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Author Topic: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)  (Read 13127 times)

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nickbuol

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Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« on: July 07, 2007, 10:19:07 pm »
I know that this comes up from time to time.  I've searched, but haven't found what I am looking for.

I know that I can download MCM and delete adult roms, but like others said, it is hard to verify the ROMs list without all of the ROMs.  So has anyone created a textfile list of the adult/mature ROMs?  I was hoping to set it up as an exclude list for AtomicFE which I just started using.

Any thoughts or help here would be great.


Lilwolf

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2007, 10:42:48 pm »
Most frontends allow you to filter.  What frontend are you running?

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2007, 10:52:42 pm »
I just started using AtomicFE.  I was using MameWah up until the reloading of O/S and data for my cabinet about 3 weeks ago (went on vacation shortly there after) and now I am back to the final tweaks.

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2007, 01:30:42 pm »
I have had a couple instances where a mature game creates an awkward moment with my 7 year old daughter.  It goes - hey, let's find a new game - that ones screenshot looks cool, let's try it - play a whole level without any indication of mature - finish the level - 'awarded' with a pic of a naked woman - awkwardness.  I had this happen with a game (which I cannot remember it's name) where it seemed like a 'normal' tetris clone with bubbles/balls.

I think that this would be a good project, if it is not already done.  Perhaps a (stickied) thread that whoever could add to when another is thought of/found (if there is not already a good solution out there).  (apologies if this is already done/mentioned - I admit that I have not looked into this...)

Rick
If I do not respond to your post in a timely manner, feel free to PM me.

spystyle

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #4 on: July 09, 2007, 09:33:00 am »
I use sortinfo, if you import catver.ini into it you can delete roms by category. I also use it to delete clones, and roms that my control panel can't use.

Here are my notes on sortinfo
------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorting the ROMs for use in the cabinet with Sortinfo
------------------------------------------------------------------

It is a good idea to sort the ROMs before adding them to the cabinet. Sorting the ROMs insures that only the games compatible with the cabinet's control panel are available. For example : a Neo Geo layout of 1 stick and 4 buttons per player (2 players) can handle most ROMs but not those which require a trackball, spinner, or games with more than 4 buttons. It also allows us to remove any of the following types of games : "adult" (as they are innapropriate for children) "mahjongg / quiz" (as they are in Japanese and can't be read by everyone) "fighter" (as some people may feel they are innapropriate for children) and "clones" (as scrolling through a menu of many of the same titled games can be annoying)

The program used in this example to accomplish these things is Sortinfo

http://tinyurl.com/6n8gxwf

The first step is to place the complete MAME ROM set onto the home computer's hard drive (not the arcade cabinet's hard drive). In this example I used MAME .53 set and copied it to a directory on my hard drive c:\games\MAME53

Next extract the contents of the file Sortinfo.zip to the MAME directory. It will extract the file Sortinfo.exe and it's text file. If you are unable to see the "exe" at the end of Sortinfo you may have "hide file extensions" turned on in Windows, you can turn off this feature by doing the following : double click "my computer", click Tools > Folder options > View and uncheck "Hide file extensions for known file types" then click OK

Then grab the most recent version of catver.ini and place it in the MAME folder. Catver.ini will tell the Sortinfo program what category each ROM is, this will allow us to delete types of ROMs.

http://www.catver.com/

Lastly, grab this file and extract it's contents to the MAME directory. It contains a batch file telling MAME to create a game list for Sortinfo.

http://tinyurl.com/6rgodpl

Now that we have MAME and it's ROMs along with Sortinfo and Catver in the MAME directory we can sort the ROMs to use on the cabinet. Follow the steps below.

0. Create the folder c:\sortroms on your hard drive. (to create a folder on your hard drive double click my computer, then click C:, then right click within the windows but not on an icon, a menu will open up, highlight new then click folder, name the folder sortroms)

1. Create the game list by double clicking
"gamelist-84.bat" if you are using MAME.exe version prior to .84
"gamelist+84.bat" if you are using MAME.exe .84 and beyond
"gamelist32-84.bat" if you are using MAME32.exe version prior to .84
"gamelist32+84.bat" if you are using MAME32.exe .84 and beyond

This will create a large text file called "gamelist.txt"

2. Double click Sortinfo.exe, this will launch the Sortinfo program.

3. press CTRL+L (hold control, press L)

4. point towards "gamelist.txt"

5. click the "input" tab

6. click "control" rectangle, ROMs are now sorted by controller

7. click the first game, it should now be visibly selected

8. hold the shift key on the keyboard down, and press down arrow key until you come up to the control you have on your control panel (I held it down past "dial" "doublejoy4way" "doublejoy8way" and stopped at "joy4way", because I feel an 8way joystick can handle the 4-way games)

9. Now all the control types you don't have should be highlighted, like double4way, trackball, paddle, etc. confirm that you don't want those selected using the scrollbar to the right, then press the Delete key on the keyboard, they will be deleted. Scroll down the list and do this for all the control types you don't have.

