Cleaning up Romsets - Database - Deleting uneeded files?

[NewYears1978]

Have been at this for a couple months and having ONE hell of a hard time. It's really starting to frustrate me.

 

My original idea was to create PClone sets from Dat-O-Matic which worked out fine but I could never create an XML for HyperSpin once I cleaned my files up with clrmame.

Then I decided just to stick to Hyperlists and I noticed my set had a bunch of Rev A, Rev B stuff in it ( a no intro set) which Hyperlist doesn't like, so I renamed those manually or with clrmame. Now I have all showing green in RocketLauncher games list, however if I load the same XML file used there in clrmame and scan, I get all sorts of wrong names (because it looks into the .nes file within the zip for one) and also showing MANY missing files (I assume CRC based)

 

I don't know what the proper method to do what I am trying to do.  Simply delete all the roms that are not part of the Xml.  If I use CLRMAME it deletes files that were in the list.

 

I've read guides on various things but usually when one aspect works, the other doesn't (For instance I REALLY like created PClone 1G1R sets using Clrmame but then I can't convert create a matching xml list)

I've tried Romlister, romcenter, clrmame, hypertools, etc..the problem is usually one part works and another doesn't...

 

I'm sure SOMEONE can help me.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

[newoski]

Rom Folder Cleaner. Does exactly what you want. I think DJVJ made it

Sent from my HTC6535LVW using Tapatalk

[NewYears1978]

Will look for that, thank you.

 

I finally figured out how to do it with Dons tools thanks to thc helper in chat. But it wasn't the most ideal.

[PXAbstraction]

Hi everyone. I'm very new here but I'm hoping someone can help. I'm using HyperSpin to put together a couple of "retro gaming stations" for a charity event I'm working with. MAME is one of the systems being used in this setup. I am using one of the XML databases that excludes Mahjong, Casino and Mature games. I'd like to remove those from the ROMs folder, in addition to removing all the clone ROMs as right now, the HyperSpin menu has numerous versions of many games. I downloaded Rom Folder Cleaner as it seemed like the perfect tool but it's just plain not working. I run it, specify the paths for RocketLauncher that it asks for and then it says it can't find any databases, even though they work fine in RocketLauncher and as far as I can tell, the files are where they're supposed to be. I've stared at it for a while but can't figure out what I'm missing here. If anyone is able to assist, I would greatly appreciate it. I've figured out most of the challenges in setting up a new HyperSpin with patience and the help of Simply Austin's videos but this part is confounding me. Thanks so much!

[Nocturnaloner]

Hi everyone. I'm very new here but I'm hoping someone can help. I'm using HyperSpin to put together a couple of "retro gaming stations" for a charity event I'm working with. MAME is one of the systems being used in this setup. I am using one of the XML databases that excludes Mahjong, Casino and Mature games. I'd like to remove those from the ROMs folder, in addition to removing all the clone ROMs as right now, the HyperSpin menu has numerous versions of many games. I downloaded Rom Folder Cleaner as it seemed like the perfect tool but it's just plain not working. I run it, specify the paths for RocketLauncher that it asks for and then it says it can't find any databases, even though they work fine in RocketLauncher and as far as I can tell, the files are where they're supposed to be. I've stared at it for a while but can't figure out what I'm missing here. If anyone is able to assist, I would greatly appreciate it. I've figured out most of the challenges in setting up a new HyperSpin with patience and the help of Simply Austin's videos but this part is confounding me. Thanks so much!

If your ultimate goal is simply to have no clones show up in your MAME wheel, then check Parents Only in RocketLauncher (this actually just edits the Mame.ini file, which you could also do by hand).  Deleting all those files is unnecessary unless you're out of disk space.

[PXAbstraction]

Yeah, I have the Parents Only options set already for making the view cleaner which works great. My goal actually was more to remove the clone ROMs because these retro stations are going on old laptops which don't have a ton of storage. Truthfully though, cleaning up the ROMs probably won't make that big a difference when I think about how much space the videos take up. Probably not that big a deal.

[NewYears1978]

Yeah, I have the Parents Only options set already for making the view cleaner which works great. My goal actually was more to remove the clone ROMs because these retro stations are going on old laptops which don't have a ton of storage. Truthfully though, cleaning up the ROMs probably won't make that big a difference when I think about how much space the videos take up. Probably not that big a deal.

 

You can actually do this with don's tools renamer. Even though it's a tool for renaming what it will do is match the XML to your MEDIA or ROMS folder then any matches it will copy to a new folder. Then you delete all the files in the original folder and copy over the ones the tool had copied.

This is how I do my sets. Like you, I don't want tons of roms in my folders that I am not even using (I have those zipped up on a backup drive if ever needed)

There is another tool also that can delete all art and roms that are not in your XML file at once, but the name escapes me. 

