Filtering Game List - questions

[Khenemet Heru]

Ok, so I have my shiny new set of ROMs and CHDs for MAME 0.144 and I set everything up, I go to set up a frontend ('cause MAMEUI is ugly) and I find I have to wade thru thousands of non-working pinball games, fruit machine and mechanical sets to get to a game I want to play...  AAARRRGGG!!!

I noticed the list folders pane in MAMEUI and I thought, ok, I'll use the "Working" folder, set it to allow clones as separate games, filter mechanical, and voila, I have a list of 8000 or so unique games, down from 18000+...  I go to export that list as an xml file and ARRRRGGGG!!!  can't do it, the export game list function is the entire list only. I seem to remember (perhaps wrongly) that MAME32 used to be able to do this, so I assume this was taken out in the switch to MAMEUI?

So my question is threefold - First: Where does MAMEUI get the info it uses to make the lists in the folder pane, and how can I export that info?  Second: In the event I can't export that list, has someone made this list already so I don't have to manually move 8000+ roms out of my collection to a new folder just to make a useable list? Third: how are people sorting their ROMs these days?

While I'm waiting for some answers and advice to roll in, I'm using the list and dragging the roms from it manually into a working folder... by hand...  30 at a time...      wanna help?   

Thanks in advance, and I apologize for the noobish question.
Khenemet Heru

[Hoopz]

Its been awhile since I used MameUI so pardon me if I'm off base but I'll give it a shot.

First, I'd use Romlister to sort out the stuff that you don't want (ie, mature, mahjong, etc). 

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=91757.0

MameUI probably gets the info in the folder pane from the XML file that's in your Mame folder.  Since you setup a FE, you can probably have it show only working games and that will avoid a lot of the issues that you're having.  Which FE is it?

I'd not use MameUI at all.  Simply use your FE and point it to your Mame.exe file and that's all you need.  Using Romlister first will help get rid of the crap you don't want.

[Khenemet Heru]

Thanks Hoopz, I was trying that last night and ROMlister crashed while making the merged XML file at the beginning, about 3/4 of the way thru the S's...  I forgot to mention I'm on Win7 64-bit, so that might have been why. Anyway, I'm playing around with MaLa, was a user of MAMEWah back a few years ago but I couldn't get it to run under my current OS (gonna look into that later).

I'll try to do that again and just leave the computer alone for a few hours lol

I'm trying everything now...

[Hoopz]

That xml file is huge so it takes awhile.  If you continue to have issues with it, you may start a new thread and see if NOP, the romlister author, can help you out.  He's great at supporting romlister.

There is also a dedicated subforum for Mala.  You could get additional help if you posted there.  I know some of the people who help in that forum also read through here quite a bit, but if it's Mala specific, they can help you out there too. 

Don't get many people posting about Mamewah anymore.  It seems like once people got it setup the way they wanted, they kept everything the same.  Minwah hasn't been active here either.

[Khenemet Heru]

The other thing I'm running into is there's no catver.ini or controls.xml for 0.144, only earlier versions, so creating the merged xml is problematic... and without it ROMLister can't do the category exclusions...

[Hoopz]

The other thing I'm running into is there's no catver.ini or controls.xml for 0.144, only earlier versions, so creating the merged xml is problematic... and without it ROMLister can't do the category exclusions...

I think it generally takes a little time to get the catver.ini and controls.xml files out after a new version of Mame is released. That's the joy from having your new shiny set of roms.   

Unless there were major changes from .143 to .144, you should be able to use an older file.  There may be a few games that are off, but it wouldn't be a lot.

When you were using Romlister with the xml file, did it actually crash or just appear to lock up?  It can take quite a while to get through it.  I've had it happen where I thought it crashed but it was actually still working.

[Khenemet Heru]

I was just trying a few things with ROMLister that make me think it was still working in the background...  it was like 2AM and i was pretty bleary so I probably misinterpreted it.

After 2 days of messing with this I'd be happy with a batch file that removed all the mechanical games, just to make the task easier - For example:  catver.ini says the ROM bguns_l7 is "Electromechanical - PinMAME", and the ROM as_acp is "Fruite Machine" - i just want to take those two categories, and remove all the ROMs associated with them from the set (move them preferably, rather than delete them) - then I can generate my list normally.  Maybe remove Mahjong and Quiz games too (although I love trivia)...

I'll keep messing with ROMLister and see what I get...

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EDIT: Update - OK, in theory I have one of the things I need now, using ROMLister. I have a list of all the ROMs I want to exclude right off the bat, like in the paragraphs above (some 9000+ right off the top). I also have a list of the same thing, just ROM names only. I suppose I can parse that 2nd list to move those ROM files from one directory to another, which would be a start, but I don't know how to do that offhand, so I'll be looking into that.

BTW the catlist I have is 0.143u4, and the controls.ini I have is 0.141.1 (thanks Progetto EMMA and SirPoonga respectively) - those plus the current nplayers.ini were what I merged with my listxml file.

So once I have this done I need to go thru the list and add or edit whatever's since the date of my catlist I assume, to perfect the list for MaLa?

