19 replies to this topic

[Koop]

First off, I begin construction of my cabinet in 2 days!

One thing I have left to do is remove all of the adult games from GameEx. I have applied the adult games filter that GameEx provides and that seems to work. It filters the games from the list of MAME games when browsing. Unfortunately, when I used EmuMovies to download the artwork/videos for my games it downloaded it for all the adult games too. So, when I'm at the GameEx main menu, and it is showing random gameplay videos, it occasionally will show an adult game (this happens more often than you would think given the sheer number of games). This is unacceptable if I'm going to allow kids (or even family/friends) near my cabinet. So, I think the solution for me would be to get a list of all the game roms that GameEx searches for when I apply the adult games filter. I'll take that and scour my video folder and manually delete all of the videos for the adult games.

Anyone have a better idea? I also plan to manually delete the adult game roms. The filter does seem to work but it's simply too risky to leave them lying around, because you know the first time a kid steps up to the machine, the filter will fail and I'll be embarrassed .

Where can I get that list? Thanks everyone.

[Draco1962]

There is a utility called MAME Content Manager. I've not used it personally but it may be worth looking into. It has not been updated since 2005 and the links for the data files are also dead. Since it works with the catver.ini file, it may still be viable unless someone else has knowledge of a better utility.

You can look under your MAME\ini path to located Catver.ini which will list the adult games as *Mature*. Appears that there were quite a few apps that probably tapped this file but none appear to be actively updated.

[Koop]

wow, thanks for all the thought you are putting into this. In the end I'm okay with manually deleting the files if I have to, I just need that list. I know it exists somewhere since the filter does work. I'm going to check out that Catver.ini file that GIMP mentioned when I get a chance later today.

[Tempest]

Use RomLister. There is a tutorial for RomLister on my Applications and Guides page found in my sig.

[Draco1962]

Tempest - ROMLister looks like it may do the job so far as generating the lists of ROMs you may want in your collection and assisting with the creation of the batch files. While I am not opposed to getting my hands dirty manually creating batch files, etc., I have to ask "What good is this computer if I can't leverage it to run these chores for me?" To be able to run an app that creates the list so that it can move/delete the ROMS, image files, etc. with a few mouse clicks would be awesome.

[Koop]

Draco1962, on 18 February 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

There is a utility called MAME Content Manager. I've not used it personally but it may be worth looking into. It has not been updated since 2005 and the links for the data files are also dead. Since it works with the catver.ini file, it may still be viable unless someone else has knowledge of a better utility.

You can look under your MAME\ini path to located Catver.ini which will list the adult games as *Mature*. Appears that there were quite a few apps that probably tapped this file but none appear to be actively updated.

I believe I've created a monster here! Anyway, I found the catver.ini file (although I found it under GameEx/DATA, not in the MAME folder). Doing a "find" search for "mature" shows me all the games with the "mature" label. From there I can manually delete the videos from my assets folder. It's a painful process, but it's not beyond the scope of doing it manually (as long as I only have to do it once). I'll just have to be sure to also delete the ROMs in case I ever use the EmuMovies service again to update my assets library.

Does anyone have a good suggestion to make this manual process a little bit easier? Depending on what comes out of this discussion I'm not sure how long it would take to develop a solution, so I'm going to assume it would be a while.

Thanks, and good luck with the new idea!

[Tempest]

Koop, on 20 February 2012 - 03:32 AM, said:

Does anyone have a good suggestion to make this manual process a little bit easier? Depending on what comes out of this discussion I'm not sure how long it would take to develop a solution, so I'm going to assume it would be a while.

Like I said before, use Romlister.

[Draco1962]

ROMLister will take some of the sting out of the process until a new solution is created. I won't promise anything new soon as I would not be the one programming it. The Force is strong with one of us, however, and I am sure that he will do the voo-doo that he do so well!

[bkenobi]

RomLister can create the batch file you need very easily. You don't need another program created to do exactly what you want. As I recall, you specify the command line that you want and it will create a batch file with that command line for each rom. Done.

[Draco1962]

BK - You are correct. What is being proposed is automating the process so you do not have to mess with batch files and running command line options.

[Tempest]

Twice the OP has asked for a solution that he could use TODAY, and I gave him one.

If the OP would just click on my thanks button for answering his question, I would be grateful.

