Topic: I need help creating Arcade "gamelist.xml", filtering games by genre

[Whipon]

Greetings:

I have two custom arcade cabs with the RetroFE frontend.
I'm setting up the frontend to add FB Neo to the menu.
I managed to convert the FBNeo dat to XML so game names are shown instead of rom names.
However, the arcade games list has 7238 games.
So I want to filter them by genre.
RetroFE include txt files are just a list with the desired games rom names.

I couldn't find any info regarding how to create these lists.
For example with MAME I can do it with MAME XML Full List Generator.
I can't do it with FBNeo because it doesn't support -listxml.
So I don't know how to generate the XML files I need.

I found some lists through Google from 2020 that are currently outdated. More than 900 games avalaible in latest rom set are missing from them.

I'll really appreciate any info.

Have a nice week.

Whipon.

[dink]

Hi,
You could use the latest windows ui version to generate the game lists, under the "Misc -> Generate Dat FileS"

best regards,
- dink

[Whipon]

Hi,
You could use the latest windows ui version to generate the game lists, under the "Misc -> Generate Dat FileS"

best regards,
- dink

Hello, Dink.
Thanks a lot for your reply.

I already did that, but the resulting DAT file contains all the Arcade games without any genre info.
So I can't filter them.
I tried with both January 9 and January 15 X64 releases.
I didn't find any way to generate separated dat files by genre.

Regards .

[dink]

Could you link me a file which has genre info?  I need to see how it is supposed to look in order to possibly implement it.

best regards,
- dink

[Whipon]

Excellent!.

I have attached 3 files, Fighter.xml and MAME.xml are both from MAME, first one are fighter games, second one has all MAME games.
FB Neo.xml is the FB Neo dat converted from dat to xml, with rom info nodes removed.

Regards .

[dink]

Could you link the mame file before it had been converted?

[Whipon]

Good morning.

I created those XMLs with Mame XML Full List Generator:

http://r0man0.free.fr/index.php/download-mame-xml-lists-and-generator/

It generates the files from MAME exe file.
I didn't modify those files, I just used them to generate the include txt game lists.

I tried to do something similar with FB Neo since you can filter the games by genre, manufacturer, etc, in the game selection menu.

Here's the web where I found the outdated lists:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/26761/fbneo-rom-filtering-vertical-genre-bootleg-demo-hack-etc

I attach a game include txt list for reference.

Have a great week .

[dink]

I'm comparing mame's -listxml with fbneo's arcade dat file, and neither of them have a genre tag, so there must be something else to this.  Hmm

[Whipon]

I'm comparing mame's -listxml with fbneo's arcade dat file, and neither of them have a genre tag, so there must be something else to this.  Hmm

Exactly, you can only generate xml files from Mame with Genre info with Mame Xml Full List Generator.

Since FBNeo already allows to choose games through genre in the game selection menu, maybe a xml file can be generated with that info?. Maybe there is a list in another format in the source files?.

Thanks in advance .

[dink]

Couldn't you use the fbneo dat file(s) with this MAME xml list generator app?
fbneo dat file are the xml files, they're just named .dat for historical reasons that I don't quite understand

best regards,
- dink

[Whipon]

Hello Dink.

The mentioned app can only be used with the Mame executable.

I can't use the Mame files directly because there are a lot of roms for FBNeo with different rom names. For example all the hacks not avalaible in Mame.
Those games are not mentioned in the Mame xml files.

Where does FBNeo get the genre info from the game select menu?. Any format will suffice, dat, xml, txt, xls...I just need to generate several txt files with the rom names under each category.

Thanks a lot for your assitance.

Regards .

[barbudreadmon]

Afaik, people are using some tool called "catlist" when sorting romsets by genre. I can't give you details about it though since i never used it.

[Whipon]

Afaik, people are using some tool called "catlist" when sorting romsets by genre. I can't give you details about it though since i never used it.

Hello.

I will see if I can sort the games that way.

I was hoping a list in any format already existed, since you can sort the games through FBNeo menu.

Thanks a lot.

[barbudreadmon]

Afaik, there is no such thing as a genre tag in dat files. MAME doesn't have it either.
Most likely that tool you are using is internally using catlist.

[Whipon]

Thanks again, I will see what I can find.

Regards .