MALA gamelist files

[Daniel B.]

I'm going to start building/posting my mala gamelist files.

I'm literally loading up a mame DB webpage and organizing by game type, and then MANUALLY creating the lists. So far, I've only completed Vertical Shmups - but should be able to get some more done this weekend. It's very time consuming to do it this way, but romlister doesn't seem to work like I want it to. It's only coming back with a small portion of the games that it should. 

Anyway, if someone wants to start posting these gamelists I will be happy to host them on my server for all to use/download, otherwise you will all have to wait until I eventually, get a decent set of lists going.

DB

[NOP]

Hi, I'm the author of romlister, and this is troubling for me to hear.
Can you post your search criteria and then show me a game that it should have come up with so I can attempt to duplicate the problem? 

If you've discovered a bug, then I'd like to fix it, and that will in turn save you a lot of time.

-jeff!

[Daniel B.]

Jeff,

Thanks for your help. Settings/results are as follows...



A specific game I was just trying to locate is dodonpachi (ddonpach), and it doesn't seem to be coming up with it. I did a quick look on MAWS, and the categories break down pretty good to get lists that I feel would be "usable". For example, the vertical shmup list I made that I referenced in my first post is pretty much then entire     Shooter / Flying Vertical cat.

Is there any chance that romlister could use them? I think that would pretty much solve my problem.

Thanks again Jeff.

-DB

[NOP]

ah, the reason dodonpachi didn't show up is because it's not in controls.dat.

Here's the issue:
controls.dat does button descriptions as "numButtons=x" while the standard MAME's listing uses "buttons="

When ROMLister sees that you're using a merged list, with controls.dat information in it, it switches the button criteria over to "numButtons" instead of "buttons" because controls.dat is more accurate that MAME's data.  Since controls.dat doesn't list dodonpachi, ROMLister was looking for "numButtons" which it can't find, so it got dumped.  There's the rub: controls.dat has accuracy, but is missing titles.

The fix:
If you were to change (by hand) all those "numButtons=" statements in the -find window at the bottom of the screen to "buttons=" and hit go, then it should show up. 
(because you've effectively switched it back to looking at MAME's data and not controls.dat's data)
You may get some stray results from MAME's data being inaccurate, but it likely won't affect your searches since your looking for 6 buttons or less.

I'm pretty sure that will get you the same results as maws is coming up with, as I suspect (I don't know) that they use MAME's data+catver.ini, where ROMLister uses MAME+catver+controls.dat.

-jeff!

[javeryh]

Daniel B. - I'd be very interested in your lists.

[Daniel B.]

J, I was thinking of making the following lists...

Vertical Shmups
Horizontal Shmups
Beat 'em up
Platformer
Sports
Classics (there will be some debate as to what goes in here I'm sure)
Puzzle
Mature

Do you have a specific list you've got your heart on? These are just off the top of my head, it could get really in depth and crazy....but I'd like to think that just a few basic lists will narrow it down small enough to find what you're looking for. After all, you can always go back to "all games" and skip by letter if you have to!

[thefunkygibbon]

i would be totally interested in this.  I was just about to start figuring out how to make more lists.

I've already done a clean list which should be all roms minus the adult themed ones... not sure its the full list though as it totals about 2800 roms and i thought there were more than that.

ho hum

[Daniel B.]

i would be totally interested in this.  I was just about to start figuring out how to make more lists.

I've already done a clean list which should be all roms minus the adult themed ones... not sure its the full list though as it totals about 2800 roms and i thought there were more than that.

ho hum

You may have removed non-working and clones?

I'm also working with the romlister developer to see if we cant figure out whats going wrong on my end.

If anyone has any suggestions as to what types of lists they would want, please chime in!