ROMLister build 13 guinea pigs needed!

[NOP]

hi all,

for those of you who've used romlister before, I'm hoping to get some feedback on a new direction I've taken with it.

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister_013beta.zip

It now works like this:

You click some options to pick your system's setup, then hit the Go! button.
From there, I generate a "working" list.  You can delete items out of the list, or, go back into the main romlister dialog and send a new search in.  Any new roms then get added to the working list.  Once you're finished tweaking, you can then export your list to all of the old staples as before (mala, maximus, atomicFE, batch files, etc)

I think it's the right direction to be headed for this app-I think it is now less confusing to beginner users, but still has all (I hope) the features that power users might be interested in. 

It does run a little bit slower, but it's not that bad. 

Please, kick this around, see if you can find anything that needs fixing or improving, and we'll see if I can do it!  (this is already pushing my abilities, so no promises!)

thanks,

-jeff!

[u_rebelscum]

First impressions:

I like the find games, then decide what to do with them idea.  Much more intuitive.

As a database user, one point I didn't like is for inputs, the query either has to have xinput or has to not have xinput.  There is no "I don't care if it has it" selection.  I wish there was a gray (aka "I don't mind either way") check or something like that.  Of course, that makes it a little "less easy", and I know I can edit the criteria by hand, but it's a pain to switch between the easy automatic check & radio boxes and editing by hand.

Another minor thing, could the "show details" show what the export would show, or add another right click option for preview or something like that?

Way to keep up the awesome app!

[NOP]

> I wish there was a gray (aka "I don't mind either way") check or something like that.

Done!  I've never used them before, but all checkboxes can be tri-stated, so I've switched them over to that.  It grays them out exactly as you wanted if you 2x click them.  When an item is grayed, it doesn't get put into the "must haves" or the "must not haves".  Pretty cool. (and darn easy to implement, so thank you!)

>Another minor thing, could the "show details" show what the export would show, or add another right click option for preview or something like that?

To a degree that could be done.  Some game lists are becoming more than just text now, so those would not be previewable in a window.  I can see this being useful for batch files and the like, so I'll see what I can do. 

I really need to enhance the "rom lookup" feature too.  I want a find prev/next, and also a way to use the lookup, type in a game name, and then have it get added to the working list quickly. 

thanks for the feedback!

[Paul Olson]

I tried to make a 4-way list of US only games, and it only came up with 12  games. 2-way was similar. Any idea what would cause this?

[NOP]

>I tried to make a 4-way list of US only games, and it only came up with 12  games. 2-way was similar. Any idea what would cause this?

Very few US games have any "tag" like (US), (USA), etc in their name, so there is nothing to key off of to pull that game into your list, which is why there were so few.  If you take a look at rlmacros.txt, you'll see all the various tags that RL searches for to bring a game in.  Most of the early games, which would use a 2 or 4way stick, aren't going to have any additional information to key off of.

Another route to take would be to do a NOT search on the other regions, but you'd probably have to do some editing to either rlmacros.txt and the query itself in order to get the results you're really looking for.

The region stuff is an interesting experiment at best, but the data that we get from MAME just really isn't all there to give you any kind of accuracy that you're looking for. 

You should just do an any region with your 2/4way query.  You'll have to pull a few out by hand, but they should be easy to spot.

Once this new version of RL gets released for real, and I update the tutorials and docs, this warning about the region stuff will be in there.

-jeff!

[dgame]

NOP,

It works well as before. I like the pop up preview of the list.

The one thing that doesn’t seem to work is the ~c_button1 ~c_button2 ~c_button3 variables in MaLa layouts when using RomLister generated lists.

It seems as the MaLa generated “All Games” list also includes information from the MAME controls.ini that is accessed by the ~c_button variables used in Mala layouts.

The MaLa All Games list is 2,065KB
The same RomLister list is 1,445KB


Could you please add support for the control panel variables in the RomLister generated MaLa gamelists? Thank you.


EDIT: Added gamelists.zip with the two lists mentioned above. Thanks Jeff.

