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81

clrmame Discussion / Re: Alive and kicking

« on: 20 September 2023, 06:40 »

First version will be a standalone Scanner, so call it Scanner ;-). Later on I will merge both standalones (rebuilder and scanner) and will think about some kind of profiler ....no working title yet...

82

clrmame Discussion / Re: Alive and kicking

« on: 18 September 2023, 06:18 »

Time will tell. Tosec? Well, as long as they follow the xml layout of MAME I don't see a problem. I haven't thought about any 1G1R mode yet though. For now, a clean, small core is all I'm interested in.....

83

clrmame Discussion / Re: Alive and kicking

« on: 15 September 2023, 06:25 »

That sounds wrong (if I fully understand it), you're saying that the scanner adds files to unselected sets? How? By fix-missing? If a set is disabled it should not even complain about missing files nor should a fix-missing operation work on it. In full merged sets you may run into weird effects if you e.g. enabled a clone but got the parent disabled, then of course the "parent" set exists but only with the clone files....Disabling sets is a bad idea anyhow ;-)

84

clrmame Discussion / Re: Alive and kicking

« on: 14 September 2023, 09:29 »

Currently I'm focusing on the core but yes, of course an UI is something on the list, as a first step a minimal one like in the new rebuilder.

85

clrmame Discussion / Re: Alive and kicking

« on: 14 September 2023, 06:31 »

well, if everything else is running fine, I can think of some additional filtering possibilities.
Currently the new rebuilder and scanner already have a regular expression based filter option to select only some of the sets.

I can think of a generic include/exclude option which would allow selecting a subset of machines based on whatever you want inside the xml, e.g. by providing an xpath expression. That would be an extremely powerful selector/deselector, e.g. -include "/*machine[driver[@status='good'] and not(contains(manufacturer, 'Taito')]" would include only non Taito manufacture machines with good driver status ....

Actually that idea came up right now while writing this post...and I definetly put it on my list. One thing is questionable though: Such a selector would only pick machines on their own. There is no "also include parent / clone / bios / devices"....but hey...I need something to do for the future....

86

clrmame Discussion / Alive and kicking

« on: 12 September 2023, 11:57 »

It’s quiet here, isn't it?

One reason is that it's summertime and real life, holidays, Diablo4 and other stuff kept me busy.

But just wanted to say that I'm alive and kicking and working on a new scanner, similar to the new rebuilder.

Fortunately, the code basis of the rebuilder with the new concept of having views on XML data instead of implementing rules for different merge modes makes coding life very easy.

The scanner is in a state that it runs fine already in finding and reporting all issues. Didn't start the fixing part at all, but it is planned that this will be an easy set of straight forward archive or file operations like rename/delete/add.

Compared to the cmpro's scanner, where you can differ between missing, case, name, size, checksum etc checks, you will have all in one and it comes down to missing, wrong name or unneeded. You see, simplification is one of the goals. You won't need to specify anything to do this or that check.

One of the main things I wanted to find a good solution for are -taadaa- rompaths. As you might now not all people tend to put all sets into one (1) rompath. Some people split the collection by bios (so you got rompaths for e.g., neogeo, playchoice10 and so on), others may go even further and use something like a manufacturer/year combination. Since configurating rompaths is usually an annoying thing if #rompaths > 1, the new scanner will allow simply specifying a root folder plus some storing pattern expression, like the pattern the new rebuilder allows. If it comes to softwarelists (and loading a full software list xml), you can now simply use one rompath root. In cmpro it is really annoying to setup hundreds of paths. Of course you can also specify single ones, but maybe you get inspired to use some more structured paths.

Regarding speed I can say that it already looks promising compared to the cmpro scanner, some benchmarks will follow.
Keep in mind that with such large data as a MAME collection, you already have a fixed amount of time just to read in all the archives' central directories with your preferred zip/7z/file routine. You can't really get below that. Surely this time differs from SSD to HD and using/not using disk cache. Due to the new code basis, the on top part, the actual checking, becomes a very small part of the overall used time now.

