Additional Info in Romlists for Consoles

[mondaiji]

I've just started adding consoles to attractmode and really wanted to have all the additional information like year, manufacturer, category and players included in the romlist.

What did you do to create this?

I'm using No-Intro ROM set for cartridge based consoles. The issue I have is:

• Generating a romlist with attractmode doesn't obtain this information.
• The No-Intro DAT file doesn't contain this information

I read http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=116.15 where @akafox created his own NEScatver.ini file. Thats a great idea. Like he mentions it can be a lot of work. It may not work for me as I would have to do a bunch of renaming because of the No-Intro title format.

I'm wondering what solutions people have come up with?

• Does "Scrape Artwork" complete it? (testing now)
• Can you scrape thegamesdb.net or another website to get this?
• Use a HypserSpin XML file (http://hyperlist.hyperspin-fe.com/index.php) and obtain the information from their? (I'm still trying to come up with an excel statement to do this. The HyperSpin XML's don't contain the number of players.

[attrekt]

Use a HypserSpin XML file (http://hyperlist.hyperspin-fe.com/index.php) and obtain the information from their? (I'm still trying to come up with an excel statement to do this. The HyperSpin XML's don't contain the number of players.

Is there any reason you'd do this with Excel, or is it just what you're most familiar with? Parsing XML with an actual XML parser would probably make this pretty easy, even if it is missing one of the pieces of information you need.

[mondaiji]

I'm open to try suggestions.

If you use the XML parser how do you merge that list with the romlist\console.txt file without duplicates? Keeping in mind the XML is different to the headers in the attract semicolon delimiter file, and I'm unsure if the HyperSpin XML contains the complete set of ROMs.

[omegaman]

Lacanian-

There are several ways to parse a romlist but this is what I do and it works very well for me. The first thing that I do is get the latest hyperspin.xml, catver.ini, and nplayers.ini files etc...  Once, I have these files, I place them in my AM root folder to simply importing them into my romlist.

I then add the catver.ini and players.ini to my mame emulator config as import_extras. You can add these extra .ini files by editing the mame emulator config directly or through the AM GUI under emulators. Then the last step is importing the mame.xml romlist. At the command line, CD to the attract DIR and then type attract -i mame.xml mame. This will build your new mame romlist with the extra info from the catver.ini and nplayers,ini files.

There also other tools like romlister, but for me, hyperspin already has a clean DB to work with.     

[mondaiji]

Thanks @omegaman. However that doesn't work for my purpose as expected. When I import the HyperSpin XML, if there is an entry in my existing romlist.txt that isn't in the HyperSpin.xml file it removes that rom entry in the romlist.txt file. I only tested on SNES so perhaps I'll combine the Super NES and Super Famicom XML's, but at this stage my goal is to leave my romlist.txt file in tact and just append information to it. "Removing any duplicate entries" is the issue below.

Code: [Select]

*** Importing Collection/Rom List
[Import Super Nintendo Entertainment System.xml] - Imported 851 entries.
 - Removing any duplicate entries...
 + Writing 851 entries to: N:\Arcade\AttractMode\romlists/Super Nintendo Enterta
inment System.txt

The process I have at the moment is.

• Open up hyperspin.xml file in Excel.
• Delete everything except the Title column and the column with additional information I need.
• Save that file as a tab delimiter file.
• Open and do a find and replace on the tab with a " = "
• Save file.
• Add filename.ini as "import_extras" in \attractmode\emulators\emulator.cfg

This works well but I only have the below two headers. Only two headers missing now. Manufacturer and Year.
[Category]
[NPlayers]

How do you create a "import_extras" ini file for "Year" and "Manufacturer"? What are those headers or the structure of the layout attract expects? I'll try going through the source code on GIT, perhaps that will give some clues.

[omegaman]

Icanian-

I must be missing something, because the year & manufacturer info is already included in the hyperspin.xml, there is no need to import it. And, I think only the catver.in and nplayers.ini is supported using import_extra. You really don't even need to edit any romlist if you do good filtering. For example, to filter out clones just add a rule like this "cloneof does not equal.*" 

Are you using a custom layout or one that is included in AM? Because, of course, the layout needs to be coded to display the info you want.     

[mondaiji]

Hi omegaman, it may be just my poor explanation as well.

Your correct. In the HyperSpin.XML file it contains Year, Manufacturer, Players, and Category.

And your are also correct that I could just use the HyperSpin.XML files for my \attract\romlists\romlist.txt using the import command.

The reason I am not doing that is I am using a newer version of the No-Intro set than the HyperSpin.xml and I am including some hacked ROMs. This is the reason why I want my \attract\romlists\romlist.txt to be generated by AttractMode from the ROM directory on my system. That's why I am focused on using the "import_extras" to populate all that missing info I don't get from generating a ROM list from my directory.

Hope that clears it up.

[omegaman]

Ah, OK...  I think the mame database is still at 1.60, so they do tend to lag behind somewhat.

[mondaiji]

Yeah that's right. However everything with MAME works fine because of the available .ini files. This thread post is targeted at consoles.

I've started using another method which won't work as well if I keep generating new rom lists. I just use VLOOKUP in excel and map everything accordingly.

I'm going to try some different tags in import_extra to see what I can discover.

[akafox]

I can filter my console lists by category. Well some anyway..I made (typed) a category.ini for my nes games. I would think scraping would get that info added to the list though wouldn't it? Then you could filter. The problem with a console catver.ini is that the names of the roms have to match the game in the list. There is a set naming standard in mame..however not for consoles. I have thought maybe to make "both types" That is no-intro names and good tools..but Running my roms though clrmame pro names them (there are dat files for consoles) ..that could be used as a ."standard" I guess. I have not worked on it in a while. However if I can get some help on the project I would be more than willing to pick it up again

[omegaman]

lacanian-

Just to reiterate and expand on what I was saying above. There are no intro hyperspin xml Databases for practically every console system including arcades like MAME.  The example that I gave you for MAME still applies to the consoles as well. In hindsight, you really only need to import whatever XML DB you want and then add the cat and nplayer ini files. Then it's just a simple matter of filtering what info you want.

If someone had the time, we could create are own no intro xmls based off hyperspins but then that is a lot of work for something that already exist.