First of all, big thanks to Roman for helping me with this: even after using ClrMAMEPro for a decade, I still don't know how to use it properly, so I couldn't get that working without him.
What it does?These steps will let you bulk exclude romsets from your scan (e.g. MPU4 gambling games anyone?).
How it works?It uses the possibility to specify a customised filter in the "Set information" window.
How to do it?1 - From the main window (the small one with 6 graphical buttons), click the "Scanner" button (leftmost). Two windows pop up: "Scanner" and "Scan results".
2 - In the "Scan results" window, click the "Set information" button at the very bottom left. This opens the "Set information" window.
3 - In the "Set selection" frame, type or copy/paste your filter string (more on that later) in the "Select sets" text box.
4 - Click "Apply". This will select only the sets matching your filter (which is the opposite of what we want).
5 - Click "Invert". This inverts the selection, hence all sets matching your filter will be excluded.
6 - Close the "Set information" window.
7 - Scan as usual.
If you got something wrong, don't panic! Delete your filter string, click the "Select all" button, and start again from step 3.
How to build my filter string?See here:
http://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/docs/htm/scanner.htmBasically, you use the following syntax (copy/paste from link above):
%y - year
%m - manufacturer
%s - source file
%d - description
%f - set name
%c - parent rom set name
%C - parent sample set name
%b - bios set name
%A - first character of description
%a - first character of set name
%Z - "0-9" in case of first description character is a number, otherwise description
%z - "0-9" in case of first set name character is a number, otherwise set name
%U - currently selected URL (Popupmenu -> WWW Open -> Set URL) from urls.ini file
%u - currently selected URL Extension (Popupmenu -> WWW Open -> Set URL) from urls.ini file
And more importantly, a couple burried in the same page:
%h - CHDs
%M - Mechanical games! Note that it has to be %M with capital M.
You can "combine" as many as you want by separating the terms of your filter with a semi-colon ( ; ).
You can also use "*" and "?" wildcards.
Examples:%h=1: filter CHDs.
%h=1;%M=1: filter both CHDs and mechanical games.
%s=mpu4.c: filter all romsets belonging to the mpu4.c driver.
%s=mpu*: filter all romsets belonging to any driver which name starts with "mpu".
%s=*mpu*: filter all romsets belonging to any driver which name contains "mpu".
String for all gambling games?WIP and incomplete:
%s=acefruit.c;%s=aces1.c;%s=acesp.c;%s=astrafr.c;%s=bfm_s*;%s=bfmsys8*;%s=bingo.c;%s=bingoman.c;%s=bingor.c;%s=calomega.c;%s=ecoinf*;%s=funworld.c;%s=gamtor.c;%s=gei.c;%s=globalfr.c;%s=goldn*;%s=goldstar.c;%s=hazelgr.c;%s=jpm*;%s=maygay*;%s=mpu*;%s=multfish.c;%s=play_?.c;%s=pluto5.c;%s=proconn.c;%s=sfbonus.c;%s=sumt8035.c
I used the "Source" section of MAMEUI to find these, then checked them in the list of drivers here:
http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/index.htmlUnfortunately this filter is incomplete. In fact, I'm not 100% sure the drivers in my filter are all ok to exclude, so use with caution! And feel free to contribute to complete it!