Is there a way to use romlister to generate mamewah custom lists?

[bardon]

I was playing around with RomLister, and I was wondering if there was actually a way to get it to generate custom lists that I can use with Mamewah?  I can get a list of ROM names matching the criteria I want quite easily, but I haven't been able to figure out how to incorporate this into Mamewah.  The tutorial on the wiki explains how to actually remove files, but not how to leave the ROMs (so they show up in the "all games" list), but filter what Mamewah displays (via mame-1.ini etc).

[TheShanMan]

Do you have an example of the contents of a mamewah game list file? I wrote a little command line app for converting to and from mame32, mala, and tb_screensaver game lists. If the mamewah format is pretty trivial I might be willing to add support for it and give it to you. If it contains other settings though, my app wouldn't be able to preserve them.

[u_rebelscum]

The mamewah game list file is very simple, maybe even too simple.  After a quick look online, I can't find a description of the file format, and the file is very unclear.  Are the blank lines needed?  Is the order of  the lines important?

Attached is a small list of mame games, zipped.

[TheShanMan]

Well the problem is my command line app doesn't deal with metadata - only the rom names. So the only way it would work in this context is if mamewah doesn't really need all that data. Incidentally, I've never used my app to convert to mala game lists, only from. One of these days I want to try converting to, and see if mala chokes with no metadata, or if it can fill in the metadata when the list is loaded.

Bardon, is my app of any interest? If so, please hand edit a mamewah game list file, taking out all the game information and only leaving rom names. If mamewah can handle such a list then please upload your edited game list and I'll see about adding mamewah to my app.

[bardon]

I'll have to take a look at the files that mamewah generates and see if you can edit them using the rom names.  I can probably throw my own app together in a couple hours that would take the XML from the mame listgen and output something that mamewah can use, but if there was already a capability in romlister to do this, then I figured I'd just use that.  I'll try editing a couple of files by hand first, and see what I can come up with. 

[TheShanMan]

Well, let me know how it goes. I'd like to add it to my app if possible because one of these days I may want to make it widely available, so the more FE's it supports the better. I've got it architected to make it simple to add new formats, so no sense in both of us spending time doing it.

In fact, I even talked to the guy who did RomLister about reusing my work so he could more easily support more formats, but he hasn't taken me up on that offer.

[NOP]

The mamewah game list file is very simple, maybe even too simple.  After a quick look online, I can't find a description of the file format, and the file is very unclear.  Are the blank lines needed?  Is the order of  the lines important?

Attached is a small list of mame games, zipped.

I think I can handle adding support for this into ROMLister natively.

The description is slightly tweaked:
1941 - Counter Attack (World) from the XML
vs.
1941 - Counter Attack (W) in the list file, so you'll lose those changes, but everything else looks pretty straightforward.


Gimme a day or two and I'll PM you with a beta version you can test out for me.

stay tuned.

-jeff!

[Minwah]

Are the blank lines needed?

Yes.

Is the order of  the lines important?

Yes.

As you noticed, the format is *very* simple. The LST format is hardcoded to use the same fields, in the same order, one line per field. Note this is regardless of emulator.  Here is a quick explanation:

Romname
Description
Year
Manufacturer
Cloneof
Romof
Screen Type
Orientation
Input
Driver Status
Color Status
Sound Status
Category


If I'd known what I know now when I made the format, I would've done it differently.  That said, it is very easy to read/write, and basically does the job so I will not be changing it unless I ever get round to my complete backend rewrite.

[Minwah]

The description is slightly tweaked:
1941 - Counter Attack (World) from the XML
vs.
1941 - Counter Attack (W) in the list file, so you'll lose those changes, but everything else looks pretty straightforward.

I don't believe Mamewah 'tweaks' any of the descriptions...so I wonder how was this list with the '(W)' generated (which list_generation_method)?

Note here is that entry in the LST file from my test setup:

1941
1941 - Counter Attack (World)
1990
Capcom


Raster
Vertical
joy8way
Status Good (Good)
Color Good (Good)
Sound Good
Shooter / Flying Vertical

[NOP]

ok guinea pigs, here's something to try out:

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister12beta.zip
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister12beta2.zip

This is totally untested, as I'm not running mamewah (and I'm at work doing this anyway!) so you get what you pay for.

Some notes:
1) controls, especially multiples, are not being pulled out, so "dial, pedal" that should be in pole position, you're likely only going to end up with "dial" in my list.  I'm looking into getting that fixed in future builds. damn, that was easier than I thought to fix.

2) I'm not capitalizing some of the fields-I do uppercase the rom name, but other bits aren't all in the same case as the example files here.  If that's an issue, it's easy to fix.

3) this may be an issue elsewhere, but I'm adding the Romof field, and the examples are always blank.
Here's an example that I came across:
MameWah-0.lst

Code: [Select]

KUNGFUB
Kung-Fu Master (bootleg set 1)
1984
bootleg
KUNGFUM

Raster
Horz
joy4way
Status Good (Good)
Color Good (Good)
Sound Good


ROMLister:

Code: [Select]

KUNGFUB
Kung-Fu Master (bootleg set 1)
1984
bootleg
KUNGFUM
kungfum
raster
Horz
joy4way
Status good (good)
Color good (good)
Sound good
Fighter / 2D

Other than that, it appears that things are matching up pretty well.  Good luck!

-jeff!

[mario.NET]

I built a little utility for this, it's quite simple, you can try it:

www.mansoft.it/mario/download/mamefilterv1.zip

bye
Mario

[NOP]

yeah, I was just going to ask if anyone had tried out that new romlister?  I'd like to give it an official release, but not if there were any bugs in the mamewah output.

anyone?

--

mario.NET - pretty nifty little application!  When I tried it, I got no data in display, orientation and control fields.  I'm using mame 0.122.  I dunno if missing fields like that will make mamewah puke or not. 

-jeff!

[mario.NET]

mario.NET - pretty nifty little application!  When I tried it, I got no data in display, orientation and control fields.  I'm using mame 0.122.  I dunno if missing fields like that will make mamewah puke or not. 

Oops! I only tested it with 0.106 (that's what I am using in my cab)
If romlister doesn't work, post here, and I'll make it work with latest versions too.

Bye

[pucci]

mario.NET - pretty nifty little application!  When I tried it, I got no data in display, orientation and control fields.  I'm using mame 0.122.  I dunno if missing fields like that will make mamewah puke or not. 

Oops! I only tested it with 0.106 (that's what I am using in my cab)
If romlister doesn't work, post here, and I'll make it work with latest versions too.

Bye

can you release the sourcecode of mamefilter? it can be a great tutorial in XML parsing!

in italiano: puoi rilasciare il codice sorgente di mamefilter? sarebbe un ottima guida per chi vuole imparare ad usare il parsing xml! (p.s.: so che la traduzione in inglese fa schifo!)

[headkaze]

can you release the sourcecode of mamefilter? it can be a great tutorial in XML parsing!

What would you like to know? Parsing xml is very easy in .NET using the System.Xml namespace.

[Cakemeister]

You can also just use Expat or some other XML parsing library, there are several.

I wrote my own XML parser for MAME using flex/bison and it was much faster than expat but it broke every time MAMEdev changed the XML. So I finally ripped that out of ListGen and put in expat instead.

[pucci]

can you release the sourcecode of mamefilter? it can be a great tutorial in XML parsing!

What would you like to know? Parsing xml is very easy in .NET using the System.Xml namespace.

i'm a very niub with .NET