FE Devs, Do you have this problem with alien3?

[SirPoonga]

Just curious as to how many people this effects?  Checkout the description of alien3.

Also, what do you plan on doing about it?
For those with search engines in your FE how do you plan on searching for this rom?  

[lokki]

Hi,
I think the problem is that the name is Alien³, So mame is trying to add the superscript

[Minwah]

"Alien\xb3: The Gun"

OK, so why '\xb3'?  What actually understands the \xb part?

I'm not going to do anything about it for now, let's wait and see if it changes (there seems to be a lot of listxml related changes going on)...

If it sticks I'll probably just code something to get rid of the \xb, I mean how bad is 'Alien3: The Gun'?

[SirPoonga]

OK, so why '\xb3'?  What actually understands the \xb part?

Minwah, hehe, you are using listinfo. NOW look at it in listxml!  It's to make it superscript like in the movie and game startup screen.  So far I have found nothing but html that understands listxml's output, go look at the game supported page on controls.dat.  HowardC's DK and Johnny5 don't understand.  IE chokes on it.  Mozilla show a | or a ?.  It's rather annoying!

I mean how bad is 'Alien3: The Gun'?

I know, go read mame.net's forums!  This will stick, unless maybe enough people will complain about it.  Though, coding wise, it isn't a big problem to get around.  But I think these latest releases the mame devs just wanted to piss off FE devs


Yeah lokki, I know, that's why I brought it up.

[Minwah]

SirP, I just noticed something interesting...

The 'Alien\xb3: The Gun' I saw earlier at work, was after generating a MAME list from a DAT file, which I created using as you informed me 'mame -listxml|xml2info'...

I am at home now, and the list I have generated using my 'ROM Folder vs Listxml' method, which essentially does *exactly* the same, albeit the DAT file is generated behind the scenes...the interesting thing is that the superscript '3' DOES show up perfectly using this method.

I don't know why myself yet!!  

Edit: I am reading through the mame.net thread atm...my connection seems to be very slow atm......

[SirPoonga]

I bet you xml2info is screwing up.  As, if you read, the super script is part of the ISO standard.  Should everything "should" view it fine.

Anyway, this will still be in controls.dat.  I think I am almost ready to unvail the new system.  The biggest change, for FE devs is the addition of a cocktail flag, indicating the game had a cocktail dip.

I gotta get ahold of HowardC tonight.  I think all the Vs. games and Mahjong will be scripted in tonight. Along with updating the main database to .84.

[Howard_Casto]

What I find EXTRENELY annoying about this game is it doesn't even show up properly from mame itself!  open up a command line and type:

mame.exe alien3 -listdetails

you'll get a name of "Alien|: The Gun"

If it doesn't even show up properly in mame then it's gots ta go.  

And minwah I discovered the exact same thing last night.  From dats it works great, but the conversion is screwing something up real bad.  

Btw, for the record this shouldn't even be Alien³

That is stylized text like Toy R' Us uses a backwards "R"  

If we start doing that stuff then it's going to be madness and some game do crazy things with the title.

 For example Arkanoid 2 is Titled "^{The Revenge of the} DOH!" on the marquee. Even though it's called Arkanoid 2: Revenge of Doh  by pretty much everyone.  


Afterall it's "Alien Three" not "Alien Cubed"

[Minwah]

Afterall it's "Alien Three" not "Alien Cubed"

I was just thinking that

I haven't figured out yet why in my FE Alien(cubed) shows OK from a DAT which *it* produces, but if I use a DAT file which I've produced it shows as \xb3.  It uses the same code to read the DAT file...I'll have to do some debugging and see if I can see where the difference happens...

Looks like the MAME dev's are not going to budge easily on this one.  I actually don't mind it being Alien cubed, if that is deemed to be it's correct name (which is arguable), but as you say if MAME itself doesn't show it properly then whats the point...

[Minwah]

Also, I was thinking last night that I'm *sure* I've seen game descriptions in MAME before and thought 'that's not the right title'...but I can't think of any examples right now...

[SirPoonga]

Afterall it's "Alien Three" not "Alien Cubed"

I was just thinking that

I haven't figured out yet why in my FE Alien(cubed) shows OK from a DAT which *it* produces, but if I use a DAT file which I've produced it shows as \xb3.  It uses the same code to read the DAT file...I'll have to do some debugging and see if I can see where the difference happens...

Was this a controlled experiment  are the dats being produced by the same mame in the same manner?

but as you say if MAME itself doesn't show it properly then whats the point...

It's not mame displaying it though, it's command prompt.  The command prompt is not "up to code" so to speak.  It has the old ascii standard, not he newers standards like unicode and western ISO-XXXXX-1.


Displaying isn't the main issue though.  The main issue is parsing, some XML parsers are choking on the character.

[Howard_Casto]

Displaying isn't the main issue though.  The main issue is parsing, some XML parsers are choking on the character.

Maybe not to you, but I gurantee you, to the mame devs it is.  When a documention project doesn't display the proper output, even if it's due to the operating system (dos, command prompt)  that's a huge issue.  And the mame devs don't seem to care about us lowley fe developers, else they wouldn't have switched to xml in the first place.  

[Minwah]

Was this a controlled experiment  are the dats being produced by the same mame in the same manner?

Yes...Only difference is one way I produced the dat in command prompt (mame -listxml|xml2info > mame.dat), the other way the dat is produced via code using 'CMD.EXE /c mame -listxml|xml2info > mame.dat'.

I'll report back once I figure it out...

[SirPoonga]

Displaying isn't the main issue though.  The main issue is parsing, some XML parsers are choking on the character.

Maybe not to you, but I gurantee you, to the mame devs it is.  When a documention project doesn't display the proper output, even if it's due to the operating system (dos, command prompt)  that's a huge issue.  And the mame devs don't seem to care about us lowley fe developers, else they wouldn't have switched to xml in the first place.  

Not really, they are using hte Western ISO-8859-1 standard, shich is a standard.  It does make sense that they would just say since your software is out of date with the standard it isn't their problem, they are using a current standard.

It's kind like when you say you are only going ot support the current version of your software.