Consolidating my list of MAME and FBA roms

[timbone316]

I wanted to clean up my ROM list, so, for instance, there wouldn’t be 3 entries for Strider, or 12 for Street Fighter 2. I went and moved all duplicate entries that were smaller to a different folder, and the games still seem to load just fine. As long as they load and start, can anything be screwed up down the line? What I mean to say is, does, for instance, 1941 use one zip for most of the game, and use 1941a.zip for some end game content? I don’t need a purist list of roms having every version and bootleg, I just wanna play the games I wanna play. And if I do need all the different zips for one game, can i combine the zips together? As long as there is no overwriting the files, can I take the 1941.zip, the 1941a.zip, and the 1941b.zip, and put all files into one 1941.zip so the files are all present and accounted for in case the emulator needs them, or is it programmed to check 1941a.zip to finds a certain file it needs? It’s just a huge pain to scroll through a list of 500 entries when it’s really only 100 or so games…

[mavic19]

[quote=96445]As long as there is no overwriting the files, can I take the 1941.zip, the 1941a.zip, and the 1941b.zip, and put all files into one 1941.zip so the files are all present[/quote]

Good question and I was thinking about trying the same thing. I had posted the same question a couple of days ago with no response. MAME is a cluttered mess and I find it frustrating that all these additional files are necessary to load a game when I have no interest in any of the variants (Street Fighter 2 is a great example).

All I want is one option per game to show up in my game selection menu under each MAME emulator I’m using. If I can’t clean it up, I’m almost debating on dumping MAME altogether.

[timbone316]

Well, like I said, so far every ROM loads fine with just the biggest one filesize-wise present in the directory. I kept all the variants in an easy to get spot in case I needed to put them back, but all the ones I tested started fine (which got me wondering what I would be missing in the first place).

[mavic19]

Did you just create another folder for the smaller files within the same ROM directory? If not, where did you place it?

Second question: If you did place it in the same ROM directory, does that folder show up in the games menu?

[timbone316]

I made a folder in my USB drive called “alt-mame4all” and “alt-fba,” separate from my “mame4all” and “fba” directories, so i could access them quick if need be and put them back if the ROMs didn’t work or didn’t load, but they’re not linked to anywhere in the ES_systems.cfg, and EmulationStation doesn’t know it exists, essentially.

[mavic19]

Interesting that works, yet if you remove the files and only keep the main .zip game file it won’t load. I’ll give that a shot tonight. Also going to try uncompressing all the files and rezipping them into one to see what that does.

[timbone316]

As far as putting them into one zip, I imagine it would work just fine, since 1941.zip, for example, loads just fine without the a or b zips present in the folder, but I wonder if the extra content would load from the one zip. But now that I think about it, how would that even work for localization? If I put the Japanese, Brazilian, USA, and world files into one zip for street fighter 2, what content would load? I guess the only thing I would care about is non-localized different zips. This is what happens… I ask a question, then start really thinking about it and talking (typing) out loud, and figure out all the holes and flaws.

[Floob]

This shows you if a romset is a clone, or a parent.
http://www.progettoemma.net/search.php

Parents dont need clone sets to run, but a clone set needs a parent to run.
You could remove all clones, but then you would get rid of games like pacman that is a clone of puckman.

This explains the difference between split and merged romsets.
http://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/docs/htm/merger.htm

[mavic19]

So….from what I understand from that article is I can use CLRMAMEPRO to select the PARENT and the CLONE .zip files and recreate them as NON-SPLIT SETS (all clonesets will now include parentset files)? Once that is done, I should be able to delete the versions I don’t want?

Example: PUCKMAN is the parentset and PACMAN is the clone. If I use CLRMAMEPRO and run both as NON-SPLIT sets, it will provide PACMAN with the parentset files and be able to run on its own so that I can then delete PUCKMAN as it’s no longer needed. Is that right?

[patrick500]

To help you about the FBA roms : parents / hardware (CPS1-CPS2-NEOGEO), I join the FBA-gamelist.txt

Enjoy !

[Floob]

[quote=96463]So….from what I understand from that article is I can use CLRMAMEPRO to select the PARENT and the CLONE .zip files and recreate them as NON-SPLIT SETS (all clonesets will now include parentset files)? Once that is done, I should be able to delete the versions I don’t want?

Example: PUCKMAN is the parentset and PACMAN is the clone. If I use CLRMAMEPRO and run both as NON-SPLIT sets, it will provide PACMAN with the parentset files and be able to run on its own so that I can then delete PUCKMAN as it’s no longer needed. Is that right?

[/quote]

Yes, that should work. Bear in mind the romsets filesize will grow – but if you are going to delete the vast majority of clones it shouldnt be much of an issue.
Then if you want to tidy up further, this can help strip out unwanted games
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

Ask user “Roo” for more details, he’s a bit of a MAME whizz.

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