Goodset multiple title syndrome

[eXo]

Hey guys. I'm using the goodset file naming system, which with a complete romset leads to many duplicates of the same game (f1, f2, f3, f4, u, j, e, jue, !, hack, prototype, b1, b2, b3, etc etc etc)

It's really drags my game lists down and makes them look cluttered and unorganized (not to mention it takes a lot longer to load).

Is there an option only to display the parent/most recetn rom, such as the option under the mame preferences?

If not, can someone suggest a method which will only get rid of the useless ones?

I tried first moving all the (J) games to a japanese game directory since I don't plan on playing those, and then did the same thing with (E)'s.

Next I systematically deleted (I have them all backed up elsewhere) all the [f1]s, [f2]s, etc. Hoping that by doing this it would only leave the main (U) version.

I'm not sure that it worked. After all the pruning I noticed a lot of games were missing - ie: there was no version of Mortal Kombat 2 at all anymoreon my list.

This forum has been extremely helpful so far, and I really appreciate everyones time (especially Tom and Headkaze). Hopefully I'll learn enough of this to actually answers someone's questions in time.

[eXo]

edit:

I think I've figured out that

[b*] - is a bad dump

[o*] - is an overdump.

That makes both of these types of files useless, doesnt it?

Does anyone have a link to the other codes?

[Vynce]

I think this is exactly what you're looking for: No-Intro Project

Here's their mission statement from the website:

Basically, our goal is to conquer the world. But in our free time, we fill catalogues about games and their relative ROM images. Often there are more ROM version of the same game title, most of the time they are useless: bad dumps, hacked games, fakes, overdumped/underdumped and so on. no-intro lists only the best version available i.e. the ROM’s that are as close as to the original as possible. We provide DAT files that people can use in their rommanagers (f.e. ClrMamePro or RomCenter).

Their NES dat isn't really up to date (they're waiting for Cowering to release GoodNES 3.0), but I think the others are in good shape.

[eXo]

thats a GREAT site man - thank you so much

[hansolo77]

So how would somebody use this? I've got the roms, with all those wierd filenames, and want to get rid of all the dupes too. How does this program work? Is it taking the actual binary data from the rom, or just using the filenames. Also, what is a rom manager? Isn't GameEx a sort of manager?

[Adultery]

GameEx is an emulator manager of sorts...

[Vynce]

No Intro just supplies the dats. Dat files contain a rom signature and associated filename. When you use the dat files with a rom manager like ClrMamePro or RomCenter it can organize and rename your roms based on the contents of the dat. The rom signatures stored in the dat allow the rom manager to detect which rom is which by the binary contents of the rom - regardless of filename.

So you basically load the correct dat into the rom manager and run it on your huge set of roms. The rom manager will then pick out the roms that the dat identifies (the best ones if you're using the No Intro dats).