 

Dons Tools: http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/files/file/11125-dons-hyperspin-tools-43-beta-significant-rom-renamer/

 

I can't remember the other app, I have it at home (at work right now) but I really prefer Don's tools because it works always and no bugs. You can use it for media or roms, when it asks to use XML say yes, then when it asks for media choose roms path.  You can repeat the process later using media path if you want to remove media as well (wheels, etc)

[PXAbstraction]

Awesome! I saw Don's Tools but didn't think it would work but using your methodology, it should do the trick. I'll give it a shot on one of my test setups and see how it works out. Thanks!

[NewYears1978]

Awesome! I saw Don's Tools but didn't think it would work but using your methodology, it should do the trick. I'll give it a shot on one of my test setups and see how it works out. Thanks!

 

Yeah I didn't realize it would work either til someone told me how to do it. Because it copies or moves all the files that it matches, it leaves all the unmatched (stuff not in the XML) to be deleted

Let me know how you turn out.

[PXAbstraction]

So I gave Don's Renamer a go but I'm not sure if I'm using it right. I don't see an option I can specify to copy the correct ROMs to another folder like you mentioned. It also asks me to specify a naming convention but as I'm trying to run this against a MAME ROM folder, none of the conventions in his pulldown are applicable and I'm not sure what I should specify. When it completed, it said there was about 7,600 mismatches out of over 10,000 ROMs but the two columns didn't look at all similar so I'm not sure how to match them up from there. I'm obviously missing some key steps here.

[NewYears1978]

What kind of romset are you matching? and are you using Hyperlists?

 

If you are using like a full romset say SNES with Jap, Proto, Unl games then your mistmatches are giong to be pretty high.  I should have explained the tool it's a little confusing, once the little spreadsheets pop up, close it, it will keep going, keep closing the pop ups they are just reports of the matches.  At the end it will ask you to copy/move.

 

The SNES sets have like THOUSANDS but the official XML only has like 1k or something so yeah, you will have tons of mismatches.

 

Once you figure the program out you'll be glad you did

[PXAbstraction]

Forgive me for sounding like an idiot here. So I am trying to clean out a MAME set. I have a complete set of ROMs for the latest release of MAME (0.169 at time of writing.) I have HyperSpin set to only use parent ROMs (I'm also using a database in RocketLauncher that only recognisees the parent ROMs) but ideally, what I'd like to do is delete all those unnecessary child and clone ROMs to clear up space as these retro stations I'm putting together will be running on old laptops with limited storage (we're talking a 64GB SSD in one case here and that also has to hold Windows.) So I loaded up Don's HyperSpin Tools (the renamer), pointed it at my RocketLauncher database and then the path that contains the MAME ROMs. See the first attached screenshot. I'm not sure how I should set the ROMset Naming Convention because this set uses what I think is just the standard MAME naming convention. See second attachment. After a very long scan (the better part of an hour), I'm presented with what you see in the third attachment.

 

This is where I'm unsure where to go from. The two lists obviously look quite different and I'm not sure if those results are normal and are going to produce what I hope they will (i.e. getting rid of all the child and clone ROMs from the folder.) I also don't see an option in here to move mismatched ROMs to another folder which I believe was the stated intent of using this tool.

 

I'm sure this is just me not understanding how to properly configure this and it's probably one of those things that once I'm done it a single time, I'll get it going forward. Does this make any sense? Thanks!

 

[NewYears1978]

I wonder if I used Tur-Matcher for this not Don's Tools. I use both so much I get them mixed up.

 

HOWEVER, MAME is totally different than other sets because it is required you have certain files for roms to work. I have never attempted to clean mine because I was worried I would delete files I needed

 

For mame you should have ROM zip files (not unzipped roms) and then you should also have folders that have CHD's in them. Let me take a screenshot.

You might have your rom folders setup inproperly.

[PXAbstraction]

Yeah, MAME is really the only folder of the ones I'm using that needs to be cleaned up because it's so humongous compared to the others. If there's no easy way to do it, then so be it. I can figure out another solution. It would probably involve using external hard drives with the laptops which is fine, it's just more potential points of failure at busy conventions I'd rather avoid.

 

I wonder, I haven't used ClrMamePro in a LONG time but would this be something it could do? I don't know if it can accept a RocketLauncher XML database as input but if it could, theoretically it could do the cleanup.

[PXAbstraction]

So I just did a little bit of preliminary searching and it looks like there's going to be no easy way for me to do this because I'm using a merged ROM set. Basically, all the child and clone ROMs are in 7z containers with the parent ROMs so there's no real way to separate them out. I could download the unmerged set but the main purpose of the merged set is to save disk space so even if I grabbed an unmerged set and pruned out all the unneeded ROMs, the end size would still be similar to what it is now. Ah well, at least now I know. Thanks for the help!

[Nocturnaloner]

Here's a question:  Does Don's Renamer work with merged rom sets?  Each game consists of many files.

 

What I see in that spreadsheet layout is that it seems to be looking at one component of a rom, and making it equivalent to the whole game, which it is not.

 

Oops!  Simulpost.  I see we had the same idea. 

 

Looks like if you want to do this, start with the split rom sets.  I know the newest tutorials online for Hyperspin say to start with merged, but for more options, split is the way to go.