MAME How to Create a datafile excluding Not Working Games

All about datafiles.

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Dweezledap
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MAME How to Create a datafile excluding Not Working Games

Post by Dweezledap »

I can't see the sense in having games that are not working so I would like to create a mame 0.86, or whatever, datafile that excludes the not working games.

My first attempt was to create a regular expression and use search and replace on the mame list.xml. Of course that did'nt work because In removing not working parents I also removed needed rom info for all working clones.

I'm kinda stumped here. Anyone know or have any idea how I might go about doing this?

I could always create a datafile manually, but that would take a ridiculous amount of time :?
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Post by Iron Man »

I dont know, but what will you do with games that have, say like Raiden II etc only unemulated protection and are flagged like this and what will you do if the games become playable?

But i have no solution besides to do it manually...
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Dweezledap
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Post by Dweezledap »

Part of the reason i was trying to do this is I have an old AMD 400 k-6 system with a 6 GB hard drive and an old Asteroids arcade cabinet. I was going to convert it to a MAME arcade cabinet (if I ever find the time and money :)).
Iron Man wrote:what will you do with games that have, say like Raiden II etc only unemulated protection and are flagged like this and what will you do if the games become playable
I just thought it would be easier to manually add the few dozen games like this than to manually remove the 600 or so that don't work. If I found an easy way to do this I could simply update the datafile with each new release of MAME.
It's just for my personal use and I was'nt too concerned about missing a couple of games.
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Logiqx
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Post by Logiqx »

If you can program in C then it would only require a small program using my DatLib:

1) Extend DatLib to load the game 'status' flag in dats/xml.
2) Use DatLib to load the dat/xml into memory.
3) Remove non-working games (use the 'remove clones' function already in DatLib as a guide for removing games).
4) Blank out the 'cloneof' for games where the parent does not exist (ie. games that have been been removed).
5) Call the function to save the dat from memory.

The result will be a program that generates a clean data file with non-working games removed. As usual, my to-do list is building and I have no desire to write such a utility myself though, sorry! Good luck if you have a go yourself though. It is a relatively simple task for an experienced C programmer but would probably be too ambitous for someone that does not have a good understanding of the language.

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Post by Dweezledap »

Thanks for the help. I've been reading books and slowly beginning to understand the basics of C and C++. Perhaps after some more studying and some experience I'll be able to create a working program.
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Tulsaboyw

Re: MAME How to Create a datafile excluding Not Working Game

Post by Tulsaboyw »

Im wondering how to that above to ..
The idea about doing manually is not going to happen for me.

IfI can systematically or programatically remove nonworking, then I will likley dump everything and keep 2-3 of my alltime favorites and somehow dumb down mame to run just those games.

But the idea i have .. does take some work ... is to leave everything alone in mame.. but to create a favorites folder in Mame and use that.

That would allow me to have just the games that works....
The trick is.. I would love to use that same idea to use hyperspin or other to use that 'favorites' file..
(hyperspin, is using all games, and It should use only the 'favorites'.. Im not going to waste time or money going thru hundreds of nonworking games in that scenario once the above favorites is done.

When the next mame is updated - hopefully they will note what changes were made, and I would manually handle those.
Hopefully not a large amt... as it is, its high probability that I wont bother updating..

Too many games are:
1. Not worth playing at all, ever.
2. Not working.
3. or are too duplicate like of another.

With using mame, as long as I use the favorites, Im cool.

With hyperspin or other, untill I can use the 'favorites' in some way, Im not likley to use anything other than mame itself.

Tulsaboyw

Re: MAME How to Create a datafile excluding Not Working Game

Post by Tulsaboyw »

Didnt relize the above thread was 5 years old.

Tulsaboyw

Re: MAME How to Create a datafile excluding Not Working Game

Post by Tulsaboyw »

As it is, so far many of the tools are either not working or not working well enough to be usuable.
Clrmame acutally removed 3 or so items.
Other similar tools that where helpful in informaton but in reality did nothing to cut down the nonworking stuff.

Also, Im up to the 'J's in the mame db with dragdrop of games that acutally work or are worth playing into a 'favorites' folder (mame).
Thats about 400 or so... whihc is so far about 25% of what ive gone thru. I expect to end up with about 600-800 by the time Im all the way thru it.

But having so many games that are obviolsy not functioning that mame itself says is 'working' is kinda of ?? a weird thing.
Many of these acutaly state 'missing this or that'. which obvioulsy means that they are not working.

My workaround is to take that 'favorites' list and somehow make a hyperspin usuable xml db (whatever it is) and use only that list to play off of.
Problem there is that hyperspin doenst handle things quite right either.

I will also want to have my pc based games in hyperspin..
Doable if the game is off the main menu, but i want them in a submenu from a 'PC GAMES main (same lvl as mame) ..yet the documentation that helps here stops at the point of adding the actually games to submenu, and ony help you add it to main.

Tulsaboyw

Re: MAME How to Create a datafile excluding Not Working Game

Post by Tulsaboyw »

Finished going thru it all.. 735 games total... but this includes clones and 'too similar' games too.
Will go back thru these now, and remove from favorites, the games that niether myself or others will likley not bother with.

As it is, fortunately creating the process makes editing down a usuable list makes mame worth playing with the right frontend.

Its surprsing to me that such a process didnt already exist, with comments that manual was the only way.
Thats usually what non-developers say, but its still funny that nobody did the above before now.

For those saying, well use the rom-remover stuff, I should mention that some of those may have worked at one time, but most of them
havent worked for at least a couple of versions since.

That alone would have been good, if they had worked, but not for a long time.

But im having fun with hyperspin, though Im having to remove a lot of the excessive category stuff.
There really isnt enough game variety to justify having so many different categories.
With me its going to be nothing but 'MAME' and PC GAMES as a main list category.
Everything else is excessive.

As far as creating a cabinet... naw, That would be a nice idea, if the frontend and others actually did allow some variant of using only the favorites and a easier than current way to edit that list.

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