(Tutorial) How to create a "Best of MAME" wheel or a "Genre X MAME"-wheel, out of your big total MAME collection

[lovebus5]

 

Here is how I did it (Im not claiming its the optimal way, but ut works

Situation: You have a big MAME wheel in Hyperspin Android with 1000s of games (with all your media & video set up in the right folders), and since neither Favourites nor Genres work you need a way to either: A) break the big MAME wheel into multiple smaller MAME wheels, e.g. by genre or, B.) You have a subset, such as I did, e.g. with your "top 500" MAME games or whatever, that you want to put in a separate wheel

Complication: You wanna do this without manually moving about roms and media files to match the new multiple MAME-wheel situation

Solution (at least one way, dont know if it´s the best, like I said im basically a HS noob):

I will describe Situation B, which is what I ended up doing for my own system 

• I wanted to create a MAME wheel with roughly max 1000 of the "best" MAME games.
• Go ahead and create your "Best of MAME"-wheel in your normal RLUI routine, to create the right folders etc.
• I started with a txt file, that I downloaded from here:  (credit to Progetto-SNAPS). It contains nearly all MAME games, rated (im fine with someone else´s opinion on whats good:)). I chose to include all games rated "good" or better...
• The txt file did not contain the full filename of the roms, they are missing ".zip", so I copied over to excel and added it (=concatenate is the function to use...). Complete filepath is not needed, just the complete filename. Save your txt as "list.txt" (so next step´s script will find it)
• Download a software called "Autoit", create a Autoit script file and copy paste the code that is described here (see the step-by-step there and follow it through, no changes needed)
• The above link also gives step by step what to do (put your script in your big MAME rom folder, execute it etc.)

Now you have the right roms for your "Best of MAME"-wheel (or your MAME GENRE X-wheel, if thats what youre after) in your new MAME rom folder. Now on to the media:

• Get a tool called "Hyperspin Rom & Media Manager". I think its nowadays called "HyperChecker", and that mine might be an older version, but not sure
• In this tool, after you put in some basic settings like your HS path etc in "HyperSpin System settings" and "Program settings" tabs, you choose your new system "Best of MAME", do a "Check", and you should see it finds your roms but no media. Here you can also easily create your HS database xml "Crop XML to only found games"
• Click the "Check missing roms or media in another folder" button, and work through one media folder at a time. It works for images, sounds as well as themes and video (all the time pointing to your big MAME-wheel media folders). The function will copy (not move) the media corresponding to your new rom list into the right "Best of MAME" media folders. Very easy!

Thats it! You now have your intended roms & media copied to new Best of MAME-system. Finalize by adding e.g. Main Menu images for your new Best of MAME wheel, update the Main Menu Android database etc., to make sure it shows up well.

Let me know if more detail is needed!

If you want to instead to scenario A, e.g. a "MAME Bowling Games"-wheel, you do the exact same thing. Only difference is you need a way to create a txt file with all MAME Bowling roms in it (one filename per line, no delimiters). Looks like EyMannMachHin's script here can do just that for you! (you start with a Genre MAME xml which are readily available)

Over and out, 

lovebus5

 

 

 

[thatman84]

Great work.

I will give this a try when i get round to sorting out my one big mame wheel