Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: Well Fed Games on August 20, 2011, 10:45:23 pm

Title: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: Well Fed Games on August 20, 2011, 10:45:23 pm
OK, so I want some info to show up on my front end, and MALA reads the metadata fine. Here's my problem:

The info currently appears like:

Pac-Man
1980
Namco (Midway)
JOY4WAY

I would love it to show up like:

Pac-Man
1980
Namco
Joystick (spinner games would say spinner here)

I am hand-picking games for the cab, so it is not a big deal to edit it on a per-game level, but is it possible to edit the game data for manufacturer, control, etc?

Title: Re: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: Gray_Area on August 26, 2011, 01:58:54 am
The data comes from the history dat. It's a text file.
Title: Re: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: Well Fed Games on August 26, 2011, 08:33:49 am
No, sorry, that is wrong. I am looking for where I can edit the info that Mala pulls in with tags like ~g_manufacturer and so on. History.dat is something different.
Title: Re: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: BadMouth on August 26, 2011, 10:06:52 am
mame.xml in the MAME folder.  
MALA creates it from the other files the first time it's run.

Open it with notepad and turn off wordwrap.  
Even though it's just text, it's a LARGE file, so your computer may freeze for a bit when you open it or save your changes.

Use search to find the rom name quickly.  Parents/Clones each have separate entries.
Title: Re: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: Well Fed Games on August 26, 2011, 10:30:15 am
mame.xml in the MAME folder.  
MALA creates it from the other files the first time it's run.

Open it with notepad and turn off wordwrap.  
Even though it's just text, it's a LARGE file, so your computer may freeze for a bit when you open it or save your changes.

Use search to find the rom name quickly.  Parents/Clones each have separate entries.

thanks!
Title: Re: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: Gray_Area on August 28, 2011, 02:58:09 pm
No, sorry, that is wrong.

mame.xml in the MAME folder. 

Oh. I thought it was from the history.dat
Title: Re: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: Well Fed Games on August 28, 2011, 05:37:31 pm
No worries. I actually took a wholly different approach, one that will probably sound insane to all but the most anal photoshoppers... I am making a custom snap for each game (40-50 games) with the info I want.
Title: Re: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: zorrobandito on August 30, 2011, 09:33:20 pm
It's not insane, it's well within the bounds of reason - I've done it myself :-)
Title: Re: Editing game Metadata? (Manufacturer, controls, etc.)
Post by: Gray_Area on September 01, 2011, 03:08:48 am
No worries. I actually took a wholly different approach, one that will probably sound insane to all but the most anal photoshoppers... I am making a custom snap for each game (40-50 games) with the info I want.

Ummm....why do that when a front end is designed to display things in essentially whatever way you wish? Besides, if you're only doing a few games, then changing them in the xml is easy. If doing a lot/all, then I bet a fairly simple script could change it to the format you wish.