Compressed 001 files.

[Lancerguy]

My CD Images are compressed into archives that begin in .001-.NNN, and I would like to leave them inside this standard compression without having to change all of them. I have fiddled around with the Launch Before, the 7zip support, and the rom filters, but haven't been able to successfully have GameEx extract and open the files. Does anyone have an idea for getting past this. The files are also in subfolders, but as of my reading on the forum, I can safely say I will have to forgo getting the subfolders to work, but recompressing all the images doesn't really sound very appealing...

[fRequEnCy]

My CD Images are compressed into archives that begin in .001-.NNN, and I would like to leave them inside this standard compression without having to change all of them. I have fiddled around with the Launch Before, the 7zip support, and the rom filters, but haven't been able to successfully have GameEx extract and open the files. Does anyone have an idea for getting past this. The files are also in subfolders, but as of my reading on the forum, I can safely say I will have to forgo getting the subfolders to work, but recompressing all the images doesn't really sound very appealing...

Well the best way would be to uncompress but to each his own. Well there's a few ways to tackle this but this all depends on how your images are named and the name of the folder as well. Post your folder name and all the files in it so I can give more of an opinion. But from the way it seems is the only way to get this to all work is to get creative with a map file and wrapper to load the rom based off that map file. I've accomplished this and I'm able to have subfolder support for GameEx. But only use it on emulators where I need it.

[Lancerguy]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I am trying to keep the "scene" organization for my files, they are labeled as FULL_GAME_NAME_SCENE_GROUP\shortname.001-shortname.NNN, example might be (I'm just making one up because I'm at work): SOUL_CALIBUR_kal_RARx14\kal-sc.001.

The 001 files can be uncompressed with 7za.exe, however even if I set the rom filter to *.001 and enable 7zip support, it doesn't read them as valid 7zip files I guess, because it won't launch. I have also fiddled with using the Run Before to run 7zip and extract them to a folder, but the issue there is that it would be looking for say, kal-sc.001 instead of kal-sc.cdi. I've gotten nullDC and ChankastEX to run EXACTLY like I want them too without the use of Launch Before or Launch After, but they just look for cdi files in the ROM directory, so I think I'm ready to try and tackle this part of it... In your reply keep in mind that Chankast is using the chankast_launch.exe (wrapper?) to run, nullDC is not using anything. If it isn't possible, or would take WAY to much time, then I suppose I will re-zip them all...Just let me know what you think. It would be no problem to generate a directory listing or something if that would help work into the map file, I don't fully understand the whole "map file" thing, if you can help could you also send a sample or example map file?

[fRequEnCy]

Map files make your listing of games more user-friendly. So in your case you have your short names and by using the following syntax then you'll have a long name as your selection. For example:

kal-sc.001 | Soul Calibur

On the left you have the name of your file and on the right of the delimiter you have what you want it to be named. What your wanting is possible but with your naming convention then a map file and wrapper is the way to go. Here's how I would go about it.

1. Create a map file with the listing of all your games. So say you ran kal-sc.001 then GameEx would send emulator.exe kal-sc.001 to the commandline.

2. Based off that info you would create a wrapper that would find that file since you're using subfolders and once it's found it unzips to a directory of your choice. Then pulls that name based off your extensions like cdi and then runs the game.

This is possible! Just gonna be time consuming unless you know a scripting language like AHK or AutoIt.

[Lancerguy]

OK, I thought that was what the map file was, I was just confused because most of the time on this forum people use the term when talking about roms in subfolders, and it didn't seem like using the map would help with that. I can easily generate a file like this with a quick sendto batch file for directory listing and a little bit of spreadsheet merging skills. I'm still kinda stuck on the subfolder portion though. I haven't ever used autoit, although I have seen example scripts and it doesn't look too difficult. I believe I saw some examples for using it for subfolders on this forum actually. I have run a couple of searches for +autoit +subfolders, but I can't seem to find the information I once saw here...

ALSO, there is still the question of getting gameex to recognize the fact that it is looking for .001 files but needing to run .cdi files. I am thinking this is getting too complicated...

I am also considering just re-zipping all of them into zips and dropping them in a single directory

Let me know what you think. If I re-zip all of them, I could still use the map file so I don't have to rename all of them, correct? If using the map file, kal-sc.zip | Soul Calibur will display the name "Soul Calibur" but use the kal-sc.zip file, will it also unzip the file for me when I launch if I have 7zip support enabled? Or do I need to do a launch before or something.

[fRequEnCy]

I don't recall anything about using subfolders other than a post about running a rom with the same name as the directory and a user got creative using the commandline. Ex. emulator.exe "c:\roms\iso's\Soul Calibur\Soul Calibur.zip". So in GameEx terms that would be "[ROMPATH]\[ROM]\[ROMFILE]". That's given that the rom folder is the same name as the rom. What you're wanting to do is doable. Trust me!

Well you could output a txt file using 7za and have it generate the rom name. Then you string that and declare a variable. And then use that variable in your commandline. So you'll have 2 parts. Unzipping the rom and then running. It's easy to do but again just time consuming unless you really know what you're doin.

No you won't have to rename if you use a map file. As far as doing this much in GameEx I found it easier to do it all in one wrapper than in a bunch of places for launch before, commandline, etc.

[Lancerguy]

OK, great big update here. I appreciate your help so far, and I'm going to leave a little documentation here and attach the files I made in case anyone wants to use them. I don't think I'm breaking any rules based on the posts and faq I've seen so far by mentioning filenames, etc...

I ended up writing a batch file that parses my directory full of folders to and creates a file named "romfolder".txt fir each directory.

I then created another batch file (my actual loader) that, when gameex launches the txt file INTO my batch file, it parses the text file name and then opens the subfolder, then parses that directory for my .001 file, extracts that archive into an unzipped folder in my ROM root, then it checks the file to see if it is a .cdi ready to go or if it is a bin/cue (dreamcast emus don't like those), it runs bin2boot.exe. After that, it launches the emulator (set up for both chankastex and nulldc) It works like a charm when I pass the txt file directly to it in a dos prompt or from explorer, but there are still a couple of kinks in it running from gameex. I'm working on that...

My directories look like this:

ROMs\

Armada_USA_DC-KALISTO\

kal-arma.001

kal-arma.002

....

Atari_Anniversary_Edition_USA_DC-ECKO\

eck-aae.001

eck-aae.002

....

....

unzipped

The first batch file, creator.bat, creates text files for each folder, example:

Armada_USA_DC-KALISTO.txt

Atari_Anniversary_Edition_USA_DC-ECKO.txt

in that same folder as the ROM subdirectories

The second file uses that input (I set gameex to filter for .txt files) to open the subdirectory, extract the contents, etc...

That should give anyone the idea of how it looks. I have commented my script pretty well, and made sure that MOST things are not dependent on the specific paths on my PC (The obvious ones should be clear, like I:\ROMs and that sort of thing can be easily modified), but the batch file should work on just about anyone's PC as long as the hardcoded emulator and rom paths are modified.

I still need to edit for supporting rars, because I just noticed some of them are rars (Geez, no standards anymore, huh?). And I am not sure GameEX will actually launch my batch file correctly yet (I know it works from CMD and from explorer with only 1 input, the .txt filename), but it is a great start.

Thanks for your help so far frequency, I will try to update this thread as I fix up my files, so others can use this as well.

IF GAMEEX 7ZIP SUPPORT WORKED FOR .001 FILES, THIS WOULD BE WAAAAAAAAY EASIER.

DC.zip

[fRequEnCy]

Very creative considering you used batch files. Good work!