Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ReadOnly]

Time to update mame set after a whole year of release skipping

while importing database from mame binaries several things appeared unclear to me

1. filenames collision, when two files from a parent-clone set have same filename and different hash

cmpro asking you to either remove parent clone relationship which seems lame to me, OR force split-merged, but what's the difference between the latter and removing P/C ? Also would it apply only to the one faulty rom or to the whole set? Haven't found answers anywhere.

2. software list import

again very unclear, clrmame says it detects softlists, but nowhere it is said which one it detects, the last mame 0.148 package from mamedev includes all softlists whether mame or mess, so is cmpro going to import all of them or can it select the mame-only ones? and what would be the pros/cons of not importing softlist as cmpro suggests, would that avoid duplicate sets for instance?

Thank in advance

[Roman]

1) if cmpro removes a parent clone relationship it simply interprets the sets in question as standalone ones. So you can't run into any overwrites (identical names while the hashes differ) when doing a full merge. You will need some files multiple times then, the ones which get merged in the normal case...but again...that's really no real problem. And this is only applied to the set(s) which cause possible merge issues, not the whole dat/sets.

2) It first informs you that software lists were detected and if you want to import them. Afterwards you have the options (and a list) which you want to include.
Pro/Cons Softwarelists...well...a lot of people like to keep them separated in single profiles (cmpro can simply read standalone MESS softwarelist files). The direct import is more for people who want to scan everything with one scan....personal taste...and yes in case of direct import cmpro needs to handle equally named sets within different software lists....it tries to do its best...but can't say that it's 100% ok, especially if some software lists even share identical roms (I remember at least one case for Atari files...)

[ReadOnly]

1) and what does it do exactly to selct no to this

Set:   Best League (bootleg of Big Striker, Italian Serie A)
Name:   bestleag
ROM:   2.bin

Issue:   Can't merge set due to equal names for different ROM hashes

Press yes to remove parent/clone relationship or no to force split-merge mode.

will it force split merge for this set, or for the whole mame set (as it says "mode"and if only for this set what's exactly the difference between split-merge and no P/C relashionship?

2) in case I'd import neogeo softlist, neogeo set will move to neogeo subfolder but isn't there a risk of duplicates? some neogeo sets present in both neogeo subfolder and in main folder?

Thank you.

[Roman]

1) forcing split merge mode will be a general setting, not a 1-set-selection.
2) for MAME itself, software lists don't really make sense since they mostly mirror the existing sets. In case of neogeo, you will need to have the files twice then...one times for standard MAME and the second time for the software list.

[ReadOnly]

1) that's what I feared, merge-split is definitely not an option then
you may add on you to-do list the following tho it would be very low priority, instead of entirely removing the parent clone relationship, why not just move the faulty roms individually into the clone set, mame is perfectly able to load a game with roms scattered through bios/parent/clones sets. Low priority because it wouldn't save much space, even with 7z-merget set, probably not more than 1 gig although I would need to look into the details of the affected sets

2) OK, but if I do not import these lists will I miss the softlists-only sets then? because missing sets would be far worse than having dupes, sometimes you need to choose between the lesser evil

[Roman]

1) that's why the "remove parent/clone relationship" (for the sets in question) is the way if you want to still use fullmerged sets

2) Yes. There are a handful roms which aren't identical to standard MAME. In case you import them you most of them twice. Or simply don't import them and use the software lists in separate profiles. For neogeo you can then have 2 rompaths. 1st rompath is used for MAME while 1st  and 2nd are used when scanning the neogeo software list (where the 2nd only holds the software-list only ones).

[ReadOnly]

Yes I will opt for separate lists then. From what I heard softlist import is causing a shitstorm of epic proportion, don't know all the details, but I heard mame can no longer handle chd folder properly and other fun stuff like that.