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Arcade Game File Structure...Streamlining

Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:47 pm
by BlockABoots
So have noticed after running the Update_all script that in the _Arcade folder there appears to be Alt and Alternatives folder. The Alt folder appears to have just Jotego's alternatives roms where as the Alternatives folder has Jotego's alternatives plus all the other arcade core alternatives.

Is the organisation of the Arcade folder supposed to have both Alt and Alternatives folders??

Also is there a quick way of having the mra files of arcade games all in one folder and not listed individually on the Arcade game list? I have noticed Jotego's arcade games all have a single entry on the game list and when you click on the game it then has the different roms version BUT other arcade games seem to just list multiple rom version on the main game list?.

Re: Arcade Game File Structure...Streamlining

Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2021 3:18 pm
by mapf
Each arcade core chooses what MRA files are to be installed with it by placing them into the corresponding "release" subfolder on github. The update scripts simply download that. The update scripts can remove old cores (they have a date in their filename and when a newer file is there, they can check for older ones), but have no way to delete old MRA files (so after some time, you might have differently named MRAs for the same thing). See https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Arcade- ... r/releases for an example folder.

The alternative MRAs are in the MRA-Alternatives_MiSTer github. For the example above, there are alternative roms for the "Kick" game: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MRA-Alt ... ives/_Kick. You can disable downloading alternative MRAs in the update_all setup screen.

On my sd card, the cores are in "_Arcade/_cores and besides the "_Alternatives" subfolder, all the default MRAs are just there in the main "_Arcade" folder - is this not what you want to achieve?

I also have no "_Alt" folder. It might be a leftover from an earlier time. If your Arcade subfolder is messy, you might consider deleting it and let update_all re-download the cores and mra files to have a clean setup.

Personally, I use the arcade-organizer that comes with update_all to sort the Arcade games by different dimensions and primarily use these subfolders. It creates an "_Organized" subfolder under "_Arcade". The arcade-organizer is also optional and is configured in the setup screen.

Re: Arcade Game File Structure...Streamlining

Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:40 pm
by BlockABoots
Thats a sound plan, ill delete the Arcade, MAME and MAMEB folders and start from fresh!

It would appear its Jotego's JTBeta.zip file that has an Alt folder under the Acades folder for some reason!

After that ill run the The arcade-organizer script

Re: Arcade Game File Structure...Streamlining

Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2021 6:24 pm
by aberu
BlockABoots wrote: Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:47 pm So have noticed after running the Update_all script that in the _Arcade folder there appears to be Alt and Alternatives folder. The Alt folder appears to have just Jotego's alternatives roms where as the Alternatives folder has Jotego's alternatives plus all the other arcade core alternatives.

Is the organisation of the Arcade folder supposed to have both Alt and Alternatives folders??

Also is there a quick way of having the mra files of arcade games all in one folder and not listed individually on the Arcade game list? I have noticed Jotego's arcade games all have a single entry on the game list and when you click on the game it then has the different roms version BUT other arcade games seem to just list multiple rom version on the main game list?.
Jotego doesn't follow the naming scheme from the main project. You'll have to ask him to change it. Personally he should.