For now, it is command line based but as you see from last rebuilder release, a simple UI can be added pretty quickly.
I'm currently also thinking about a better way for the command line output. Scanning a messy collection produces a lot of text output, so I think I may additionally write a result xml file which can be used for some plain html/xslt rendering purpose....time will tell.

It's still far away from a Profiler/Rebuilder/Scanner solution....but hey...let's see what the future brings...

So...just wanted to send out a small "hello world"....till next time.

Tada
Roman

87

clrmame Discussion / Re: why some sample are unnedded?

« on: 27 August 2023, 19:36 »

You only need the "sample parent" sets placed in your samples path (assuming you're using split or full merged sets and an official latest MAME direct data import, or the latest progetto samples datfile).
So ftaerobi, not nes_bandai_pt554. moepro and not nes_jf13 and so on.

All valid sample sets can be found at https://www.progettosnaps.net/samples/

88

clrmame Discussion / Re: How to Update CHD Version with CHDMan?

« on: 06 August 2023, 18:36 »

Your problem is not related to cmpro. It's a question of old chds which can't be converted via chdman to match the current ones. You need to find the old chds or the new chds depending on which MAME version you want to check.

89

clrmame Discussion / Re: How to Update CHD Version with CHDMan?

« on: 06 August 2023, 10:04 »

I think there was a time where chds were simply redumped / reencoded with chdman instead of just being updated to a newer chdman version. For example to include some more metadata.....but hey...that was years ago...can't really remember.

90

clrmame Discussion / Re: How to Update CHD Version with CHDMan?

« on: 05 August 2023, 20:53 »

If I'm not mistaken a current MAME chdman has no update function anymore and I doubt that all old chdfiles can be simply updated.
Since all chds are 'available' for the current MAME version (which is .257) you shouldn't have a problem finding them.

91

clrmame Discussion / Re: How to best deal with progetto-SNAPs?

« on: 29 July 2023, 09:18 »

Yep placeholder files which are shared thousands of times are a killer. They are one of the reasons why fix missing options (and deeper look for fix missing etc) should be turned off. If you then also use solid 7z archives you can go on vacation while fixing 😁

Maybe a full rebuild is faster in such cases or a manual zip after working with decompressed sets….

As mentioned, maybe the not too far future brings you something faster 😁 however progetto snaps are not in the focus yet at all but I guess I will have a look at it too

92

clrmame Discussion / Re: How to best deal with progetto-SNAPs?

« on: 28 July 2023, 17:52 »

I‘d go with decompressed sets and anything fixmissing related turned off. Use the rebuilder to add the update sets to the existing collection.

Future might bring something faster…..cough

93

clrmame Discussion / Re: Omg. look what i confusion i have made on my roms collection. Help :)

« on: 06 July 2023, 16:16 »

"not working" is no term which is used in any way when it comes to audit sets. MAME has tons of sets which are non working simply because the emulation is not yet fully working, e.g. due to encryption/protection issues etc.

So differ between playing sets and auditing sets. cmpro is only for auditing sets and it audits what's listed in the datfile. Yes, there are 1GB CHDs which are non working...there are CHDs which are 30GB...so if you're into MAME, you should look out for larger HDs. However these days 2TB Disks are like 50EUR which is enough for plain MAME (roms/chds). When it comes to software lists you might look out for some more TB.


"ddr3ma", assuming you keep your sets split and using MAME .256, then you only need:

your_rompath\ddr3ma\887aaa02.chd

Why? Because the set has a 1 chd on its own, 1 nodump rom file (hd6473644h.18e, yes, the icon with the question mark....you can't find it, it's not dumped, ignore it), some shared files with its parent (ddr3mk) and 2 roms shared from devices and bios roms.... So no "own" rom files are needed, so you don't have a ddr3ma.zip

Keep in mind: A set is a collection of roms and/or chds and/or samples. There are chd-only sets, there are sample-only sets.
If you miss a chd from a chd only set you're missing the full set, if you miss a chd from a set with roms and chds and you got the roms, cmpro will still show the set as partially bad with the missing chd

To use ddr3ma in MAME (when storing the sets split), you of course need the chd, the parent romset, the needed devices and the needed bios rom....


