1 (edited by Patzik 2007-10-29 13:12:19)

Is there a way to split the datfile in 3 sections, US EU and J?
Or is it maybe possible you add these regions as systems in the dat so we can do it ourselves is clrmamepro?

You can edit yourself if you want, load it up with notepad and delete all entries for EU and J. I did that a long time a go with no intro dats it took awhile though. Be careful so you don't delete an US game. I think with the lack of replies that they have no desire to do that and its probably more work to keep up 3 dats instead of just one and it raises the chances of error I believe.

Three years and still going strong.

This is why it may be easy to add the regions in the system part of the dat file. Since the dat file is generated automatically this shouldn't be difficult. This way you can select any region (system) and still remain with 1 dat file. Editing the datfile by hand would be way to much work, especially with a new datfile comming out just about every day...

You'll have to talk to Dremora about this since he programs the site.

I also think it's a good idea to split Games and Demo discs into separate dats..

I think it's needed to split CD and DVD for PS2 and IBMPC.
It's not so beautiful that 2 different format dumps are on a dat.

Mr Driller pwns

asapy wrote:

I think it's needed to split CD and DVD for PS2 and IBMPC.
It's not so beautiful that 2 different format dumps are on a dat.

I think the same.
Maybe also DEMO release should be moved in a different dat.

My patch requests thread
--------------------------------

And what's if the game contains several Discs and they are of different format CD/DVD ?
Then they shall not be found any more in the same DAT !?

PX-760A (+30), PX-W4824TA (+98), GSA-H42L (+667), GDR-8164B (+102), SH-D162D (+6), SOHD-167T (+12)

iR0b0t wrote:

And what's if the game contains several Discs and they are of different format CD/DVD ?
Then they shall not be found any more in the same DAT !?

I think there is no game with such a odd format.
(e.g. Disc1 -> DVD, Disc2 -> CD; install disc -> CD, game disc -> DVD)
I have never seen such games.

I have a ps2 game with CD and DVD. Dragon Quest V (J).
DVD is the game. And, the CD is DQ8 bonus CD.
The CD is a bonus movie CD, not the game itself.
it's no problem to spilit them. hmm

Mr Driller pwns

Yes, I have still never seen such a thing too, but who knows maybe there are such exotic games?

But, what's the reason to split CD and DVD in two dats?

PX-760A (+30), PX-W4824TA (+98), GSA-H42L (+667), GDR-8164B (+102), SH-D162D (+6), SOHD-167T (+12)

it's not beautiful, a dat includes DVD isos with ".iso/2048" and CD with ".bin/2352+.cue".

Mr Driller pwns

Nevertheless, this is no real reason!? We everybody are also no twins too big_smile

But seriously, if there should be later "Media Description Files" for DVD-9 or BLU-RAY dumps (I do not mean MDS files),
would you want to separate them then also from DVD-5?

PX-760A (+30), PX-W4824TA (+98), GSA-H42L (+667), GDR-8164B (+102), SH-D162D (+6), SOHD-167T (+12)

Well, i'm neutral with DVD9. But, i think we should separate BD.
They're dumped from different media.
If someone dumped floppy disc PC games, I agree to separate FD games from CD and DVD.

Mr Driller pwns

Well, I see, you will also separate different media types.

If there are no combined media, then I would also welcome your idea too, also CD / DVD / BD / etc. big_smile

PX-760A (+30), PX-W4824TA (+98), GSA-H42L (+667), GDR-8164B (+102), SH-D162D (+6), SOHD-167T (+12)

BD doesn't need preservation.. it doesn't belong here and hopefully it will never be added

What's BD? Blu-ray Disc?

Three years and still going strong.

pepsidrinker wrote:

What's BD? Blu-ray Disc?

Yes. I hope future gen consoles will come back to rom media. Today the prices are continuosly raising down so I won't understand why (if) they will use again cd based media.

My patch requests thread
--------------------------------

Rocknroms wrote:

I hope future gen consoles will come back to rom media.

Do you mean cartridges? big_smile
We don't really wont to have the old "Floppy Disc Times" back, to have 100s of discs for one simple game !

PX-760A (+30), PX-W4824TA (+98), GSA-H42L (+667), GDR-8164B (+102), SH-D162D (+6), SOHD-167T (+12)

roms = cartridges -> yes!:)
CD and DVD are very similar to floppy until a new format come out CD -> DVD -> BD -> ? (Probably we will see some Wii games on 4 DVDs in future, Phantasm on SS has 8 CDs and many other PC games are similar).

My patch requests thread
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Any progress in splitting up the dats?

I would really appriciate that. Like TOSEC, there should be dats for games, demo, coverdisc etc.  For the large sets like psx the games folder should be further divided into regions (usa, asia, pal). As my collections grows, messing around with 500+ gb of data in clrmame isn't fun.

It would be awesome to have a DAT-o-MATiC like No-Intro does, where you can select exactly what you want in a .dat. Like have checkboxes for:

NTSC / PAL

Game Discs / Demos / Bonus Material

English / Japanese / German / French / etc.

Users can just check exactly what they want, and have a custom .dat built for them.

22 (edited by NvrBst 2013-09-26 01:27:43)

I would also love to be able to download the dat files in regions, or via systems with clearmamepro.  As an alternative to manually doing it, I did create a simple GUI program that grabs games/regions from a DAT for me that I've been using with Redumps PSX set to grab the USA games; anyone is free to use/edit/etc if they wish.

Convert DAT Program + src

The source code is for Visual C#, the free express version should be able to compile it.  The EXE requires a Windows Machine (XP, Vista, Win2003, etc), and .NET Framework 3.5 to run.

Basically what the program does is use a regular expression.  This grabs each game from the dat, and if the game contains an element in the containing text box then it'll add that game to the new list.

For example " (Spain) , (Europe) , (German) " would grab every game that contains one of those three strings.

Any questions feel free to ask.  I've never tested this with other DAT's, other than Redumps PSX, but theoretically it should work for any ClearMamePro DAT file.

2009-11-16 - EDIT: Updated to v3.  Removed the Reverse Region check (Only worked with single letter tags like (U) or (J), and problem was already fixed in redump).  Updated to work with the new XML layout, still works with old format as well though.

Another vote to split the DAT in terms of region. Furthermore, I would like to separate the Js from the non-Js like Asia and Korea (I'm only interested in the Js).

why not do it like no-intro you can generate a dat the way "u" want it if you only want greek games then you could generate the dat smile

PSX'D OFF!!

thehealthyone wrote:

you can split .DAT file by using a software called total video converter.. its the best software for conversion..

Wrong kind of dat file.