Setting up my MaLa game lists - best way to make games list?

[Anubis_au]

Hi all,

The guy who's helping me design my cab in CAD is on vacation, so while that part of the project comes to a grinding halt temporarily, I thought I'd tackle the less glamorous yet equally important task of creating my games list.

Basically, I want to have two games lists: a list of favourite horizontal games, and a list of favourite vertical games. Actually, I want four, but the other two (complete H and V lists) I don't want to see except the occasions when I'll need to do some admin, like adding back a non-fav game per request from a guest, etc.

So, the first step would be to separate the full games list into vert and horiz. After that, I want to eliminate all games that need controls I won't have (ie trackball games), or games that run on 25kHz, 31kHz displays only. That will form the basis of my "complete" games list.

After that, I can cut it down further to my favourites within each group.

So, the first question is, am I approaching this problem correctly? Should I keep trackball games in my complete list, for example, knowing full well they'll never make it to my favourites list.

Secondly, what's the best tool to do this job? My search on this topic has revealed ROMlister, which I downloaded and am about to test and have a play with, to see if it does what I want it to.

Thirdly, what opinions do people have on removing rom files for the unwanted games?

I'm sure I'll have more questions as I delve into the world of MaLa and games lists

[RXII]

I can strongly recommend RomLister, it will do everything you need, you will be able to do what you need in about 2 minutes flat! The way it exports the Mala gamelists is great.

Good luck,

Simon.

[NOP]

yeah, sounds like ROMLister will do what you're looking for.  (thanks for the plug RXII!)

I've been thinking about coming up with a few tutorials on the wiki about various things that you can do with it, such as locating all the ROMs that your hardware supports, or deleting all the adult games, etc.

So if you have any issues getting it to do what you need, that'll impact my tutorial writing.

Beyond that, good luck with your lists, and let me know if I can help.

-jeff!

[Green Giant]

I've been thinking about coming up with a few tutorials on the wiki about various things that you can do with it, such as locating all the ROMs that your hardware supports,

Did you add new features to romlister?  I don't remember seeing hardware options on there.

Also, I second or third the romlister recomendation.

[Anubis_au]

Hi guys

Firstly, thanks for firsting, seconding and thirding the ROMlister recommendation.

I had a quick go with it last night and made two lists, one each for vertical and horizontal games, that included 2,4,8 way games that were joystick controlled (with up to seven buttons per player). So, I've hopefully eliminated trackball, spinner games etc out of my lists.

One question that I've come up with, that hopefully someone can answer... by eliminating spinner games, will it cut out spinner games that also can work with joystick? The one I'm thinking about mainly is Arkanoid, but I'm sure there are others... does the controls.dat or whatever file it is, contain ALL the possible input devices to a game, or just the main / original one? I will know to add Arkanoid back into my list if it's had the chop, but how many other great games will I be possibly missing out on?

I've been thinking about coming up with a few tutorials on the wiki about various things that you can do with it, such as locating all the ROMs that your hardware supports, or deleting all the adult games, etc.

I seem to have missed this feature last night (I was rather tired, I admit). Is there a way for ROMlister to eliminate all games that won't work on a 15kHz display? Like, a setting that says any game above a certain res should be removed? And where are the flags for game category? Because, the adult games, mahjong games etc would be cut in an instant...

[NOP]

One question that I've come up with, that hopefully someone can answer... by eliminating spinner games, will it cut out spinner games that also can work with joystick? The one I'm thinking about mainly is Arkanoid, but I'm sure there are others... does the controls.dat or whatever file it is, contain ALL the possible input devices to a game, or just the main / original one? I will know to add Arkanoid back into my list if it's had the chop, but how many other great games will I be possibly missing out on?

controls.dat should only contain the hardware from the original machine, so if you eliminated trackballs and spinners, arkanoid is gone, and you'll have to add that one by hand.  There's just no way for romlister or controls.dat to know of all the alternate possibilities of controlling a game.  (I set up asteroids to work with a joystick on my machine)

I've been thinking about coming up with a few tutorials on the wiki about various things that you can do with it, such as locating all the ROMs that your hardware supports, or deleting all the adult games, etc.

(to green giant) Sorry for the confusion, by hardware I meant what your joysticks and buttons are on your machine, not what the CPU inside the box can handle.

I seem to have missed this feature last night (I was rather tired, I admit). Is there a way for ROMlister to eliminate all games that won't work on a 15kHz display? Like, a setting that says any game above a certain res should be removed?

For certain res games, you can certainly do stuff against anything in the text in the big display window.  For example, every game has this type of entry:

display type="raster" rotate="90" width="288" height="224" refresh="60.606061"

so in the -find window at the bottom of the GUI, you could type in by hand:
"& refresh=60"  or "& width=288" to eliminate any games that are outside that refresh/screen res.  You can add as many "& xyz" statements as you like before hitting the GO! button.
(note that I simplified "refresh=60.606061" down to just "refresh=60" as long as the text is in there, you don't need the whole thing)

And where are the flags for game category? Because, the adult games, mahjong games etc would be cut in an instant...

Look for the "category" dropdown box in the quick-find wizard at the top of the GUI.

If you select "tabletop" and then click the NOT button, it'll add a " & !Tabletop" to the -find window for you and that'll eliminate all the mahjong games.  (dunno exactly why mahjong is tabletop, but that's the way all those are entered in catver.ini)

Again, you can also add "& !mature" to the end of any query to get rid of all the adult games too.  Heck, to get rid of both mahjong's and adult games in the same search, add:

"& !(mature | tabletop)"
in human speak, that would be "roms that are NOT mature OR tabletop

or

"& !mature & !tabletop"
this is the same thing: we want roms that are NOT mature and NOT tabletop

The other thing you can do is have ROMLister output the results as an XML file, then turn around and re-load that new XML file into ROMLister and continue paring down the list until it's what you want.  This is sometimes easier (and less buggy) than trying to do a HUGE -find list.

I always output the rom descriptions to the screen first, and then output it to a file so I can verify by hand some of the game titles that I'm expecting to show up in the results of my query.

-jeff!

[Anubis_au]

ARGH!! Set theory from my uni days just popped back into my memory!! Damn you Jeff!!!

Actually, thanks for all that info. I'll have another crack at it when I get home.

so in the -find window at the bottom of the GUI, you could type in by hand:
"& refresh=60"  or "& width=288" to eliminate any games that are outside that refresh/screen res.

Would that eliminate every game that is NOT that exact res? What about if I wanted to eliminate all games that have, say, a horizontal res greater than 350? Can you do that?

[NOP]

so in the -find window at the bottom of the GUI, you could type in by hand:
"& refresh=60"  or "& width=288" to eliminate any games that are outside that refresh/screen res.

Would that eliminate every game that is NOT that exact res? What about if I wanted to eliminate all games that have, say, a horizontal res greater than 350? Can you do that?

there is currently no > or < operator available, so you'd have to do all those different resolutions by hand.  Perhaps it's easier to go by screen refresh? (I am pretty monitor dumb)  Otherwise you'll have to do all the resolutions individually-I gather that would be a pain in the cheeks though.

Adding <=> type operators might not be that hard to do...  I've got a busy weekend ahead of me, but perhaps by this time next week something like that could be added.

-jeff!