Using Attract Mode without romlists?

[jimmer]

I love the dynamic filtering but that jars a bit with the romlist method.

Is there a way to use AM without romlists or to automate ROM list update?

The use case is I've built a machine for someone, and I need to give them instructions on how to add ROMS.
Ideally they would just have to plonk the ROM into the ROM folder and not alter AM setup. But the way I use AM I'd have to tell them how to go into the admin panels and regenerate the rom list(s).

This is for MAME only system.

[akafox]

Yes it is possible. You can set AM up exactly the way you think is should be done and generate a list and then copy the pre-made list to the other machine and AM will read it..(even if there are no roms). However this would mean that they have the same EXACT rom set you do on your machine or that they would have a lot of games listed that they don't have. (Easy to open and edit the list and remove them..but...) Honestly there really is no other way that I know of.

[raygun]

Hi Jimmer, one way to do this is to create a romlist of all the possible mame games and then use a filter to only show the ones where the romfile is found.

To generate the full romlist, run attractmode as follows at the command line:

Code: [Select]

attract --build-romlist mame --full

Now create a Display using the romlist that was generated.  Add a global filter to the Display with a rule that "FileIsAvailable" equals 1

When you load that display, it will only display the roms that are available.  Adding new roms doesn't require anything else (other than reloading the Display)

I hope that helps

[jimmer]

It does help, thanks. 
My next question was going to be if I could generate the romlist(s) via command line. 

This means I can just put a .bat file on the system. The instructions for the user will be: add your new ROMs to the \roms folder, then run MAKE_ROMLIST.bat

I've tried to use FileIsAvailable as a filter on the list generation, but I can't get the syntax right or something.  It says Found 1566 files, then it matches up with catver and nplayers OK, but then it writes 0 entries.

attract --build-romlist mame --filter "FileIsAvailable equals 1"


EDIT:  Doh!  I've just realised that the point of the method is not to regenerate the romlist

[retrogam3]

OK so I have my RomList for MAME very organized with only the ROMS I want to see in the MAME AM display. This works well except for when I add a new MAME ROM I have to regenerate the ROM list to get the string info for the new ROM I just added, copy that line and paste it to a second (organized) RomList that I keep clean then select all, copy and paste into the mame.txt RomList file. Someone please HELP there has to be an easier way to do what I am trying to do???

[akafox]

Actually that is what I do too xev1n. You know that is a good idea though...

Hey ray..can you add a "update list" option? (add games missing from created list) instead of over writing the old one every time?
Just asking! (I know more code *grumble* more bugs *grumble*) But xev1n has a good idea there!

[retrogam3]

bump

[raygun]

I don't understand, the "Generate Romlist" command in attract-mode goes in and checks the rom directory and only adds entries that are there when it creates the romlist... so how could an "update list" option work?

xev1n it seems that an easier way would be to either mark all the games you want in your list as favourites or with a custom tag (using the custom tag command in Attract-Mode).  then you could filter based on that and only show the favourite/tagged games.

Would that work for what you are trying to do?

[akafox]

I don't understand, the "Generate Romlist" command in attract-mode goes in and checks the rom directory and only adds entries that are there when it creates the romlist... so how could an "update list" option work?

Compare the list that exists already and then add the new or added roms instead of overwriting the old list. But noe that you mention it..yeah doing that would not make sense.

[retrogam3]

I have applied filters within AM and works pretty well but I also have a MAME section with an edited romlist file that has extra text in it and it very specific to only the quality roms that I want to see. It's hard to know what roms a display is showing when you have filters like hide dupes...etc.

I have a master romlist which has every MAME ROM thousands and then I have another set which is just the quality roms and list I want. With favorites there is no way to know if the one ROM you actually wanted was a clone or the one that AM is showing. This is why it's better to just keep only the roms I want and edit the romlist. The only annoying part is editing the romlist every time I want to add a new quality, tested ROM.

[cools]

The favourites list is just a text file called "mame.tag" in the romlists folder. It's a list of the setnames, and doesn't get affected by regenerating the romlists.

You can have multiple tag files too. I have one for "Classic" games that I don't necessarily want in my favourites list.

Mess around with tagging, it's an extremely powerful feature

[retrogam3]

Thanks for this I will play around with it some more.