[NOP]

wow!

This apparently has been broken since day 1 and you're the first to notice it (and I even use Mala myself!)

yeah, looking at my code, I complete skip over filling in any of these fields:

    FControls:             string;       // game controls from controls.dat
    FJoyUp:                string;
    FJoyDown:              string;
    FJoyLeft:              string;
    FJoyRight:             string;
    FButton1:              string;
    FButton2:              string;
    FButton3:              string;
    FButton4:              string;
    FButton5:              string;
    FButton6:              string;
    FButton7:              string;
    FButton8:              string;
    FDetails:              string;

Gimme a couple days and this should be fixed.

Nice catch.  thank you for reporting this.

-jeff!

[deadsoulz]

Does this only work for Mala?  OR can I use it for Maximus Arcade and HyperSpin?

[NOP]

It supports the following output formats:

Plain text files of rom names (the 8 character names)
plain text of rom descriptions (user friendly names)
Atomic FE
MameWah
Maximus Arcade
Mala
XML
CSV
batch files

I don't know what format hyperspin uses-that was actually on my short list of things to add support for, if it didn't use any of the above already.  (can you send me a sample?)

Pretty much any other FE uses either plain text or something that is easily converted from one of the above. 

This is an open call to all FE developers: If you are using custom list formats, please send me an example so I can add support for your FE in romlister.  It'll make both of our user bases happy to be able to go straight from RL to your FE...

[DeLuSioNal29]

I haven't had a change to really delve into Romlister as of yet, but I'm sure I will once I get my vertical cab finished.  I'm using Maximus Arcade (recent addition to Romlister) and I can't wait to play with it.

~ DeLuSioNaL

[Avrus]

Hey Jeff sorry I haven't had a chance to play with the latest version at all.  It seems like when it rains it pours.  Cab went down, all my PCs were down at some point, and now hours hours of work.  Vacation coming up so that means cab play time. 

[TheShanMan]

I guess I ought to go on the record by saying I've used it briefly and it worked well. I use mala though, so I'm not exercising as much of the new stuff as others might. I will use it again whenever 0.127 comes out (I don't usually bother with u releases).

[Space Fractal]

I looking on this version when I went home.

If you diddent have change the XML format, MultiFE can use the exported XML list as well and is even checked for <controls_info> if it can find it (merged list).....

I guess you should add if a frontend can use xml export or such.

[NOP]

Thanks all,

I'm now up to beta 5 of this new build, and I think I'm quite close to a release of it.

You can try it here:

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/ROMLister13Beta5.zip

Space Fractal:
I've added Multi-FE as an output option for list creation.  It's actually the exact same thing as plain ole XML output, and I have not changed the formatting of xml out, so this should work fine on your FE. 

Output formats it now supports:
Atomic FE
Batch files
CSV
HyperSpin
Khameleon
Mala
MameWah
Maximus Arcade
MultiFE
plain text of rom descriptions (user friendly names)
Plain text files of rom names (the 8 character names)
XML

Some output formats have a lot more testing than others (some have none!) so don't hesitate to slap me if something is broken.

New tutorials coming shortly after the release.

-jeff!

[Space Fractal]

Nice work, and like the new interface.

One minor issue found in xml output: It dosent show correctly in Notepad, but it does work fine in MultiFE Wip 6 when I tried import that list.

It would been elsewice nice if you called it gamelist.xml as default name or such.

[cadmium]

Hi, I've had a chance to try the latest beta and have a few bugs/issues to report on.

The biggest thing is, no matter what I seems to select as far as controls goes, it's always filtering out Toobin', which is a game that only has buttons, no joystick. It does work if I only use the "don't care" check boxes. (I could be doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what.)

Other minor stuff (most of which I'm sure you are aware of, since it's an early release), and in no particular order:

It would be nice to be able to select multiple regions so that we could apply the not to them, or make it so that selecting a region does a not on the other regions or includes non-specific regions in the query. That would at least alleviate some of the pain of not having great data to work with. I know this can be done by messing with the find command, but any changes get overwritten by the UI.

