Deleting unwanted roms

[nic8612]

Ok, so I have the newest complete rom set.  As you all know, there are roughly 6000 roms.  I have been searching everywhere for program that will sort through the roms and delete the ones I don't want.  I know most emulators can sort blah blah blah, I want something that can get rid of the roms.  I have tried MCM and it has a great list of categories to choose, I just can't get it to delete anything.  It says it deletes the roms, but they just stay there.   

I have used RomCenter to remove clones, but I need something that can get rid of different languages, genres, etc.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[gonzo90017]

Just create a batch file with MCM then put it in your roms folder and run it.

[nic8612]

And how does one go about creating a batch file?  What is a batch file?

[NOP]

A batch file is essentially a script or list of commands for the computer to execute.
You can do repetitive and simple things in batch files, such as deleting or moving files.


try ROMLister (shameless self plug!)

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister

Here's how I'd create a batch file to delete ROMs I didn't want:

Launch ROMLister.  Go to Settings and Tools (the app will take you there the 1st time you start the program)

Download the required files and follow the instructions on that screen to create a merged .xml file. (This is a one time step)


OK, now for an example:
Say you didn't want mature games on your machine.

In the "category" section of the quick-find wizard, select mature, then hit GO!

ROMLister will spin for a bit, and then it should then display in the big window a listing of all the game names of all the titles that have "mature" for a category.
You should visually inspect this list to make sure that it's pulling up the games that are mature. 

Now click the "batch file" radio button.

A popup dialog will appear:


In this dialog, we're going to tell ROMLister to make a batch file to move the ROMs that are mature somewhere else on your machine.

In the text window type:

move %ROM%.zip c:\badroms

and hit OK.
Hit the "Go!" button again.

This time in the big window, you should see a list, that looks like this:

...
move apparel.zip c:\badroms
move secolove.zip c:\badroms
move housemnq.zip c:\badroms
move housemn2.zip c:\badroms
move seiha.zip c:\badroms
move seiham.zip c:\badroms
move bijokkoy.zip c:\badroms
move iemoto.zip c:\badroms
...


If things in there look ok (ie, no spaces between the ROM name and ".zip")
then click the "output to" checkbox to "File" and hit GO! one last time.

A popup dialog will appear, asking you where to save the file.  Save it in your ROMs folder.  Save it as any filename you like, perhaps "no_mature.bat"

Then make sure you have a "badroms" folder off the root of your C: drive for the batch file to move your ROMs into.

Now you can go to your ROMs folder, locate "no_mature" and double click it. 
The batch file will run, and move all those ROMs into your "badroms" folder on your C: drive.

tada.

Now you can go in and clean up the rest of your ROMs too.  If you don't have a spinner or trackball, use the wizard to locate those ROMs, following the same steps as above.  I personally find it easier to locate the ROMs I do want, the ones that I have controls for, and move them INTO my roms folder, than delete the ones I don't want, but whatever. 

The power of ROMLister is that you can combine any parameters you want, such as "list up all the fighting games, with vertical monitor orientation, 1 spinner, 5 buttons and an 8-way joystick" or "find all the maze games with a 4way stick and 2, 1 or 0 buttons"


That said, deleting ROMs may break games that you want.  If there are parent ROMs that share files with other games, and you delete the parent, all of the child games will have missing files.  This is why I had you MOVE the files instead of delete them...

Good luck,
-jeff!

[unclet]

If I remember correctly, the MCM tool simply renames the ROM files you choose you do not "want" to have a different extension other than zip (possibly .mcm  ??)   This way mame will not find these games since mame does not search for ".mcm" extension ROM files.

Anyway, after using the MCM tool, if you truely want to delete those ROM files, then you can go into your mame ROM directory and move all the files which end with ".mcm" extension to somewhere else (or delete them for real).  Executing the move or delete command from within a command window would be easiest so all files can be moved with one single command.

[shardian]

I got Clrmame and MCM confused. It was MCM I used and it worked fine deleting the adult games. It was a while ago that I did it, but I can tell you that if I can figure it out, any of you all can too.

[shardian]

I've been messing with this romlister this morning, and whenever I specify "vertical only", it will not return any results. What is the deal?

[shardian]

Can anyone help me get this darn program working? I need to make a few custom rom sets for my various machines. This prog will save me A TON of time!

[NOP]

what version of MAME are you using?

