MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Trying to parse the MAME XML file

> Why make life hard? Machines that have a CHD in their ROM definitions will have a
> element inside the element. (Unless you're looking for any machine that can
> potentially load a CHD, which is a different question.)

Oh yeah, I didn't notice this tag the first time around, I'll use that to build a CHD list then, thanks!

> But I'd question the usefulness of this - presence or absence of CHD media is not
> really a good indication of space or performance requirements. There are CHDs that
> are smaller than many ROM sets (e.g. Wedding Rhapsody is smaller than a lot of later
> Neo-Geo games), and many ROM-based games are more demanding than the
> PlayStation-based CD-ROM games.

It's just that I don't have much time to play (employed, married and a nipper), and when I do, I'd much rather play stuff I'm fond of, such as SNES or the arcade games that I played as a kid, such as CPS1/2, Sega System 16/18, stuff like that.
I used to collect and hog every possible ROM under the sun, but I did some massive pruning over the last few years. My MAME "complete" set as far as I'm concerned is 8069 arcade only roms, 11.9GB, and that already includes thousand of games I never even tried. I also got rid of some big NeoGeo games, HNG64, Naomi, Model1/2/3, CPS3, Triforce, etc. My biggest zipped romset is Metal Slug 5. If I wanted to play anything like a CHD game, I'd fire up the Wii (which hasn't been played in years) or buy another XBOX360 or something. And I can't ever remember a day in the years since I took this decision when I ever thought "dang, I could do with playing X today, I wish I didn't delete the rom". Apart from Nintendo and Sega ROMs, I pretty much only have some PC Engine ROMs and that's about it. I still have some Atari ST and MSX ROMs, but I think those will go soon too!

Anyway, thanks for the help, now I'll be able to build my exclude list with CHDs and multi-monitors on top of the system I don't care for (that's the easy bit, I'm just checking the sourcefile attribute of the machine elements).