It would be great if the UI remembered my settings from the last time for the Quick-List and roms location.

The working list is not sorted correctly on load and also it does not export a sorted list at all (at least for the Maximus Arcade option).

The Maximus export option only works if you save the file into the same directory as RomLister and converter.exe.

If you leave the working list open, it keeps adding to the list instead of making a fresh one each time. I noticed this when I ended up with more roms than I started with as I got more specific with my query

That's all I got for now. Hope it helps 

[NOP]

The biggest thing is, no matter what I seems to select as far as controls goes, it's always filtering out Toobin', which is a game that only has buttons, no joystick. It does work if I only use the "don't care" check boxes. (I could be doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what.)

Ah!  that's an interesting one.  I like it.
Adding "| !'control type=' " to the controls wanted list brought it up (you also have to make sure you have 5 buttons or less selected.)  I've added "buttons only" to the checkbox list now, and this very well may dig out a few new ROMs for everyone. 

It would be nice to be able to select multiple regions so that we could apply the not to them, or make it so that selecting a region does a not on the other regions or includes non-specific regions in the query. That would at least alleviate some of the pain of not having great data to work with.

Lemme look into breaking all of those out.  I want to try and avoid GUI overload with too many cluttered up checkboxes, and I was trying to shrink the size of the GUI altogether, but I can certainly see this as a nice feature to be able to just click all the stuff you want and unclick the stuff you don't...  I personally don't use that function (I don't have kids and majhong games don't show up when you filter out horizontal games) so that section has been neglected.

If you leave the working list open, it keeps adding to the list instead of making a fresh one each time. I noticed this when I ended up with more roms than I started with as I got more specific with my query

That is done by design, and the main selling point of this new interface.

Because no single query can really get everything you want in a list, I made it work that way so you can do multiple queries, and each one just pushes more stuff into the working list. 
You can then click on the "list all games" button and pick out individual games from there and throw those onto the pile too.  Closing the working list starts the process over again.  Since I haven't written up any documentation on how this all works yet, this is understandably confusing.

It would be great if the UI remembered my settings from the last time for the Quick-List and roms location.

yeah.  There's a lot of stuff I really should be saving-even the previously used query would be nice to have restored.  I need something to do for the next release, so I will probably defer this type of work for next time.  (I'm more interested in functionality than features at the moment)

The working list is not sorted correctly on load and also it does not export a sorted list at all (at least for the Maximus Arcade option).

It's not sorted at all - meaning that the ROMs are displayed in the order they are listed in the -listXML file, which is the order they were added to MAME through the years.  I realize that's unimportant to everyone, but it makes a huge difference in time when I export the list out.
You see, the input file is ~30mb in size, and I don't load the whole thing into memory at once, because that can take a very long time to process.  When I export out a list, I merely start at the top of the input file, check if you want it in your list, and repeat til I'm done with the whole 30mb file.
This gives you an unsorted list in the output, and I'm leaving the sorting up to the FE.  (I use mala, and all lists are automatically sorted when displayed)  If other FEs don't do that, I kinda think that's the fault of the FE personally.

I can be convinced to change this, but there will be huge time penalties using the program and/or saving your list out, and RL is already getting kind of pokey as it is.

The Maximus export option only works if you save the file into the same directory as RomLister and converter.exe.

wow, you're right!
I think this is a bug in convert.exe and needs to get thrown over to mameSeer.
I'm passing in a fully qualified path for source and destination and it's telling me that the source file doesn't exist if it's not in the same directory.  I'll email mameSeer and let him know.


thanks for the feedback!  If I break out all the category stuff and decide I like the look, I will likely release this officially and get some documentation written up.  There's so much new stuff in this build that I'm going to forget to document it all if I don't start soon.

-jeff!

[cadmium]

That is done by design, and the main selling point of this new interface.

