Proggy for deleting ROMs by game name?

[Texasmame]

Now, in MAME32, for example, you can delete games from certain lists, etc. but it leaves the ROMs in the ROM folder untouched.

I'm looking for a program that lets you delete ROMs by the game name, preferably with screenshots so you can tell if something might look cool before you go deleting the ROM.

I know you could do this by firing up 32 and opening your ROM folder and doing this all manually but, hey, it's the 21st Century!  

I've got many a ROM that I'd never use and would like to ditch 'em.

[Texasmame]

This is the only thing I've found that's close:

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

Surely, there must be another alternative?

[leapinlew]

Man... this would be a good find if there was some software.

I've actually gone through all my roms 1 by 1 to pick out the games I wanted. I created a favorites list. It's a headache for sure. The problem I found with only trying to keep the games I want is making sure I have all the parent roms. PITA

[Texasmame]

Man... this would be a good find if there was some software.

I've actually gone through all my roms 1 by 1 to pick out the games I wanted. I created a favorites list. It's a headache for sure. The problem I found with only trying to keep the games I want is making sure I have all the parent roms. PITA

After much searching, this appears to be the only one.  Looks like there may be a couple of MAME frontends that also do this but I like 32. . .

[Kaytrim]

I to would like to see a program like this.  Maybe this should be posted in the software forum.  The guys there might be able to create something or know of a program.

[Apollo]

huge ditto ive been wanting a program like this for years, YEARS I TELL YOU!

at the moment i just set up the games i want in my favs list in mamewah and go straight to that list when i open up (this can have the side effect of missing out on weird unheard of games from time to time though, you know, you're scrolling through the full list and you see 'Hyper Super Bull Fighting Ninja City Car Crush' and you think oooh i'll try that and it turns out to be super awesome)

[Texasmame]

huge ditto ive been wanting a program like this for years, YEARS I TELL YOU!

at the moment i just set up the games i want in my favs list in mamewah and go straight to that list when i open up (this can have the side effect of missing out on weird unheard of games from time to time though, you know, you're scrolling through the full list and you see 'Hyper Super Bull Fighting Ninja City Car Crush' and you think oooh i'll try that and it turns out to be super awesome)

True, but I already know I don't want, say, the 400 or so MAJHONG games, mature games, Tetris-like games, etc.  That's why it would be great if the proggy had screenshots, too.  Generally, I can look at a game and see if I might think it's fun to try. . .

[Kaytrim]

one nice thing to have as well is...
If you delete a parent rom the program will give a list of the clones an ask if you want them deleted too.  It you don't want the clones deleted then it won't delete the parent.  This way you don't have parent-less clones lying around.

[Texasmame]

Linked this thread over to the software section.  Let's see if anyone bites!

[ahofle]

True, but I already know I don't want, say, the 400 or so MAJHONG games, mature games, Tetris-like games, etc.  That's why it would be great if the proggy had screenshots, too.  Generally, I can look at a game and see if I might think it's fun to try. . .

Couldn't you use MCM to remove the mahjong and adult (and whatever other categories of games you don't like) and then go through the rest manually and build a favorites list?

[Kaytrim]

A favorites list is for a select list of from the complete list of games that you have available.  We want to be able to remove games form the complete list for various reasons.  This way they are unaccessible by us or other players whether we use MAME32 or another front end.

[ardarvin]

I just posted this in the software forum, but have you heard of ROMCenter, romcenter.com?

I don't really like mcm all that much, since it does miss a lot of games in the categories, but it IS a good starting step.

To further pare down your ROMs, check out ROMCenter ... with mame dat file from logiqx.com.  NOTE, when running RomCenter the first time, you MUST choose a dat file from the combo box up top right (it's not obvious...I spent a good 30 mins trying to figure out how to run the prog). After that, things are really great. RomCenter is very good at getting rid of clones as well.

To further pare things down, some more search tricks you can do in windows, in your ROM directory...
do a:  *mahj*.zip,  search, move the results into another folder.  Similarly, you can do a *j.zip search to get rid of japanese versions, although you may delete the odd rom ending in "j" that's not a japanese version (that's why you should move them to another folder, not delete).

Also, if you don't like super old games, you can sort your ROM directory by filesize, then move everything <8k to some old folder.

Any other tricks you guys know about?

[NOP]

Another thing you could do is try this program:

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

It's kinda the inverse of what you're trying to do, but it could help pare down the entire ROMset in a hurry.

Use ROMLister to weed out all the ROMs you don't want, or that your cabinet doesn't support (like all the games that have 4 buttons when your cab only has 2).

Have it create a batch file output for you, do a quick search-n-replace to make it delete the roms that you don't want instead of copying them.

You can get a pretty good list of all the mahjong games by just putting the word
Mahjong in the -find field and hit the GO! button.

[BuZz880]

I use Mamewah as a frontend so it is trivial to assign an app such as a BAT file to a button.  Perhaps your frontend can do the same.

So what you do is setup your lists however you want and then when you encounter something you want to remove, perhaps a non-working game or whatever, you hit the magic button it fires up your bat file (that is nothing more than MOVE c:\arcade\mame\roms\%1% c:\arcade\mame\unusedroms\%1%.  Then next time you rebuild your game list the missing rom shouldn't appear. 

Of course the screenshot thing is a non-issue since you are working from within your frontend, its also the best place to try the game before you move or delete it.  Simple really.  I prefer MOVE to delete because you can still use CLRMAMEPRO on multiple Rom paths.

[ardarvin]

For all those FE developers out there...this would be a nice default behaviour for a FE. That is, the moving of ROMS to another directory on button press.