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Oddball front end question.
#237570 - 10/28/10 06:23 PM
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I've messed with a number of front ends over the years (most recently Mala), but it occurs to me that there's one feature I've never actually seen in any front end.
Every front end has you select a system, then a game. You can't select, for instance, a series and have all titles from that series across all systems pop up in a list.
I'd like to be able to tell the thing, "Show me all the Castlevania stuff on my machine." and have it bring up the complete list.
Has anyone actually ever implemented a way of tagging games as part of a series in a frontend? Bonus points if it's cabinet friendly.
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Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: Firehawke]
#237577 - 10/28/10 06:51 PM
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> I've messed with a number of front ends over the years (most recently Mala), but it
> occurs to me that there's one feature I've never actually seen in any front end.
>
> Every front end has you select a system, then a game. You can't select, for instance,
> a series and have all titles from that series across all systems pop up in a list.
>
> I'd like to be able to tell the thing, "Show me all the Castlevania stuff on my
> machine." and have it bring up the complete list.
>
> Has anyone actually ever implemented a way of tagging games as part of a series in a
> frontend? Bonus points if it's cabinet friendly.
to implement that feature, there should be some .ini file which has such information and which is updated regularly. so, frontends can support that feature.
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MAME Stuff | MAME favorites | Bubble Bobble Series chart / wiki | PC configuration
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: abelenki]
#237582 - 10/28/10 07:32 PM
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Why an INI? Why not just let the user determine what they want to add?
Adding an additional INI just adds an extra layer of hoops which you'd basically either need emulator authors to support or end-users to run out and download updated content sets periodically.
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Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: abelenki]
#237583 - 10/28/10 07:34 PM
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> to implement that feature, there should be some .ini file which has such information
> and which is updated regularly. so, frontends can support that feature.
history.dat does provide that kind of info, but only if there is at least one of the titles on the series that was available on arcade.
for example: Castlevania
Then there is the problem of uniquely match the titles...
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: Firehawke]
#237584 - 10/28/10 07:46 PM
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> Why an INI? Why not just let the user determine what they want to add?
>
> Adding an additional INI just adds an extra layer of hoops which you'd basically
> either need emulator authors to support or end-users to run out and download updated
> content sets periodically.
Well, for the same reason you use any other ini, so that you don't have to do it manually...
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| CptGuapo |
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: Firehawke]
#237604 - 10/29/10 12:27 AM
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Solved: Series.ini. A little outdated, it's true, but easy to edit and build as you wish.
Hope this helps.
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"Mythology is what grownups believe, folklore is what they tell children and religion is both."
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: CptGuapo]
#237609 - 10/29/10 01:24 AM
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I should have been more specific. I'm not talking JUST MAME, I mean other platforms as well. I'm talking NES, SNES, Genesis, you name it.
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Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: franciscohs]
#237610 - 10/29/10 01:24 AM
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The problem here being that an INI solution isn't feasible for console stuff with 30,000 different filenames-- doing CRC/MD5/etc isn't feasible for that sort of thing simply because it would drop a frontend to an utter crawl on any updating.
If it were JUST MAME, an INI is fine. Console? No way.
That's why I said "user specified"-- everyone's going to have their own filenames in the end. I bet if I said here, "Let's mandate GoodXXXX filenames!" I'd get at _LEAST_ ten responses telling me to go to hell within ten minutes. That's not even taking into account all the debates over the existing databases for this sort of material. TOSEC, GoodXXXX, they all have points people argue over.
Edited by Firehawke (10/29/10 01:26 AM)
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Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: Firehawke]
#237614 - 10/29/10 03:57 AM
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> The problem here being that an INI solution isn't feasible for console stuff with
> 30,000 different filenames-- doing CRC/MD5/etc isn't feasible for that sort of thing
> simply because it would drop a frontend to an utter crawl on any updating.
>
> If it were JUST MAME, an INI is fine. Console? No way.
>
> That's why I said "user specified"-- everyone's going to have their own filenames in
> the end. I bet if I said here, "Let's mandate GoodXXXX filenames!" I'd get at _LEAST_
> ten responses telling me to go to hell within ten minutes. That's not even taking
> into account all the debates over the existing databases for this sort of material.
> TOSEC, GoodXXXX, they all have points people argue over.
Or you could use MESS sets... there are other problems, but nothing that can't be solved, it doesn't seem that hard really, just someone that has the will to do it.
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Re: Oddball front end question.
[Re: Firehawke]
#237622 - 10/29/10 06:13 AM
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You'd still end up with a file that looks much like an .ini, so what you need is
a frontend for all the systems
that supports .inis or similar
and has a way to edit them, or has available another tool that will allow you to go through the games and add/remove them from arbitrary lists.
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