Makes sense. Maybe in a future version the list could check for duplicates?

yeah.  There's a lot of stuff I really should be saving-even the previously used query would be nice to have restored.  I need something to do for the next release, so I will probably defer this type of work for next time.  (I'm more interested in functionality than features at the moment)

I understand how it is, gotta make it work first, then add all of the niceties.

It's not sorted at all - meaning that the ROMs are displayed in the order they are listed in the -listXML file, which is the order they were added to MAME through the years. 

Fair enough. As a workaround I can make Maximus sort the list by importing it, rather than just using it directly.

thanks for the feedback! 

You are welcome and thank you for the handy utility. I look forward to the next release!

[NOP]

>Maybe in a future version the list could check for duplicates?

Brilliant idea!  I also had an epiphany about how I might go about doing sorted lists without the huge burden of parsing the 30mb input file a bunch of times.  If I go in that direction, de-duping will be an automatic feature.  This won't happen in this release-I need a break and have got to get documenting it.

OK, here's beta 7:


http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/RomLister13Beta7.zip

Just drop this over your existing download-no reason to download the 3mb convert.exe again-MameSeer has not gotten back to me about the path issue, so no updates there.

This version has a "buttons only" checkbox for controls, and I broke out the category stuff into checkboxes.  20 more checkboxes on the screen!  We're getting close to sensory overload on all the different tweakables on the GUI now, so we have to proceed with caution if we add anything else.


No other stuff has been added.  The category stuff has been lightly tested, but seems to work.
If no bug reports show up in the next couple days, this will be the official release.

-jeff!

[Space Fractal]

(second atempt to write this post, due it somethims log me out after posting):

1. Why not to use one listform to list all category and then one checkbox? I think this way is much easier instead having 20 checkboxes.

2. I search for duplicates checking for the title before ( and then jump the rest over. Example "Bomb Jack (Set 1)" whould threated as "Bomb Jack". Some people might prefer to use the last rom (bomb jack have 3 sets). That is what I does in MultiFE and works better than rely in master roms (personly).

I think you can do something same?

3. Instead of multiply a 30mb input, you could not use a linked list system? But I dosent think speed is a issue, since this is just a utility. So dont think about speed.

[NOP]

>1. Why not to use one listform to list all category and then one checkbox? I think this way is much easier instead having 20 checkboxes.

If I have to work on the GUI some more, I may go this route if it gets too cluttered looking.  Checkboxes are (for me) easier to work with because I do a lot more of them than list forms from my programming past.  I could also do some kind of tabbed view, but I've never worked with tabs before.  As I think I've said, this program is not only a tool for people to use, but also a way for me to push my programming skills up-I'd never done resizable windows, multi-threads or list controls before this new release, so am absolutely at my limits right now!


>2. I search for duplicates checking for the title before ( and then jump the rest over. Example "Bomb Jack (Set 1)" whould threated as "Bomb Jack". Some people might prefer to use the last rom (bomb jack have 3 sets). That is what I does in MultiFE and works better than rely in master roms (personly).

My idea for de-duping will be based off the position the ROM exists in the input file, so I won't be using the name at all-this will allow people to use whatever set they want for any game.  I can't really explain it too well simply because I haven't written and/or tested it out yet.

>3. Instead of multiply a 30mb input, you could not use a linked list system? But I dosent think speed is a issue, since this is just a utility. So dont think about speed.

I agree that slow is fine.  How many months did you spend building your cab?  You can't wait 2 minutes for a list!? 

A linked list system would force me to re-write a lot of the way the program works, and I still think that my idea will work fine to provide fast outputs, deduping, and sorted lists, all in 1, without having to load in the entire 30mb input file at any time.  We'll see!

-jeff!

[Space Fractal]

Just tested out newest beta, i do think the category checkboxes is nice and you cant do anything elsewice.

I do have a request: Filter out mature games (can been added under misc setting).

But again: Dont think about speed of romlister, you dosen't use it often and that is of course not meant.

[NOP]

>I do have a request: Filter out mature games (can been added under misc setting).

that's the first checkbox under categories! 
Uncheck that and all the mature games are gone.