For me, I left only joy8way and joy4way joystick games, because I have only a pair of 8-way joysticks on my control panel.

10. click the buttons rectangle now all games are sorted by the number of required buttons, using the same method delete the games that have more buttons than your control panel. for example if you have 4 buttons delete all 5,6,7,8, and 9 button games.

tricky: if you have 3 buttons leave all 4-button games, why? because many "4 button games" are literally "3 button games" that don't use the 4th button, for example : many Neo Geo games including Metal Slug.

This *could possibly* cause a problem with true "4 button" games on a "3 button control panel" but the 4th button is usually something dispensable, like grenade, as opposed to something indispensable, like shoot and jump.

11. *optional* click the players rectangle and delete games requiring more players than your control panel has.

12. *optional* click "game" tab , click "clone of" and scroll down until the sheep icons are visible on the left, you can highlight and delete all the games with the sheep icon as they are clones (like duplicates). Many people find it tedious to scroll through long game lists on a cabinet and deleting clones is one way to shorten the list.

*tricky* Pac-Man, the #1 arcade game in America, is a clone of puck-man, the ad wizards at Midway envisioned naughty kids with black markers making swear words out of their marquees, so they changed the name for American release. So leave the clone game "Pac-Man" or your friends will wonder where it went.

13. To sort by content press CTRL+F (hold control while pressing F) and open "catver.ini"

Catver.ini categorizes the games in Sortinfo, this is useful for removing "mahjong" and "quiz" (if you can't read Japanese) "adult" (if you don't want nudity on your cab) and whatever else types of games you feel inappropriate for your setting.

click on the "category" rectangle on the far right, now games are organized by category. Using shift, the down arrow, and delete key, delete any unwanted types of games from the list.

13. Now you should only have the games you like in the list, give it a double check and when you are ready press CTRL+T, this is to make a "copy the ROMs on this list" batch file.

Double click the ROMs directory

name the file !copy.bat

or whatever you like, the exclamation point puts the file at the top of the alphabetized directory

then enter the template:
copy %a.zip c:\sortroms

and click OK

14. Minimize Sortinfo and go to MAME's "roms" directory on the hard drive, double click !copy.bat, it should copy all the ROMs from the list to c:\sortroms

It can take several minutes to copy all the ROM files

15. now all the ROMs for your cabinet are in c:\sortroms, but Sortinfo does not copy the bios ROMs required by many games. To copy the bios ROMs extract the contents of this zip file into MAME's "roms" directory. Then go to MAME's "roms" directory and double click !copybroms.bat. It will copy all the BIOS ROMs to c:\sortroms.

« Last Edit: January 12, 2012, 01:13:54 am by spystyle »

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #5 on: July 09, 2007, 10:31:10 am »
as if you don't already have a wealth of solutions, here's another:

www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister

ROMLister can weed out all the clones and mature games and stuff that doesn't support your machine's setup without needing to scan the entire rom set.  Have it build a batch file to delete the stuff you don't want or move the stuff you do.  Easy.

-jeff!


spystyle

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2007, 12:07:48 pm »
That must be new, I'll have to check that out.

Cheers,
Craig

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #7 on: July 09, 2007, 12:10:11 pm »
That would a nice feature. Sort of like the blocking TV channels feature. Add a flag to each game and prompt with a password if it's blocked or simply do not add these games to your system. This could come in handy too when my kids act up. I can block some of their favorites. Evil I know, but you've gotta do what you've gotta do.
This plan is so perfect, it's retarded. -- Peter Family Guy

spystyle

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #8 on: July 09, 2007, 12:17:23 pm »
You should never deprive your kids of the arcade machine, that's inhumane!

Cruel and unusual!

Punish them like the rest of us, by making them clean their rooms. If they are extra bad make them clean your room.

