse listxml)

-listgame ==> -ll (works exactly the same)

[Buddabing]

Man that really sucks.... the only way those options can be removed is if they "fix" listxml and allow it to show data for just one game.

[Howard_Casto]

Well it seems only logical to me that mame could easily do the searching for you.... afterall, it does it for all the other list functions. 


For example typing mame sf2 -listxml should give you the xml data for just Street fighter 2.  This would prevent the initial lag of actually printing out the whole 16 meg xml file.  In My FE this doesn't cause much trouble as I want the whole file anyway, but in the viewer and some of my mini apps it does.  I don't want users to have to either setup a centralized place to store a listxml file for all their various apps or have multiple, 16 meg files on their harddrive.  And beyond that, I don't want to have to generate a 16 meg file just to parse about 10 lines of text from it in the case of apps that you just use data for a single rom at a time. 

I would like to report that it seems Aaron is adding a lot of data to the listxml file.  It's still not complete yet compared to other methods of getting data, but it's getting there. 

[Howard_Casto]

Just some interesting additions on the positive side of things:

I notice that now the mame.ini allows you to set the monitor you want mame to be viewed in as well as setting the resolution of said monitor independantly of the other.  To me this hints that dual screen support won't be far off.

[Howard_Casto]

DK's listgen has been patched for anyone interested.