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Next beta version

Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:20 pm
by RomCenter
Hi all

Some news on what's going on in beta 8 version.
I'm mostly working on the 'launch game' feature. It's quite tricky to get it working but it's almost done.

You can click the 'play' button when you select a game in the database or directly a file in a rom path. Romcenter will then scan the roms and identifies which files are needed to play the game. It attempts to make the game work, even if the files are not yet fixed, and the roms are spread in a lot of files across several folders.
Then the mame command is built, passing all rom folders and sample folders to the command line.
I still have some tests to do with chd and samples, but it seems good so far.
I also spotted some bugs here and there and fixed them. And of course the reported issues will be fixed as well.

Keep testing romcenter, espcially with the new mame 0.177 and report issues in the mantis page.
Thanks

Re: Next beta version

Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:34 pm
by Wanderer
RomCenter wrote:It attempts to make the game work, even if the files are not yet fixed, and the roms are spread in a lot of files across several folders.
:!: :!: :!:

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Nice touch Eric. Indeed it must be tricky but it will be a nice feature when completed. Thanks for the news.

Re: Next beta version

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 7:07 am
by posix
No offence, but I find this feature somewhat misplaced, unless I don't understand fully. To me RomCenter is an auditor, and in no way a launcher. If the game runs or not, the actual emulator will tell me anyway?

Re: Next beta version

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 9:14 am
by RomCenter
I can understand your point of view, but Rc is used to fix games, and I think it's a nice feature to be able to check directly if the game works. Then you can switch to your launcher and make it work there.
Also rc will tell you why it is not working and which file you need to download to make it work.

Re: Next beta version

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 10:28 pm
by Wanderer
OK, correct me if i'm wrong Eric, but from what you've said in your first post about the "run" feature, i understood that RC will try to find all necessary files and if they are all located, it will try to run the game in the emulator even if their filenames are wrong.

This would indeed be a nice feature. It might be good though (if the game is playable but some of the filenames are wrong) to display a warning dialog before starting the emulator (which could be configurable so one may choose to disable it). After all (as posix notes), RC is an auditor.

Re: Next beta version

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2016 7:49 am
by RomCenter
In fact, you can't start mame with any filename, it must be a known game name. Then, mame will try to identify required roms in several files. For example, for 2020bba (neogeo), it will be 2020bba, 2020bb and neogeo. Every required roms must be found in these files.
Romcenter will identify these files, scan them to detect any missing roms (bad named roms are identified correctly by mame with crc), and a message box will inform the user why the game won't work (mostly missing merged roms, chd or bios).