:)
Craig

spystyle

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2012, 03:00:05 pm »
Hey I just made a batch file that deletes all clone and mature roms in MAME 0.141

I am assuming it will work in all previous versions.

Attached is "delete.exe" and the batch file "delete_clones.bat"

Drop these files in your roms folder and double click "delete_clones.bat"

...and it should remove "clone roms" and "mature roms", freeing up some space :)

Let me know if it works for ya :)

Cheers!
Craig

p.s. "delete.exe" comes from here :

http://ebible.org/mpj/software.htm

I am running Win XP 64-bit at the moment and I don't think it has "del" or "delete" but it does have "copy" and "ren" (?)
« Last Edit: January 12, 2012, 12:16:24 am by spystyle »

DaveMMR

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #10 on: January 11, 2012, 03:27:59 pm »
Thanks, will come in useful - but just a heads-up about deleting clones: Pacman is considered a clone of Puckman.  (Or it was last time I checked, can't find MAWS...)

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #11 on: January 11, 2012, 03:32:01 pm »
Thanks, will come in useful - but just a heads-up about deleting clones: Pacman is considered a clone of Puckman.  (Or it was last time I checked, can't find MAWS...)


Yeah, you just can't delete clones.... in many cases a "clone" is the preferred version for most people.

Examples:

Beat-em-ups...... the 4 player version, which doesnt' let you slect characters, is the parent..... the 2 player version is the clone.

Pacman

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is a "clone" of MK3, even though they are totally different games. 



There are dozen's more, but you get the idea.

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #12 on: January 11, 2012, 05:57:09 pm »
LOL, I just tested that batch file and it left many clones in MAME 0.141, I'm working on that.

You can make a list of the "good clones" to remove from the batch file.

For example :

pacman.zip


« Last Edit: January 12, 2012, 12:16:39 am by spystyle »

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #13 on: January 11, 2012, 06:12:02 pm »
You do know we are on .144 now right?

Actually my guess woudl be 145 will be out before the month is over.

spystyle

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #14 on: January 11, 2012, 06:19:09 pm »
LOL, I usually use double-digit sets.

My last cabinet was a simple bartop with a Pentium 3 running MAME 0.36

I think my last "big" cabinet was running MAME 0.95 (sans chd) if I recall.

Oh now 0.145, I can't keep up :)


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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #15 on: January 11, 2012, 07:01:51 pm »
Oh man, I don't want to trivialize your efforts because it's a good idea, especially for removing adult roms, but how much space are you really gaining by deleting clones?  A full set (from whichever version I happened upon) was about 18GB. Considering 250GB drives can be had for under $50 - and you have to manually decide which clones to keep (from thousands of games) - even gaining back a theoretical 9GB of space might be more effort than it's worth. (Edit: Plus I always think it's better to just leave everything intact and not have to wonder if you deleted the wrong rom when a game suddenly doesn't work.)

That's just my opinion though. Maybe someone's on a really, really tight budget (e.g. using old, smaller hard drive) and can benefit for a few more Gigs of space.

spystyle

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #16 on: January 11, 2012, 07:18:32 pm »
True, I was looking at a 1 TB drive for a notebook, weighing in at like $109 :)

http://www.goharddrive.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=G02-0169&Click=46406

A reason to make a romset skinny is for burning incrementally to DVDs

I have winrar split it into 4,400m parts.

But I suppose sorting and deleting is kind of silly when the hard drives are cheap and the front ends sort roms :)

This wasn't a big effort, I was just messing with sortinfo and made a batch to delete rather than copy.

My 2 TB USB drive is becoming full so I'm sorting files and burning DVDs :)

But I do like the idea of a simple batch file a person can run to avoid having to sort roms, making it very easy for them to remove the "provocative" ones - and I figured why not "clones" at the same time.

It never occurred to me that people keep their clones LOL

OK have fun!
Craig
« Last Edit: January 12, 2012, 12:24:17 am by spystyle »

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #17 on: February 10, 2012, 10:20:22 am »
I've given up on tape and optical for backups.  Hard drives are the way to go these days.  My backups are hands-off; I use SyncBack to backup all my stuff (100GB-ish) nightly.  The computer wakes itself, copies whatever changed, and goes back to sleep.  It emails me if the backup job fails.  I don't have to touch it at all.  Total cost is one hard drive.  I had an old 250GB laying around, so it was free for me.  No consumables, no work.  Perfect for a lazy guy like me.  :)

I've got two ways I deal with adult games, and I'm not sure which I like best, yet.

