Dat file for filtering FBA romset v0.2.97.43?

[m2306]

I want to filter my FBA v0.2.97.43 romset but can't even find a dat for that set. Neither the dat master collection in the documentation here on Retropie nor the FBA Github page has the dat. Where can I find it? I want to filter the collection to 1 game 1 rom and with working roms only. I'd also like to separate NeoGeo. Any tips or links on finding dats or how to do this if it differs from working with console sets is very welcome. Thank you.

[m2306]

After some research I'm partly answering my own question. The dat files can be generated in the FBA Windows application and the Windows version is on version .43. This however has not resolved my question as I'm not able to create the 1g1r set. It might be that I just can't use clrmamepro correctly, the 1g1r option is greyed out. Or it might be some other problem, like can a 1g1r set even be created? Do any one of you have a set like that? How do you navigate the FBA romset? I appreciate any input on this. Thank you. (I know this question should be asked on other forums (FBA or clrmamepro forums etc) and I have allready asked for help in other places but not found a solution.)

[Riverstorm]

@m2306 - In order to do what you want you need region tags. As far as I know none of these older DAT files have that type of information. Unfortunately it wouldn't be real easy to add it either.

[m2306]

@Riverstorm I came to the same conclusion.. What I wonder is how people manage their romlist. I know you can use a MAME catver.ini file to exclude by game genre but that will still leave a duplicates(?). What I have done this far is separated NeoGeo and CPS. I’m thinking about skipping the rest of the FBA set and go for MAME2003plus in the arcade folder.

[Riverstorm]

@m2306 - I believe there's a good number of ROM management programs out there if you search around but it sounds like you've done that already. Also there's a few decent programs on the forums coded by members. For me I basically hand picked the games I play on the Pi and that came out to around 300 or so. I mainly use the Arcade folder with mame2003-plus, FBNeo and AdvMAME.

I know it's not quite the same as 1G1R (I would love a priority region sort) but stripping the clones and demo's removes close to 4,000 ROMs from FBNeo. That leaves about 1,300 parent ROMs and 800 "other". Other being no parent/clone relationship. What's left is about 2,000 ROMs in the DAT which is usually the preferred parent ROM.

To add to that you may also need to do some small manual cleanup of adding/removing a game that requires a clone ROM for the parent to run or clone only game (parent file doesn't work), unwanted, wanted games, etc. Or adding back a game like Demolition Derby that was removed with games that have "demo" in the description. I was trying to think of classic games that were removed. ;)

Here's a link to the newest FBNeo DAT from the Github page with clones and demos removed. It was a quick and dirty job but if you want to flip through it and take a look it might get you closer to what you're shooting for.

If we had sourcefile information such as neogeo.c we could get a lot more system specific on filtering but these old DATs are limited. I think they started adding sourcefile information around 0.85 or so. But if it's a string in the description it's pretty easy to strip or possible is filtering on text files lists.

[Riverstorm]

@m2306 - I was thinking about this over the weekend and there might be another way but requires a bit more work. I don't think it would be to much really and only initially. If you're set and good to go then no worries.

Take CPS games for example. Basically if you had a list of parent ROM names in a text file with one per line like so:

...
1941
avsp
ddsom
dino
sf2
etc.

With a list like this it would be pretty easy to pull parent ROMs only or parent + clones.

The advantage being is you only need to track parent ROMs and not clones as they are automatically linked to the parent.

So basically by listing the 70 or 80 CPS games you could generate new DATs after an update with very little changes after the initial setup.

I don't believe parent ROMs change to often and if they do it would be only a matter of changing the name in the list like sf2 to sfi2 for example. The clones will be automatically linked.

The clones make up a much larger part of the games list by several hundred so it's nice that you only need to track the parent.

I think a lot of filter lists and batch files that copy ROMs are based of specific DATs in time and are outdated with the next release whereas this would allow you to be a bit more dynamic with new releases and generate a current correct ROM set.

You could also stack lists to make a master list. Like combine the CPS and Neo Geo list or CPS, Neo Geo plus favorites, etc.

I'm not sure of that makes sense but I believe it would work fairly well.