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[Shoegazer]

Hi Roman, I wanted to ask a few questions about running ClrMAME against MESS under the "single profile":

1) Under SysDef paths, what are "[STANDARD]" and "[DEVICE]" and how do they relate to scanning?

2) Why are only three bios sets recognized - 3do, cd32, and cd-i?  I would imagine either all bios sets would be listed there or none would; there doesn't appear to be anything special about these particular sets unless I'm missing something, so it's a bit confusing this way.

3) Why are some software lists missing, such as 3do_m2?  How does the SysDef feature obtain the software lists for display there?

4) Can you add a way to easily assign a single SysDef path to multiple lists (outside of external file manipulation).  I noticed the user a few posts down had some issues with this; I was just curious if you could add a feature to address it within ClrMAME itself.

Thanks!

[Roman]

Generally I assume you know what system default paths are for...

1)
STANDARD is anything not assigned to a bios/devices/software list. So it's a path for anything not special.
DEVICE is the system default path for devices (e.g. MAME got devices 22vp931, bsmt2000, mie, namco50, etc). There also exists MECHANICAL, if the loaded data contains MECHANICAL flagged items.

2) because MESS handles the rest as standard I guess and only these are flagged as BIOS

3) most likely because they are empty. If cmpro imports software list via exe import it runs the exe with -listsofware name_of_the_list. If that ends up with no result, the list isn't listed.

4) Sysdefpaths have to be unique per software list. BIOS/STANDARD/DEVICES/MECHANICAL can share the same but software lists can't share the same path. Well, there is an auto-assign button which maps your setup rompaths to the sysdefpaths but it will look for exisiting files in these paths and the best match will win. If you paths are empty (which I assume if you start) that option won't help you. So if you don't have any files for the several lists, you need to go through the assignment hell once.

Of course this only applies to the multi-software list support within one profile. Noone stops you to simply load the software lists xmls separately in the profile (or via the batcher)...then you don't need to fight with sysdefpaths at all....

[Shoegazer]

Thanks, Roman.  Responses:

1) I see.. so I guess these extra SysDef paths are there in case someone wanted to keep e.g. Devices in a separate location from other BIOS files?  I think that by default the device files are kept with the BIOS files if I'm not mistaken.

2) Gotcha.  Still not sure exactly why it's done that way but from what you're saying I guess that's a MAME/MESS internal thing.

3) I see.  To use my example, I noticed that the 3do_m2 list has its software commented out for now because MESS doesn't yet use it, but it's still included for documentation purposes.  In that case I guess that would be missed in scanning under the "single profile" mode - though in "multiple profile" mode, chances are the user would just import ALL software lists and catch that one - so the latter option is more inclusive and therefore arguably better.  By the way, how does ClrMAME get the actual list names for its "-listsoftware name_of_the_list" operation?  Does it derive the names from the xml files or from some other MESS-internal command?

4) I see now - that makes sense.  When "auto-assign" was run it came up with about a 5% success rate for software paths with existing sets in them; i.e. about 95% of the time it thought software was in the bios path for some reason.  I guess the only recourse would be to do as you suggest and manually assign them.  I'm sure most of the "hell" would only have to be experienced once, though it would also have to be done each time new software lists are introduced (or existing names change, as they have in the recent past).

Anyway, in light of the above I'm going to keep using the "multi-profile" batch mode as I've done in the past. 

Thanks!

[Roman]

1) standard is always available. Devices and Mechanical only if the dat/exe import lists mechanical flagged sets and devices. Same for BIOS. ...and of course software lists only appear if you include software lists from the exe directly.

2) Common misunderstanding I think. MESS' -listxml output lists hundred of files which of course are usually BIOS files since MESS is mainly for emulating systems. But in the xml they are not (besides of 3) marked as ISBIOS...so they are handled as standard sets.

3) if software lists are imported from a MESS exe, cmpro first runs MESS with -listxml to get the sets and names for the available software lists. Then it calls -listsofware for each of them (or just -listsoftware if all are selected)

4) Well, auto assign should actually work nearly perfect if you got some files available for the single lists and already got them in the belonging folder. If no match can be found, the 1st rompath is assigned. Sets have to be named correctly though.... I may think about an easy way for setting it up (and you're right, setup needs to be done only once) but currently I only got an "auto-create *new* rompaths for each list and assign them automatically" in my mind...guess that will work already.