- Added preliminary backwards compatibility with older MAME versions. The oldest I could find for download was 0.100b, so I tested with it. Make sure to point to your older mame.exe and then update your xml file by clicking on "Mame -listxml", under options.
The catch is, not everything is hooked up just yet, so unless you check all the "unknown" checkboxes on both FiltersA and FiltersB tabs, you will not be able to see anything parsed if you are using an older MAME version!
- Preliminary compatibility with the latest changes on Launchbox images folder structure. Images should now be parsed just like before and this should also maintain backwards compatibility with previous versions of Launchbox
- Speed improvements. A complete list (36445 entries) can now be parsed in about 21 seconds in my machine, compared to about 72 seconds in Romlister. Considering that there are many other filters being used, this was quite a bit of a boost, reflected in all parsing methods from now on.
- List can now be matched against the Icons folder as well (in preparation for a new feature requested by John IV)
- Added an "Expand Tabs" checkbox under the export tab, so you can toggle to see all the information parsed under the hood.
- Eliminated the need of ControlsButtons.ini. Thinking about backwards compatibility with older MAME versions in the future, the controls are now being parsed on the fly, with no significant hit in performance
- Fixed a bug that was causing the number of players to be parsed incorrectly (thanks Milky @ Arcade Controls for reporting!).
- Introducing History Reparser^TM, a different approach when it comes to extracting notes from History.dat. Games marked as “Export version” will now have a much better chance to have their notes extracted from the original games, so, much more complete notes from now on if you use LaunchBox, for example.
- Updated all support files to the latest versions available.
- Improved controllers metadata. Most games now have a controller associated to them.
- Renamed the default platform from “Mame Arcade” to simply “Arcade”
- Improved auto-fill when selecting MAME.exe
- Improved “reset” functions.
- FiltersA, 3rd toggle now ignores “All Killer” filter, since this is a very specific filter that ends up overwriting all others
- Removed the game descriptions in the status bar when parsing lists. This sped up the process by a few seconds. The progress bar is still present.
- Removed some splash screens. All info related should now be presented at the status bar, which is way faster than splash screens (it's all about speed after all).
- Improved attract-mode generated lists.

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Lightspeed "cheats" a bit, making the notes friendlier to Front-End users who are not that concerned about historical precision, but are rather interested in the most complete Bio available, so it looks good in their FE:

You may see it different, but for any Arcade-cab/CRT-user, the info about resolution and refresh is a very valuable info. Maybe you could add that info too .

Please dont get me wrong, it is a nice app, but it lacks of some really unique features. It doesnt feature something, we didnt see with older tools, like the mentioned rom-lister for example. Except, it combines some features into one single tool, which is good.

My advice, add something that makes it outstanding, like a filter for games with visible scanlines, filter for b/w games, etc.

Such features would be very handy for creating proper BGFX/HLSL/GLSL settings. Maybe automated processes could be maked, so that there are always proper settings used, whenever a game is launched from MAME.

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- if rotate is 90 or 270, parse width as height and height as width (this is to show the correct resolution.
Easy...

I don't know why MAME does this in the -listxml output.

What should i say, it is not the way to show correct resolution . Maybe, for a LCD/LED screen yes, but not for a CRT . I guess GroovyMAME makes extensive use of that info.

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there is no such info in -listxml output. There is no way to know how many colors a game uses, much less scanlines (don't even know what this scanlines info mean).

Yes, this is true, but only b/w games would be of interest and thanks to AntoPisa, there is already a b/w - monochrome .ini file, which you can download here: http://www.progettosnaps.net/renameset/

or other interesting files for filtering: http://www.progettosnaps.net/support/

The b/w file, will not change much over time and even if some new games will appear, the effort to expand the file is minimal .

Ok, but why we need this? Well, as i wrote previously it would be nice to have for a automated HLSL process. HLSL is a physical simulation of a real CRT and games from the past, looked very different, than on a actual LCD without any filters/shaders. With HLSL you can make them look just like they did in the past on a CRT.

So far so good, but there is a problem. Most of the time, people that use HLSL tend to use 2-3 presets to cover all the games that MAME offers. This is not enough, because there are so many games that would need special treatment. As CRTs are considered as a abandoned technology, many people forgot how the games looked in the past or like you, dont know at all how they really looked and how they where presented on a CRT screen (scanlines, shadowmask etc.).

b/w games for example, didnt have a shadowmask at the time they where released. A shadowmask is only present on a color CRT/TV-tube. So for a b/w game, the shadowmask should be turned off. It gets more interesting, if we consider b/w vector games, like Asteroids or the Vectrex console. They dont have a shadowmask and they dont have scanlines too. For such a case, both should be off in HLSL. Also any games with a progressive resolution of 640x480p or above, have no visible scanlines anymore and should also have turned off scanlines.

My intention is to have a somehow automated process for HLSL, that will always use correct settings for that matter.
A option that could filter those special treatments, would be a awesome step forward for this particular task.