First way, I used ROMLister to spit out a list of adult ROMs in my roms directory.  I took that file and edited it with a text editor to turn a list that looks like this:

Quote
game1
game2
game3

Into a batch file that looks like this:

Quote
md adultrom
move roms\game1 adultrom
move roms\game2 adultrom
move roms\game3 adultrom

A little find/replace trickery and you can do this in a minute or two, then run the script and have all the adult ROMs hiding off somewhere else, unseen by the FE or emulators.  If you need to update your romset you can move the files back in temporarily, then run the script again when you're done.  You COULD skip the find/replace method and just use the raw list and a batch FOR loop command, but FOR syntax makes my head spin, so I usually just hack up a batch script instead.  This is foolproof only so long as I don't get a newer romset that has an adult game that ROMLister doesn't know about.

The other way I've done it is perhaps particular to Mala, my main FE.  Mala has an "all games" list as well as other lists you can create.  "All games" is built by your roms directory.  The others are built by you (or a tool).  I build whitelists of games I care about, and then keep the All Games list off the FE menu (I use a tree menu).  Users only see the games I've given the thumbs up to.  This is labor intensive because I went through every game, but I used ROMLister to build a list of all my ROMs minus the adult games (and Mahjong, thankyouverymuch!), so I only had 5000 games to scroll through, and with a lot of clones to ignore it took an evening to build everything.  Now I have a list of every game I've heard of or might find fun, a list of my favorite games, a list of 2P-simultaneous games I like, and a list of trackball games I like.  The next romset I download might add more adult games, but my FE would never show them because I'm whitelisting good games rather than blacklisting "bad" games.

Of course on my cab you could always fire up MAME, then go browsing for ROMs in MAME itself.  That's why I'm not sure if I'm going to rip the adult games out entirely in the end.  I don't have to worry TOO much about it right now because young kids don't play my cab for long periods of time unsupervised.  My main goal was to just make sure nobody scrolled past Gals Panic or something.

There's also an adult games plugin someone made for Mala a while back, where you have to put a password in to play adult games.  I haven't used this because I'm not really interested in playing those games to begin with, but if you want to have them in the FE, but locked down you might try to hunt that plugin down.  If you're a Mala user, of course.

I see Hyperspin 2.0 is supposed to have an adult lock feature, too.

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #18 on: February 10, 2012, 11:51:17 am »
I see Hyperspin 2.0 is supposed to have an adult lock feature, too.

GameEx has had a user system with password protection for a while now. You can customize the game lists on a per-user basis as well as have per-user favourites and themes etc.

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #19 on: February 10, 2012, 05:55:39 pm »
First way, I used ROMLister to spit out a list of adult ROMs in my roms directory.  I took that file and edited it with a text editor to turn a list that looks like this:

Quote
game1
game2
game3

Into a batch file that looks like this:

Quote
md adultrom
move roms\game1 adultrom
move roms\game2 adultrom
move roms\game3 adultrom

A little find/replace trickery and you can do this in a minute or two, then run the script and have all the adult ROMs hiding off somewhere else, unseen by the FE or emulators. 
FWIW, romlister can output the batch file directly for you.  This tutorial steps you through it:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/RL_tutorial_batchFiles

Basically, you output your list as a batch file, and have RL put this text in your batch file:
move roms\%ROM%.zip adultrom

Super easy and no find/replace trickery required.
I guess you'd have to add your line 1 of "md adultrom" to the batch file that RL creates, but that's hardly much work at all.


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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #20 on: February 11, 2012, 03:31:15 am »
I just started using MCM (MAME Content Manager) as of yesterday.  It works REALLY well and is super easy to use.  Use with catver.ini.  Changes can be easily undone.

Jason

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Re: Excluding adult/mature roms (AGAIN)
« Reply #21 on: February 13, 2012, 01:47:27 pm »
FWIW, romlister can output the batch file directly for you.  This tutorial steps you through it:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/RL_tutorial_batchFiles

Basically, you output your list as a batch file, and have RL put this text in your batch file:
move roms\%ROM%.zip adultrom

Super easy and no find/replace trickery required.
I guess you'd have to add your line 1 of "md adultrom" to the batch file that RL creates, but that's hardly much work at all.



Thanks, NOP!  I didn't realize ROMLister could do that.  I'll do it that way next time.  I need to regenerate my lists soon as I recently updated my romset.  I see 145 adds Boonga Boonga... that'll definitely have to go.  :)