Edit: What happened to my 'Thanks' button?

[Koop]

Tempest, on 20 February 2012 - 07:23 PM, said:

Twice the OP has asked for a solution that he could use TODAY, and I gave him one.

If the OP would just click on my thanks button for answering his question, I would be grateful.

Edit: What happened to my 'Thanks' button?

Alright, well thanks Tempest. Since I didn't know exactly what ROMLister or batch files were, I interpreted Draco1962's response to your post as meaning it wouldn't actually accomplish was I was setting out to do, or at least it didn't make it any easier. But I found your ROMLister tutorial now, going through it, thanks.

So anyway, there used to be over 2 pages of comments here. They must have moved all of those posts to another topic or something.

Tempest, I only have a "like this" button. That's probably what you're looking for.

[Koop]

Tempest, that really is a great tutorial. That sounds like it will do exactly what I want it to do. One question though, can I use the "cut" command instead of the "copy" command? And just so I'm understanding this correctly, after ROMLister creates the batch file, I move the batch file to my ROM directory and double click it to run and carry out its intended operation? Great!

[Tempest]

In the tutorial there is a link to Batch File Commands in the tutorial. I would probably move the files to a new folder until you are sure of the outcome, and then delete the new folder. The command that you used in the batch file, would determine where you would be able to run it from. If you use the full path to the rom/art file, then the batch can be run from anywhere. If you only use the file name, then yes, place the batch file in the same directory as the files that you are going to move. I covered this in the tutorial along with some examples, so you may want to skim through it again.

[Koop]

I'm having trouble with the last step of using ROMLister (executing the batch file). The output from the command line window keeps saying "The system cannot find the file specified". First a little background. In setting up ROMLister the tutorial says to use the controls.xml file in the GameEx\DATA folder. The only controls.xml file I found was in the GameEx\PLUGINS\PluginLCD folder. It seemed to be the right kind of file so I choose that. I did find a controls.ini file in the GameEx\DATA folder, but I wasn't sure how to convert it. Both the controls.ini and the controls.xml file that I found seemed to have roughly the same content. Next, I was unable to choose Merge until I selected a nplayers.ini file even though the program says that file is "optional". Then I did a search command (-find) for 'mature' and it came back with a list of 559 roms. I saved that list to a batch file with this command line:

copy C:\Program Files\games\emulators\Assets\MAME\videos\%ROM%.mp4 C:\Program Files\games\ROMLister\temp files folder

So it should look through my videos folder for the .mp4 files and copy them to the other temp folder. The batch file runs and finished very quickly. When I pause the process midway, I can see why it only takes a few seconds to run: it cannot find any of the files to copy. But upon close inspection I see lines that say it is attempting to copy a file that I DO have, and says it cannot find it! I've double checked and the paths are typed correctly so it's not looking in the wrong folder.

Any ideas what's going on? Thanks.

[Draco1962]

You need to use the controls.xml from the mame\ini path.

[Tempest]

Try putting quotes around your paths.

copy "C:\Program Files\games\emulators\Assets\MAME\videos\%ROM%.mp4" "C:\Program Files\games\ROMLister\temp files folder"

[Koop]

Now I can't get the -find function to return any results for 'mature'! Clicking "list all ROMs" gives me a large list and even doing a search for 'adult' gives me a few results. But for some reason now I get 0 results back when searching for mature. So I can't create the batch file to try your suggestion, Tempest. But I'm going to keep working on it. Grrr.

Draco, I don't have a folder named "ini" in my MAME folder. In fact there is no controls.xml in my MAME folder. Is that what you meant?

[Koop]

Hey, I got it to work. Just needed to make a post about it before the solution would present itself. I could have sworn that last night I was doing a search for 'mature' (single quotes). But today it is only accepting "mature" (double quotes). So anyway, I created the batch file, added the quotes as you suggested and it worked! So now that I know how to work ROMLister I need to figure out how exactly to move the offending "mature" files out of the folder, rather than copying. I'll do a search for Batch commands and figure out if I can do a 'cut' or something like that. Thanks for the help!

[Koop]

after some searching I figured it out. I can use the "move" command to cut and paste the files I want to remove from a directory. I just tested it out and it works. This should allow me to get what I want done pretty easy. If anything goes wrong I'll report back, but this topic should be considered resolved.