------------
EDIT 2:  Ok, found a batch script I was able to modify to do the moving, I'll add it here for anyone else who wants to modify it for their use - it parses the text file and uses the move command, so all that crap is segregated now. Still need to process the rest to make a useable set of game lists. Code follows:

Code: [Select]

title ROM Mover

set src_folder=C:\MAME 0.144 ROMset
set dst_folder=C:\MAME 0.144 ROMset\Eliminated
set filelist=Eliminate.txt

echo Origin: %src_folder% >> "Eliminate.log"
echo Destination: %dst_folder% >> "Eliminate.log"
echo.

REM for /f %%i in (%filelist%) DO move /-Y "%src_folder%\%%i" "%dst_folder%" > "%dd%.log"

for /f "delims=" %%i in (%filelist%) do (
    move /-Y "%src_folder%\%%i.zip" "%dst_folder%" >> "Eliminate.log"
)

echo Success. >> "Eliminate.log"
echo.
echo Done - Check log Eliminate.log
echo.
pause
goto start

[NOP]

here to help...

so romlister is working with MAME 144?  I'd thought that the formatting of the XML had changed enough that it was broken.  I haven't had time to look into it yet, but maybe if those reports are false, then I'm already done.

It does sound like I need to add some kind of progress indicator when making the merged file so that people don't kill the app.  The mame devs must have added a ton of new games or new data into the xml, because it never seems to take that long in previous releases of mame.

As for move batch files, romlister can generate batch files for you based off your list- this tutorial might help:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/RL_tutorial_batchFiles

I think that's a lot easier than generating a raw name list, then calling this external batch file off that list, but whatever works!

any other things I should do when I get around to poking at the code again?

[Khenemet Heru]

Hey NOP! Great little program there!  All in all I got what I wanted, but there's got to be an easier way than this lol  I just wish I could export the listings from MAMEUI like we used to be able to do with MAME32...  I'm not sure if working is the correct term since I can't say if anything was actually broken or not, but it did the job for the most part, and I think the issues I had were mostly due to the outdated infs I had to merge with the listxml info. I ended up having to kinda mess around until I got the "removal" list I wanted, but after some time spent tweaking, I ended up getting the lists I needed for MaLa. I'll give that tutorial a look, this method worked but it was clunky.

The progress bar is definitely a must, I did that like 4 times before I realized it was still saving to the xml file 

FWIW, the definition of "Playable" in ROMLister seems to be uber strict, I clicked that and a ton of ROMs I considered playable (some sound or graphical glitches but nothing affecting gameplay) ended up being dropped from the list.

Hmm, suggestions for the future? Maybe a category for non-working (by that I mean TOTALLY not working)?

You might want to add categories for mechanical and fruit machine, I know that that's mostly determined by the xml files' category data, but when I manually added "mechanical" to my search strings, I got most of the ROMs with "electromechanical" as a category, where I didn't without it (in other words where I just relied on "pinball" in the string) - doing that made it easier for me to eliminate those ROMs.

Thanks for all the help and advice guys, I'll post anything relevant for others to reference if I come up with anything else, and if you've got any other ideas I'd love to hear them, since the next full-update is likely to come up soon 

[NOP]

FWIW, the definition of "Playable" in ROMLister seems to be uber strict, I clicked that and a ton of ROMs I considered playable (some sound or graphical glitches but nothing affecting gameplay) ended up being dropped from the list.

This is a case of Garbage in, Garbage out.  ROMLister isn't making any decisions for you, all the checkbox is doing is removing any "emulation=preliminary" (IIRC) games that are tagged by the developers.  This is entirely at the developer's discretion, not romlisters.

Hmm, suggestions for the future? Maybe a category for non-working (by that I mean TOTALLY not working)?

That's exactly what "playable" is supposed to do.  If I don't have the keywords to work off of in the XML, there is no way to filter those out.
If the devs have added another layer to their emulation tag, then the playable checkbox just needs to change the text it is injecting into your search criteria.

You might want to add categories for mechanical and fruit machine, I know that that's mostly determined by the xml files' category data, but when I manually added "mechanical" to my search strings, I got most of the ROMs with "electromechanical" as a category, where I didn't without it (in other words where I just relied on "pinball" in the string) - doing that made it easier for me to eliminate those ROMs.

That must be new since I last worked on romlister.  If catver had those tags before, I would have added it as a checkbox group.  It has been at least 10 MAME revisions since I worked on romlister, so if they added a new group of supported machines, I'm behind the curve.  I am glad that you figured out you can tweak the search on your own, you just have to get your hands a little dirty digging through the -find: text.

[Wade007]

I just wanted to chime in quickly to let you know that RomLister is NOT uber-strict when it comes to filtering games that work.
I tested this myself. If you check "working" it will include all games that work including those that have less then perfect sound or graphics. It WILL filter out all games that TOTALLY don't work. That was my goal as well. I checked later and found that games that had imperfect graphics or sound were still included. RomLister is a great program. VERY helpful as long as you know how to use it. NOP was very helpful in helping me understand how to use it. I promised I'd defend his honor here with this post. Thanks NOP.