How to sort all the games?

[Paradise]

Hi,

i really wonder how you guys handle all the games.
I have know everything Mame 152 on my desktop (348GB) but don't have such a big HDD in my small cab.
I use Mala and can think of many ways for lists:
Arcade Collection
-all Games
-by Emulator
-by Systeme
-Vector
-Classics
-Vertical
-Horizontal
-2 Player Alt
-2 Player Sim
-Favorites

I can think of more like "2 Player Alt Horizontal",  "2 Player Alt Vertical", "Nintendo", "Cave" and so on...
Is there a way to ad A.A.E. to a Arcade Collection list.
What about stuff like Demul, Daphne, Final Burn-FF?

I see people having all the emulators on there wheels in Hyperspin (i want Mala) - but i think all Arcade games belong to one list!?

How to get rid of clones or not playable and make sure there is still everything in there (pac-man is a clone).
How to handle all this with updates?

On my small cab i only want to copy the important games but all by hand selection?
The next cab will be a new PC with a big HDD with everything so space does not count.
The small one is a P4 and i only want Mame there if the other emulators are to heavy (don't know yet if its fast enough for A.A.E., Daphne...).

Questions, questions, question...

[edekoning]

Use romlister http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/ and or my python scripts http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,133092.msg1370462.html#msg1370462.

I would suggest getting rid of all games you cannot play, because a you do not have the proper controls and b they don't work. Then you can filter further based on genre.

Also checkout this thread http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,129295.msg1322055.html#msg1322055 which provides a top200 as mala game list.

[BadMouth]

Last time I checked, only around 20GB of the CHDs were actually playable with MAME.
Best just to add the CHDs of games that you want to play and will run on your system (most working ones won't run on a P4, maybe Killer Instinct....).

After you weed out the chds that don't work and all the gambling/fruit/mechanical crap, you'll be left with a more manageable list of around 2,000 games (8,000 if you show all clones).  Weed out the ones you don't have controls for and you're probably down to 1,800.

If you're good at understanding how batch files work, you can trick Mala into putting all the games in one list by pointing it at a batch file instead of mame.exe
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,68419.0.html
Most people have a few issues to work through, the solutions to which is buried in that thread.
Sometimes I can't find them even though I know they are there. 
(I think the main one is that you can't have mala eliminate non-working games when you search for roms, which is fine if you've gotten rid of them with romlister anyway)

Here is an older version of my batch file from an unrelated thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,121157.msg1285434.html#msg1285434

Once you understand the logic of how it works, it's actually pretty easy.
But if you hope to copy and paste to get it working without taking the time to understand it,
you're gonna have a bad time.

[Paradise]

Quick reply:
Getting rid off stuff is not a good solution when it comes to checking with CRLMamePro.
The idea was to have everything on the workstation and just copy what is needed to the caps.

The question was maybe more:
Do other also have that many lists?
How to copy just the games from the list to the cap?
If i use "no clones" in romlister i don't have pac-man for example...

Now i look through your links.

[BadMouth]

Quick reply:
Getting rid off stuff is not a good solution when it comes to checking with CRLMamePro.
The idea was to have everything on the workstation and just copy what is needed to the caps.

The question was maybe more:
Do other also have that many lists?
How to copy just the games from the list to the cap?
If i use "no clones" in romlister i don't have pac-man for example...

Now i look through your links.

On the last cab I built, I made a list for each genre (classic, beat 'em up, run 'n gun, sports, shmups).
Those were made by hand though, by right clicking on games in Mala and selecting the option to add them to a list.

Romlister can create a batch file from the list it generates that will copy the roms on the list to a new folder.
Always include bios files since some games will need those to run.  You will also run into some oddball issues like the sound board having it's own rom zip file.

The way I handle adding clones that I actually want is to modify the mame.xml file so that they are listed as a parent.
The xml file has grown quite large and takes a long time to open and a long time after modifying.  Open it in notepad and turn wordwrap off.
It will freeze for a long time.  Try to make changes by copying and pasting into it.  If you try to type in it, it freezes after each letter is entered.

I don't update unless there is a game added that makes it worthwhile.
If it's only one or two games, I'll just make a separate MAME folder for it, change the games to working in the old xml, and add the newer mame to my batch file like it's a different emulator.

[edekoning]

Getting rid off stuff is not a good solution when it comes to checking with CRLMamePro.

I never understood this fetish for having complete rom sets where you need to keep around 350GB, of which only 1% will be actually playable, of which you will probably only play 1%.

The idea was to have everything on the workstation and just copy what is needed to the caps.

That's what my scripts do, you just filter the roms in excel or romlister, save the resulting list to disk and let mame_filemgr.py copy all matching roms and artwork for you.

The xml file has grown quite large and takes a long time to open and a long time after modifying.

You could try mame_xmlcleaner.py to remove all the XML entries for roms you do not have.

[cools]

I use full merged sets. There are cases where a clone is better than the parent but generally this works for me as an archival point.

For the "clone is better" cases I keep a seperate ROM folder and clrmame profile that builds a non-merged set just for these clones.