-jeff!

[Space Fractal]

hey. I diddent notice that in first run. So I guess it to hidden? Mature is not really a category and hince I want it see it moved to Misc.

[u_rebelscum]

Mature is not really a category and hince I want it see it moved to Misc.

It pretty much is a category, as that's where it's found, as you need the catver.ini file, so that's why it's placed there.

I don't really care one way or the other... well, actually I do, I say leave it as is.  It helps explain what you need to sort out/in mature (an extra file) and how it's related to the other categories, while if put in misc a comon question will be "why doesn't it work?".  If you do go to lists, though, you might want to leave the mature as a checkbox in the category box.

NOP, maybe what's needed is a status or infoor "?" button of the category and other stuff.  You know, the small blue question mark buttons now often seen next to stuff that need explaining.  Clicking the button would show more info, such as that the category boxes are disabled/enabled, to why or how to enabled, etc. 
Or maybe grey out the whole catergories box if no info?  (I'm assuming the reason I can or can't check these boxes are weather I have the catver.ini merged or not.)

[NOP]

NOP, maybe what's needed is a status or infoor "?" button of the category and other stuff.  You know, the small blue question mark buttons now often seen next to stuff that need explaining.  Clicking the button would show more info, such as that the category boxes are disabled/enabled, to why or how to enabled, etc. 

I like it.  I've never done that before, but it can't be too hard to do. 
I will probably defer that to the next release, as I'm a little burned and want to work on something new for a bit, plus I have all kinds of documentation to write.

Speaking of that, I hope that anyone who doesn't know all about the categories can pop over to the tutorials I'm writing on the wiki here for a better explanation of all the goodies.

Or maybe grey out the whole catergories box if no info?  (I'm assuming the reason I can or can't check these boxes are weather I have the catver.ini merged or not.)

Yup.  If you're not using a merged file, I pull all those selections out.  That will be (or at least should be!) explained in the tutorials/documentation I'm working on.

[TheManuel]

Hey, NOP!
I finally got around to rid my collection of Mature games (I don't want my kids running into one of those while the screensaver is running or by accidental selection) using ROMlister which is an awesome tool, by the way.

For my life, I could not get any sort of filtering by categories to work.  I'm using version 104 of mame with a bit older catver.ini file version, so to make sure that wasn't the problem, I did it with MAME 122 and the latest catver.ini and got the same result. 
I simply switched back to version 12 or ROMlister and the problem was gone.  I was able to filter by categories easily and used the batch file to move the files to a separate folder.

The funny thing is that setting up MaLa, MAME and all related software in the configuration I have is so complicated that the kids will never get to those games 

Anyway, one feature suggestion for you to consider:
Have you thought of allowing the option to build a merged xml with MAME.xml and catver.ini only without including the controls.ini file?  Right now, the "Merge" button is disabled until you include all three files for merging but some users might use the tool only to filter out or create lists for certain game genres.
Just a suggestion from your buddy.

By the way, I still owe you some tests on the latest version of fuzzyrenamer.  I have visit from out of town and the chance I got last night to work on the cab was eliminating the adult games.

Regards.

[NOP]

For my life, I could not get any sort of filtering by categories to work.  I'm using version 104 of mame with a bit older catver.ini file version, so to make sure that wasn't the problem, I did it with MAME 122 and the latest catver.ini and got the same result. 
I simply switched back to version 12 or ROMlister and the problem was gone.  I was able to filter by categories easily and used the batch file to move the files to a separate folder.

Hmmm.  I'm not seeing a problem with my setup.  Can you give me the steps you're doing to reproduce your lack of results? 

Here's what I do:
A merged input file, built off mame 125u8 (but it shouldn't matter), latest catver.ini (created 8-8-08) and when I launch romlister, I just click "make a list" without changing a thing.
I get 1082 roms available.  I close the list, uncheck Mature and make the list again.  838 games this time.  Something obviously is getting filtered.   

