What is the best way to make a concise Mame game list?

dustloop

@mediamogul Now that makes alot of sense. Looks like I'm downloading one of the older sets and starting again trying to sort this out lol

markwkidd

Once you have a full set that you are trying to cut down to a manageable size, Simple Arcade Multifilter is pretty much designed for this purpose: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/7606/simple-arcade-multifilter-app-for-mame-and-fb-alpha-sets-get-rid-of-adult-and-mahjong-games/5

dustloop

@markwkidd Oh nuice I will give this a throw. Thanks for the link

phulshof

I'd get rid of the adult games, but I'm rather fond of the Gals Panic series. :)

Snakerake

@dustloop

I'm dealing with this same issue, I ended up doing it the "dumb" way and manually dumping only the games I wanted in... then scraping those for Meta data. I started with a list I found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MAME/comments/2rawpr/i_compiled_several_best_ofrecommended_arcade/
Then I added about 20 more that I wanted, It took me about 2 hours to pull together. There are a few roms that haven't worked with Mame2003, but they are easy enough to delete. Now I have a curated list of about 250 Mame games, which is plenty for me.

RedDog

@dankcushions I tinkered around with RomLister, but did not come across a way to filter out roms the way I wanted. I probably overlooked it since it was my first go at it. I will keep it in mind and may go back to it if I have to.

Also, I don't mind filtering out the roms I don't want as space is not an issue. All of my rom files are on a hard drive.

@markwkidd Thanks. It sounds like what I am looking for. I will take a look.

A Former User

@markwkidd said in What is the best way to make a concise Mame game list?:

Once you have a full set that you are trying to cut down to a manageable size, Simple Arcade Multifilter is pretty much designed for this purpose:

Hi, this looks awesome, but I failed to make it work. Maybe somebody can see what I'm doing wrong:

-got a 0.78 MAME ROM set made by rebuilding from newer ones
-got a 0.78 DAT from Progetto
-got a catver.ini from github - I picked the 2003 version, downloaded by right-clicking on the "catver.ini" + Save As All Files. Not sure if this is how it should be done.

After the program parses stuff it arrives at the main screen but both windows are empty save for ** uncategorized ** text.

markwkidd

@arkive that sounds like an issue with the catver.ini. Could you open it up in notepad or another text editor and see if it looks like the file contents preview on github?

If it does not match what you see in that github file preview window, you can either use to the "Raw" link on that catver.ini page, or use this direct link:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/master/metadata/catver.ini

A Former User

@markwkidd Great stuff! It was indeed the catver, the one I saved first had some extra HTML rubbish in it. I grabbed the one from your direct link and now have all the filters in windows.

I really love this tool, it is simple yet powerful...I was preparing to deal with this issue (filtering MAME sets) for ages but was a bit deterred by having to use clrMAME et al (I'm a simpleton :) One thing though - is there any way to pick ALL the categories to include without clicking on every single one (from the left window)?
Basically what I'm trying to do now is exclude all the vertical games (and eventually make some other "selected" sets), however the only way I can see to sort this is clicking a lot in left window. Am I missing something basic again?

PS: The link to downloads on libretro forum in your original 1st post is borked

markwkidd

@arkive said in What is the best way to make a concise Mame game list?:

I really love this tool, it is simple yet powerful...I was preparing to deal with this issue (filtering MAME sets) for ages but was a bit deterred by having to use clrMAME et al (I'm a simpleton :) One thing though - is there any way to pick ALL the categories to include without clicking on every single one (from the left window)?

I'm afraid you'll have to click on all of them. If it's any help, after you click them all you can use the button at the top left to generate manual filters that can be pasted into the text box should you need to do the same thing again.

I'll log this as a feature request -- it's a logical one -- for if and when I update it again.

PS: The link to downloads on libretro forum in your original 1st post is borked

Thank you! Forum links within forum links. Fixed to point at https://forums.libretro.com/t/simple-arcade-multifilter-app-for-mame-and-fb-alpha-rom-sets

risk-geek

Playing with the MAME emulator front end it has view export options. I've been looking for an easy way to corral the various ROM files.

My quick and dirty approach is to split the main list of files into three using the filters.
Working Available Parents
Working Available Clones
Not-Working.

Playing with the resulting text files list, I've pre-pended the move command, added the .zip extension and a corresponding destination folder. (deleting all the name crap on the end)

This leaves me with nice batch files to then run on the list and sort in super quick fashion.
Setup your folder settings in MAME or Emulation Station and you're good to go with a relatively tidy list. Long, but tidy.

risk-geek

A link to the linux sh files I've created based on MAME 0.189 listing
ssh into your pi or on the pi.
CD to rom folder
mkdir parents
mkdir clones
mkdir not-working
Then:
Bash <filename> for each of these sh files
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=01047940340977029704
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=51201681948640043983
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=50693776412660449756