31 replies to this topic

[Adultery]

So...

Two strippers and a priest walk into a bar.

We really should have moved the dev talk to social. Ill open up a new topic and move the posts when I get home.

PS: I can't see your thanks thingy (its a red X) but the link still works for me.

[nullPointer]

Adultery, on 19 February 2012 - 11:49 PM, said:

@Null: The plugin then would just remove the stuff you filter manually in GameEx? Or would be something that does all that but also takes advantage of GameEx's stuff (automagically finding art paths comes to mind), even crosses that with removing games you remove from the list in your filters? I cans see that being handy as well.

Honestly I was just thinking of your first suggestion. As has been pointed out, there are already apps out there that can filter by catagory, but there's nothing at all to address artwork for all the roms I've filtered manually in GameEx. I have to admit that I use that feature alot for MAME to remove oddball stuff (japanese and korean games, gambling games, identical clones, hacks, plus a lot of stuff that is simply missed by catver.ini). In the end my excluded roms list ends up being fairly huge, and one needs to get a bit creative in order to filter out the associated artwork. Even [Arcade] MAME.mdb doesn't account for excluded ROMS (although it would be awesome if it did IMHO).

So yeah . . . that's sort of laying my cards on the table: I'm more interested in something tailored to GameEx than for general usage (since I'm mostly covered by other apps in that capacity). Housing everything under one roof would sure sweeten the deal though. And if you can piggyback on some additional GameEx functionality, well that just sweetens the deal even more.

Also sort of weird that I'm the OP now. Really I'd just like to see artwork filtering implemented in GameEx as a feature request. I would guess that GameEx has 80 - 90% of the data available at runtime to accomplish artwork filtering already. Even if it just worked for MAME it would be awesome. Having said that, I absolutely support and applaud any additional development projects devoted to making the emulation world a better place. So . . . Huzzah!

[Draco1962]

I say why stop at artwork when we can have a program that will address ROMs and/or media based upoin the catver,ini criteria. As a plugin for GameEx it would be awesome. As a standalone app, why not put it out there to the emu community so they can see more GameEx community greatness in action?

[nullPointer]

Draco1962, on 21 February 2012 - 04:53 PM, said:

I say why stop at artwork when we can have a program that will address ROMs and/or media based upoin the catver,ini criteria. As a plugin for GameEx it would be awesome. As a standalone app, why not put it out there to the emu community so they can see more GameEx community greatness in action?

That’s sort of what I was getting at too. Here’s what I envision for the ideal standalone app, which I’ll call AwesomeSauce Filtering Tool (since you know that’s clearly what Adultery would like to call it </sarcasm> ). The Awesome Sauce Filtering Tool filters ROMS and artwork based upon catver.ini and MAME.xml (this last part is important for recognizing parent/clone relationships). Maybe it even has settings so that the user can specify the structure of their set (split, merged, unmerged). Heck while you’re going this far, why not throw in some artwork renaming while you’re at it (heh . . . gotta love that scope creep)

AwesomeSauce Filtering Tool also has an open modular plug-in architecture. In point of fact it comes with a GameEx oriented plug-in. To be clear I mean to say that the plug-in is for the filtering tool, not a plug-in for GameEx.

So it looks like this
AwesomeSauce Filtering Tool < --- Plug-in --- > GameEx Filtering Plug-in

But Not This:
GameEx < -- Plug-in -- > Filtering Plug-in

The GameEx plugin would parse GameEx.ini to further filter ROMS and artwork based upon GameEx data (excluded ROMS and whatnot). That’s sort of what I was getting at above. For myself I’d be more interested in the GameEx plugin for the purposes of this example, but I'm sure that I'm in a relative minority in this case.

That way someone from say the HyperSpin community could run with the AwesomeSauce Filtering Tool and develop a plug-in tailored to HyperSpin which parses HyperSpin data.

All this is of course up to Adultery’s discretion and vision for the project, but I think something like above could be the ‘one filtering app to rule them all,’ which oddly enough conjures visions of Adultery sitting in a darkened room quietly muttering about ‘his precious’ as he codes this thing (but maybe that’s just me).

[Draco1962]

I don't have a problem with updating the filter detail in the gameex.ini, however, if we can move or delete the ROMs and images, then that is less that really needs to be added to the .ini file, keeping it leaner.

[nullPointer]

Hmm . . . I'm not thinking that a filtering tool should add content to the GameEx.ini at all; I'm hoping it could do quite the opposite. I envision that the filtering tool would parse a list of excluded ROMs from GameEx.ini. From there the tool could move or delete the ROMs in the excluded list along with any associated artwork. When it finishes transferring files the tool could update GameEx.ini to remove any listings for ROMs which were previously excluded from GameEx, but which now no longer exist at all (having just been moved or deleted).

This comes around full circle to the elephant in the room. The filtering tool can’t (or at least shouldn’t) transfer any parent set where the user still wishes to retain a clone of the parent set. And even that only holds true where the end user is utilizing merged or split/merged sets. If the user has unmerged sets a filtering tool can remove parent sets unencumbered by interdependencies between ROM sets.

Artwork gets even more convoluted since sometimes it’s named in relation to the parent and sometimes it’s named in relation to the clone set.

Once again though, it’s not my pig, not my farm (as we say out west). I’m confident that Adultery can/will come up with something great. So I’m certainly not saying, “Hey write an app exactly like this,” just throwing out some ideas for consideration.

Edit: Wrote split or split/merged when I meant merged or split/merged

Edited by nullPointer, 21 February 2012 - 07:50 PM.

[Draco1962]

Agreed. The only thing I can see using the gameex.ini file for at all is, for the purpose of a plugin, is to provide the ROM and media paths data. Other than that, the data contained in catver.ini can help to create a list based upon the categories and the rom names, which in turn can be used to manage (remove or delete) the selected content. BTW, is that a pink elephant?

[Adultery]

How bout this:

Proggy deletes roms and assets. Plugin finds and removes assets based on GameEx's filter list at startup. Neither dependant on the other.

Or maybe the proggy can accept command line arguments and the plugin passes them and forces a list update.

[nullPointer]

Sounds like a winner to me! Option B sounds pretty neat in that you could share common code between the two components (I'm thinking about the modules responsible for moving files around), but either way would be pretty sweet. Thanks for considering this program!

[Adultery]

I have a few ideas for sure. Gotta finish my current project first though (which is close).

[Draco1962]

In the end, the prog should be "So easy a caveman can do it..."

While we are generally "Newb Friendly," I think that the the bulk of the progs available tend to not be and the assumptions are that, if you want to enjoy system emulation, then you must do lots of hard work and learn how to X, Y, and Z.

The reality that bites us in the ass and turns away new blood is that we have a generation coming into the ranks that have never touched a command line and experiences are GUI-centric. I don't mind command line options as an "advanced option" for experienced users that want to make additional tweaks to the process. To have the basic options to select which media to move or delete after setting up the paths and the categories and generating a list would be great.

Basic options should follow KISS (and not the band). Advanced options would have command line options available.

[Adultery]

Well its as complicated or as simple as the user makes it. The plugin would send the CL, the user would only need to tell the plugin where the exe is.

Ad much as I hate noobz, I try to make things simple or advanced. Lots of options ate great as long as the options are optional.