They changed the way monitor orientation was described in the xml file somewhere in the 0.100's (IIRC), and switched it from being "orientation=vertical" to "rotate=90" or "rotate=270"

So if you're using an earlier version of mame, you will have to change this by hand.

To quickly test this theory, remove the "& (rotate=90 | rotate=270)" from your search string window at the bottom of the screen, and try it again. 

If that brings up matches, click on the "input file" radio button look under view, to get back to the XML view, and look around somewhere in the big text window and you should see some keyword about monitor orientation (it'll probably say "orientation=vertical" or similar).  That's the keyword you want. 

You could probably just replace the "& (rotate=90 | rotate=270)" with "& vertical" and I just bet it'll start working.

-jeff!

[shardian]

I am using .103 with this. Yeah it finds things when I leave both boxes alone for monitor orientation.
I'll check it out and report back.

[shardian]

Awesome! You rule. It works great now. I just have to add "& vertical" to each search just like you said.

[NOP]

glad to hear that it's working finally.

I've had to tech support this a couple times now, and I think it would be a pretty easy thing to have the software figure out what monitor orientation search string to use.  Next time I dig into that code, I'll make the change so that others won't have to go through that headache again.

-jeff!

[shardian]

Hate to bug you again, but the batch file does not seem to be working. I created a batch file, and it appeared to generate properly in the romlister prog. When I run the batch file from within my roms directory, with the batch file set to copy roms to a new folder within c:\mame called "vert roms", nothing happens.
When I pause the batch file, I notice that for each rom file it either says "The system cannot find the file name specified", or "The syntax of the command is incorrect". The error messages alternate.

A typical command line during the run of the batch file appears as so:
C:\mame\roms>copy rescue.zip C:\mame\vert roms

EDIT before I even finished typing:

It appears that due to the command line functionality, you cannot have spaces in your folder names. Just wanted to point that out for fellow command line retards like myself. After I renamed the folder and reset the batch file, it worked fine.

[SGT]

It appears that due to the command line functionality, you cannot have spaces in your folder names.

You can enclose folder names that have spaces with quotes to get it to work properly.

[NOP]

what version of MAME are you using?

They changed the way monitor orientation was described in the xml file somewhere in the 0.100's (IIRC), and switched it from being "orientation=vertical" to "rotate=90" or "rotate=270"

So if you're using an earlier version of mame, you will have to change this by hand.

To quickly test this theory, remove the "& (rotate=90 | rotate=270)" from your search string window at the bottom of the screen, and try it again. 

If that brings up matches, click on the "input file" radio button look under view, to get back to the XML view, and look around somewhere in the big text window and you should see some keyword about monitor orientation (it'll probably say "orientation=vertical" or similar).  That's the keyword you want. 

You could probably just replace the "& (rotate=90 | rotate=270)" with "& vertical" and I just bet it'll start working.

-jeff!

...slow day at work today, so...

I have *finally* (I hope!) fixed this issue.
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

build 009 automagically switches between the two descriptions for monitor orientation depending on which version of MAME's xml file that you use as input. 

-jeff!

[Lakersfan]

NOP, does RomLister work with CHD's as well? (ie. moving unnecessary clones)

[NOP]

NOP, does RomLister work with CHD's as well? (ie. moving unnecessary clones)

Not specifically.
All ROMLister knows about is the ROM name, but that shouldn't stop you from creating a batch file to move both a .zip and a .chd somewhere.  So in the batch file builder:

move %ROM%.zip c:\badroms  would move your ROM files
move %ROM%.chd c:\badroms would move your chd's.
move %ROM%.* c:\badroms     would move both, provided they are both in the same folder.

(edit after some more thinking)

of course that only works when the ROM name is the same as the CHD name, which isn't always the case.

I think you may have to do some of that work by hand, but it's fairly easy to get a list of all the CHD based games:

put just "disk name=" in the -find box and hit go. 

Unfortunately, that's about all I can give you at the moment (not enough coffee yet) but this question is opening my mind up for some new features/tools that I think I might like to add to the program...

-jeff

[Lakersfan]

Great, thanks Jeff! I'll play around with some of your suggestions.

[mario.NET]

Some time ago I made my own tool for renaming/copying rom files
Better interface, but doesn't support catlist files
Disclaimer: I used it only with mame .106

You can find it here:
http://www.mansoft.it/mario/download/mamefilterV1.zip
(requires .net 2.0)