Author Topic: MAME catver.ini - List of all Categories in the file?  (Read 2495 times)

EZL

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MAME catver.ini - List of all Categories in the file?
« on: July 08, 2020, 02:52:29 AM »
So, I've found, what I think is the latest public catver.ini file here (for MAME version 0.221 so far. Haven't found any for 0.222):
http://www.progettosnaps.net/catver/

And now I want to do some filtering in Attract Mode so I looked around and found some good example filters.
So I can filter up the roms in Maze games, Driving games etc.. . . Great!  :)

My problem: How do I know what other categories I can filter on?
For example; is there a Category for "Games including horses"? How do I find out? I can open up the file in an editor and search for horses and hope for good luck. But maybe the category is called Equestrian instead? I'm not sure what to search for.

So, how do I know what different categories there is in the catver.ini file?
I've searched and searched, and maybe just my google-mojo is bad  :-[, but I can't find a list of what categories there are in catver.ini.

The closest to a solution I've found is to instead look in the catlist.ini file included in the above linked file.
In that file the categories have their own rows, and perhaps I can do some scripting to sort out just the lines starting with "[" to get something resembling a list of categories.
But then I have to learn to do scripting to edit text-files.  ::)

Can anybody help me where to find this information?

zpaolo11x

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Re: MAME catver.ini - List of all Categories in the file?
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2020, 03:05:17 AM »
I remember I did something very similar in the past: opened the file in excel, filtered what I needed and ended up with a list of categories. But you need this for a specific layout, or just to build filters?

zpaolo11x

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Re: MAME catver.ini - List of all Categories in the file?
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2020, 03:11:20 AM »
If you just need the category list... it's here attached ;)

EZL

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Re: MAME catver.ini - List of all Categories in the file?
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2020, 07:05:15 AM »
Thanks  zpaolo11x!

I really wish this file was included in the bundle at http://www.progettosnaps.net/catver/ in the future. I think more people than us two would have use for that.  ;D
« Last Edit: July 08, 2020, 08:15:35 AM by EZL »

akafox

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Re: MAME catver.ini - List of all Categories in the file?
« Reply #4 on: July 11, 2020, 02:18:44 PM »
if you want to know EXACTLY what to put in for your filters open your MAME rom list in a text editor...then look in the category coulumn. Best way is to open it up in a spreadsheet program so you can read it.

All a rom list is in attract mode is a common separated value (csv) text file.

DO NOT SAVE YOUR ROM LIST UNDER ANY OTHER NAME OR FORMAT...unless you want to build your list all over again  :P

(I will do a write up on that soon..)
People want life easy..then complain about it