Sorting ROMS

[StewDapples]

Hi, sorry if this has been asked before, but looking for some advice as to how to sort my roms.
Up to this point I have been experimenting with full sets of mane2003plus and fbneo roms, using the arcade folder for the 2003 roms and the fba folder for the fbneo roms.

I have just been taking the new dat files installed on my pi whenever I update the emulators to their newest version and using clrmame to compile a complete list of compatible roms.

What I really want to do is start removing a lot of the clones and end up with one version of each game, but I am unsure of how I would update these games if any change with future versions of the emulators without having to go back to the full dat and start deleting the clones again.

Can anyone offer me any advice as to how to achieve this?

[Folly]

@StewDapples

For the FBneo roms you can do this in the Command Line Inerface (CLI/Terminal/Bash environment).
Get out of Emulationstation with F4 and you should be able to do some commands in the CLI assuming you have installed FBneo.
With next command you will be able to display the dat in the terminal :

cat '/opt/archypie/libretrocores/lr-fbneo/dats/FinalBurn Neo (ClrMame Pro XML, Arcade only).dat'

Know that when you push the up key your old command will display again and will save you typing.
You can also use the tab key to autofil the directory or filenames without fully typing them.

Adding the grep command will show you the lines containing clone, so it acts like a filter showing you the clones :

cat '/opt/archypie/libretrocores/lr-fbneo/dats/FinalBurn Neo (ClrMame Pro XML, Arcade only).dat' |grep "clone"

If you only want to display the rom-names then you can do that with the cut command :

cat '/opt/archypie/libretrocores/lr-fbneo/dats/FinalBurn Neo (ClrMame Pro XML, Arcade only).dat' |grep "clone"|cut -d'"' -f 2

So now you have your list.

Go to your fba roms directory with cd :

cd RetroPie/roms/fba/

You can now list your files and see if you are where you need to be with ls :

ls

Now you can use next command with while do and rm to remove the clones :
(usage on your own risk !!!, if you do something wrong it can break and remove stuff you don't want, be warned)

cat '/opt/archypie/libretrocores/lr-fbneo/dats/FinalBurn Neo (ClrMame Pro XML, Arcade only).dat' |grep "clone"|cut -d'"' -f 2|while read line;do rm $line;done

The procedure for mame2003plus could be somewhat the same.

[StewDapples]

@Folly Thanks for this! looks quite challenging for my level of knowledge but I will try and have a play when I next can.

What I really want to do is set up the arcade folder to use multiple emulators, based on Roslof's excellent compatibility list. So this will mean I have a folder with ROMS from various different versions of MAME and fbneo. I am unsure as to how to keep it updated if say FBNeo releases a new version and I need to update only those roms in my folder to work with the new version without affecting the others!

Is this sort of thing possible with CLRmamepro? could I somehow scan my mixed folder once its complete to create my own dat file and then update that file in the future by using future dat files from the emulators?

[Folly]

@StewDapples

My advise is not to mix mame and fbneo roms just keep them in separate folders.
Otherwise you can't keep track of which is which.

About new roms and emulator releases.
I would not spend hours and hours finding which rom still works and which needs updating if not necessary.
I would just backup all and get all new ones and filter them again which is much faster.
For lr-fbneo this would be easy as I explained.

For lr-mame2003plus I don't know.
I could be wrong but for lr-mame2003plus I don't expect many updates.

I never used CLRmamepro so I can't help you with that.