Home Page Forums Archives MacMAME [slightly OT] MacMAMEInfoX

Views MAME info files, browses categories, even launches MacMAME if you want it to. It just can't get the display names for games (no MAME source in it). I originally wrote it because I wanted to view history information for games I don't have ROMs for, but it sort of grew.

Download (less than 50kB) <removed>

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The browser at the top is loaded from category files and the info in the bottom half comes from mameinfo.dat and history.dat. Driver names are black if a zipped ROM is found and red otherwise. You can double-click black driver names to open them in MacMAME.

Launching MacMAME isn't that easy. You can't use AppleScript "tell application...", because MacMAME won't accept AppleEvents while the main window is displayed. I have to use NSWorkspace to invoke it (I try killing it first in case the main window is open). Also, I can't open a virtual clone, because you can only open a game by opening a ROM set file - you can't open games by name.

Looks cool. Does it let you view the entire history file (i.e. not truncated).

This seems like it could be the start of an awesome front-end. *cough* command line */cough*

OT - I'm about halfway through trying to get nekolauncher 0.5 working for advmame, but still havn't been successful. Anyone gotten through an install? babelfish does a decent job of translating Japanese to English, and the screenshots help. But, I must be missing something.

Jon

Yes, you can view the entire history without truncation. I'm doing some more work on it. If anyone has any suggestions, please post here.

And yes, I do realise that the sorting is screwed up in version 0.1. It happened when I was refactoring some code to use Core Foundation instead of Cocoa for a slight performance improvement.

OK, made an update. Here's a new screen shot:

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I can display title, manufacturer and year. Sorting is now done based on display name or driver if no display name. Search is on all the fields in the table at once (sorry, no fine-grained control).

Now before you complain that you don't see all the display names an manufacturers, READ THIS IMPORTANT NOTE. There is no readme in the download!

You need to make a game info XML file for MacMAMEInfoX to read. Do this by opening MacMAME, going to the reports tab and clicking "MAME Game Info..." Save the report with the default name in the Reports folder in the MacMAME User Data folder. This will take several minutes. Go and make a coffee. It's not quick.

MacMAMEInfoX takes about 15 seconds to load the XML file, history.dat and mameinfo.dat the first time you run it (measured on a 1.5GHz PBG4). When you quit, it will save the info in ~/Library/Caches/MacMAMEInfoX/Game Info.cache which will be loaded next time you run it (only takes about three seconds to load).

If you end up with a cache that doesn't contain all the information (for example you ran MacMAMEInfoX without having a game information file in the reports folder), trash ~/Library/Caches/MacMAMEInfoX/Game Info.cache and run MacMAMEInfoX again.

Download (less than 52kB) <removed>

Made another update. It can now:

• italicise clones
• sort clones next to parents (enable or disable in preferences)
• launch MacMAME with a virtual clone (enable or disable in preferences)
• sort by any column in the table (click a column heading)

To get any of the clone stuff to work, you will need the MAME Game Info XML file (see previous message), and you'll need to dump any files in ~/Library/Caches/MacMAMEInfoX created by previous versions of the program before running this version.

Sorting is slow. I know.

Download link removed - see post below

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Oh crap! Bad bug in that last version. Caused a crash when looking at a game with no entries in your history.dat or mameinfo.dat files. Also, I compressed the disk image properly this time, so it's back under 60kB.

Download <removed>

Looks very nice! How about also allowing it to launch advancemame?
the next obvious feature would be game screenshots

nice job!

Yeah, enhanced searching, screenshots and integration with command-line MAME are on the cards for when I've got some time after Christmas and my wedding.

Wedding? Completely off-topic, but I think a congratulation is in order.

Thanks.