Organizing Mame

[SpyDIRmaN]

I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to sort through my mame roms.

I'd like to trim down the ROM list (and hard drive space) by removing unworking, and old games to another folder...

It would be great if I could do this from Mame32 by just clicking the "not working" tab and then dragging all the files to a folder... Or by sorting by year, and then removing everything prior to 1985...

Does anyone know an easy way to organize mame's roms, based on defined criteria, that doesn't involve hunting for each file individually?

[bkenobi]

There are many ways to do this. The way I did this in the past was to use MCM (MAME Content Manager). The only problem is that it doesn't have an up to date catver file. As I recall, it's only up to date to 1.06 or so. But, with it, you can change the extension for desired files to .mcm or delete them entirely. Either way, the files don't show up in MAME.

I don't think this will do unworking, but it will filter by anything in the catver file. I suppose you could create a catver file that contained all nonworking game names, but you could just write a batch file at that point.

ClrMAME and RomCenter are other options, but I haven't used them in a LONG time. They would work better if you want to remove nonworking games I would think.

mcm

clrmame

romcenter

[SpyDIRmaN]

  bkenobi said:

There are many ways to do this. The way I did this in the past was to use MCM (MAME Content Manager). The only problem is that it doesn't have an up to date catver file. As I recall, it's only up to date to 1.06 or so. But, with it, you can change the extension for desired files to .mcm or delete them entirely. Either way, the files don't show up in MAME.

I don't think this will do unworking, but it will filter by anything in the catver file. I suppose you could create a catver file that contained all nonworking game names, but you could just write a batch file at that point.

ClrMAME and RomCenter are other options, but I haven't used them in a LONG time. They would work better if you want to remove nonworking games I would think.

mcm

clrmame

romcenter

I will have to check out the MCM thing for sure... I've been reluctant to tackle clrmame, just because I have so many other things I'm working on and it seems a tad cryptic. Also I was under the impression that it's mostly just a set validator/tweaker like goodtools (renaming, merging, and the like)... I'm not sure it would be much help with what I want to do...

What I really need is something that will behave like mame32's gui interface, and allow me to actually move the actual files associated...

I have a lot of roms and, while I plan on backing up all of them, I'm only interested in having the english, working, fairly modern (post 1988) games running on my system...

It's looking to be a nightmare, going through each and every game, marking down the filenames of the games I want to remove, closing mame and then going down the list and removing all the while hoping not to break anything.

Hopefully that MCM thing will help.

[bkenobi]

One option you might also consider based on your last response is using the GameEx database and using filters to get just the roms you want listed. Then, you can copy the rom name column to either Excel or a text editor and add the correct dos commands to move/copy the files to a different directory of your choice. In doing so, you can do EXACTLY the type of organizing you want. From the sounds of your goal, this is the method I would choose.

Actually, if I were doing it, I would build the command right in Access since you can just build a text field via a query and just copy that field to a text file which would be named "movefiles.bat" or something.

[LB11]

Ive never tried the MCM myself, but I do like romcenter better between the other two. While I think it is not as powerful as clrmamepro I think, it still does just about everything you want. I like it because it has a much better interface. Kinda like a file system manager. Just tell it to show only the nonworking games. Then select all and delete or move. Done!

[bkenobi]

From the quick look I had this afternoon, it looked like RomCenter could take care of what was asked for, but not using it, I could not recommend it. If you have experience with it, know it will do what's desired, and especially if you like it, then I would definitely go that route!

[SpyDIRmaN]

Thanks for all the advice fellas. It's really appreciated. I'm trying to get a nice clean list of worthwhile games and clear up some HD space for Movies and other large files. I managed to clear almost 40GB of HDD space just by clearing out those lame (imho) dance dance revolution, beatmania, etc roms and CHDs... What a waste of space!

I then turned on selected filtering, validate roms, working roms only, no clones, etc, in gameEx and I think i've got pretty close to what I'm after... I will be checking out RomCenter in the long run for better organization, but I'm fairly happy with the results atm...

I seem to recall reading that the Mame Data used in GameEx to build the list (info,history,catver,etc) was running a little behind the times... Would this (in conjunction with the "working roms only") end up removing roms from the list that work well in the latest version of mame?

I'm not too concerned, as I think I can just add roms to the "do not filter section" as needed, but I'm just curious.

[LB11]

  SpyDIRmaN said:

Thanks for all the advice fellas. It's really appreciated. I'm trying to get a nice clean list of worthwhile games and clear up some HD space for Movies and other large files. I managed to clear almost 40GB of HDD space just by clearing out those lame (imho) dance dance revolution, beatmania, etc roms and CHDs... What a waste of space!

I then turned on selected filtering, validate roms, working roms only, no clones, etc, in gameEx and I think i've got pretty close to what I'm after... I will be checking out RomCenter in the long run for better organization, but I'm fairly happy with the results atm...

I seem to recall reading that the Mame Data used in GameEx to build the list (info,history,catver,etc) was running a little behind the times... Would this (in conjunction with the "working roms only") end up removing roms from the list that work well in the latest version of mame?

I'm not too concerned, as I think I can just add roms to the "do not filter section" as needed, but I'm just curious.

I think the validating comes strait from the mame binary. *I think*

If the history and catver and whatever is old it will just not show all the information for all the games or have them all in the categories and whatnot.

[bkenobi]

LB11 is correct. The validation check is based on output from the MAME binary.