If you can break it, copy out the -find line and post it here and we should be able to debug that, but if you're getting a broken -find line without editing it by hand, then there is obviously a problem somewhere.

Anyway, one feature suggestion for you to consider:
Have you thought of allowing the option to build a merged xml with MAME.xml and catver.ini only without including the controls.ini file?  Right now, the "Merge" button is disabled until you include all three files for merging but some users might use the tool only to filter out or create lists for certain game genres.

I'll look into it.  I used to dynamically change the search data when I saw controls info was available, but I don't think I do that anymore, so it may not be needed.  I'd just have to branch around that chunk of code I think.  If you can convince me that the filtering thing is actually broken, then I'll fix this for you too. 

-jeff!

[cadmium]

NOP, where do you get your catver.ini files? I'm not sure I have the latest.

[NOP]

Click this:

http://www.progettoemma.net/public/ccount/click.php?id=6

If you ever lose that link, it's in my romlister tutorial:

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/RL_tutorial_merge

[cadmium]

You sir are a scholar and a gentleman.

Thank you.

[Space Fractal]

Used again today.

Build 15 seen hanging if I trying to create a MultiFE gamelist. I waited over 5 minuttes and still hanging while save. I remember it did not takt that long time.

Otherwice it would been place to create a indicator so you can see how far it are to the save (by showing game X out of total), so you easier to see what it doing.

[NOP]

yep, broken indeed.

give this one a try:

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/ROMLister_016.zip

a list of 1000+ games now takes about 10 seconds to build.

sorry I have not had a lot of time lately to spend on improvements to romlister.  i have a lot of things i want to do, just not a lot of time to do them.

[Kirth]

Hi, I'm a first time user to RomLister.  I downloaded the 0.16 build and tried to generate a merged file but it crashes.

I'm using:
TinyXP Rev09
MAME 0.128
controls.xml 0.111.5
catver.ini 
  from here: http://www.progettoemma.net/public/ccount/click.php?id=6

It successfully generates the list.xml file from mame.exe but when I try to merge all of the files RomLister disappears with no error message.

[NOP]

huh.

i too am using tinyxp and controls 111.5 and that linked catver, and it worked for me, but i'm using mame 125.u8.
I wonder if they changed the xml formatting on the newer releases?

anyway, if you can help me debug this, that would be handy.  we know that catver and controls are ok, it's either a change in mame (can you back up a couple revs?) or something deep and sinister in romlister. 

i prolly won't have a chance to get to this today, but obviously it'll be on my short list when i can get to it.

sorry to wreck you first time experience.

[Kirth]

I tried it with 0.125:
http://mamedev.org/downloader.php?file=mame0125b.exe

and it did the same thing.  It must be something with my setup, or that changed with TinyXP Rev09.  Unless there is something you've got installed that I haven't.

If I try to skip the merge step and use the MAME list.xml file (or the controls.xml file) as the input XML file I get an error:

Invalid input file.  Unable to locate MAME or controls.xml header!?

Here's a bit more about my setup:
Athlon XP 2500+, 512MB ram
Two hard drives:
C:\ - has windows and nothing else
D:\ - all of my MAME stuff including MALA and RomLister

[NOP]

ok, you can try backing up a version of romlister too, just in case my latest update nuked something else. (quite likely!)
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/ROMLister_015.zip
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/ROMLister_014.zip
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/ROMLister_013.zip
etc. should all be available for testing.

i'd think that backing up to 15 should be far enough.  Anything to change the behavior will help in the debugging.
when i open controls.xml in 016, I don't get an error, but I can't get any roms to show up in a search either, so something is broken there.
it's unusual that you'd be getting such drastically different results than me, and we're both essentially running the same system. 
we should go offline to continue the debugging process, mostly to avoid embarrassment for me.
my email address is on the romlister main page.

[Kirth]

I tried version 0.15 and it works perfectly, at least everything I've tried.  It should make my life a lot easier.

I sent you an email if you want help debugging the 0.16 version.