"Where possible i have add the correct 'romset' but not add the CHD file."
There is no romset. The CHD is the only needed file...easy as that

94

clrmame Discussion / Re: Omg. look what i confusion i have made on my roms collection. Help :)

« on: 05 July 2023, 12:25 »

It's not really recommended to disable sets in set information. You have to understand what that means if you do so.
There are options for example which mark unselected sets as unneeded (Scanner-> Advanced). Other problematic cases are if you e.g. enable clones while disabling parents and so on. Disabling sets is nothing you usually need to do.

So....Problem 1: You have incomplete sets due to missing chds. Well....either you're the "gonna get them all" guy, then find them and add them. Or you're the "I don't want them" guy, then either don't scan for chds or disable the set (and its parent/all its clones) or find/edit a datfile which suits your needs better.

Problem 2: ddr3ma ...well...can't really tell you since I can't see if it's enabled or not. If cmpro wants to rename it, then it has a good reason for it. If it's disabled then surely ddr3ma is not known and then it tries to find a set which matches best for the data inside the zip.



So...keep all sets enabled and decide yourself "I need the chds" or "I don't need the chds". You can - as you already found out -  temporarily close your eyes on the chd errors by toggling the checkbox.

95

clrmame Discussion / Re: Omg. look what i confusion i have made on my roms collection. Help :)

« on: 05 July 2023, 11:01 »

If you remove incomplete sets and run another scan and you got "fix missing" enabled, it's pretty likely that the messages reappear, simply because it found one of the missing entries in a different set.
If you want to ignore some sets due whatever reason, you can either modify the datfile or go to set information and enable just the ones you're interested in


Yes, if you toggle the checkboxes after a scan, the results tree is updated.


"If i put this files on 'Roms' folder.... it's be removed by scanner..... because ?"  ? which files? if you have valid chds on a rompath root, they can get moved to their correct subfolder. If you're talking about other files, they are unneeded and get removed (-> backup folder).

96

clrmame Discussion / Re: Short question about MIAs in Dat files

« on: 16 June 2023, 10:51 »

No.
And actually, what do you expect to see? They are not defined (besides a setname)

97

clrmame Discussion / Re: Short question about MIAs in Dat files

« on: 16 June 2023, 08:56 »

size="" crc="" md5="" sha1="" mia="yes"

so...nothing is known about such entries and cmpro will moan about them when importing the datfile....either you click yourself through the prompts or you change cmpro.ini entry
Misc_DisplayLIErrors = 0

98

clrmame Discussion / Re: Snan ROMs without subfolders

« on: 08 June 2023, 04:47 »

No. The storing method is
Rompath/setname/file1…file n for deompressed sets or
Rompath/setname.zip (.7z/.rar) (where the archive holds file 1…file n) for compressed sets. Where file 1…file n corresponds to rom files of that one set.

You have to follow that.

If you want single-file sets on the same folder level you need to edit the datfile to have one set only holding all sets in one set.

99

clrmame Discussion / Re: App freezes when scanning specific DAT

« on: 02 June 2023, 06:00 »

Scanner->Advanced ->Fix Missing Options -> turn off "Deeper check for fixable missing files" and turn off "additionally test sha1/md5 matches.

Progetto Snaps collections use a lot of placeholder pngs where you usually have at least one copy available. So as soon as you miss one of such files, fix misssing (and the upper mentioned ones) look through all your rompaths/backup files...and that takes really long. And when the next missing file is detected it does the same over and over again.

So it's not freezing but it is busy like hell. For progetto snap collections, you should turn off all the fix-missing related stuff. The rebuilder should be used to add the missing parts instead.

100

clrmame Discussion / Re: App freezes when scanning specific DAT

« on: 02 June 2023, 04:49 »

You‘ve got fix-missing enabled? If yes, turn it off.