Thanks for your interest BitLooter

If reference DAT uses old naming, please update it using current standars if you plan to build a P/C list. The conversion tool doesn't "understand" old country codes. Note that old "Mx" nomenclature used for included languages isn't No-Intro compliant either.

Regarding "parent tags", please check existing P/C list for examples and stick to them. The Mega Drive P/C list contains example parent tags for country/country combos not covered in SNES.

Thanks for the info. I'm converting some of the old dats now. A few questions: 1) Should (JUE) become (Japan, USA, Europe) or (World)? 2) I'm looking at the Pokemon Mini dat, should (Preview) releases be grouped with non-preview ones? 2) Is (A) Asia or Australia? I see codes like (JA), so I assume it's Australia, but I want to make sure.

Edit: (S) = (Spain), (Nl) = (Netherlands), (Hu) = (Hungary), (Sw) = (Sweden). Correct?

Edit 2: What about the (Rx) codes? Should I be removing those, too, like the (Mx) codes? And what do they mean?

Edit 3: In the Commodore 64 PP dat:

What's (Q) supposed to be? The only country that starts with Q is Qatar, and that seems unlikely to me. Especially since the language in the rom is (french).

And in the same dat:

I'll just leave this one as is until Bigmax (or anyone else who knows) can tell me what region goes here.

Edit 4: OK, this should be the last time. Commodore 64 PP and Tapes both have improperly named files.

No region code on this one.


BeachHeadalt and FootballManagerAlt have obvious fixes. Trailblazer is probably "Trailblazer (Europe) [alt]", but I want to confirm the region first. And I have no idea what DanDare is supposed to be. There are a couple of (Europe) sequels, but I don't know what the subtitle is, if there is one.

I think I've done 99% of all the old dats. After I get these questions answered, I'll finish the last 1% and upload my work Hopefully, we can do away with the old naming convention altogether - I did *all* the dats, not just mergable ones. Then I'll start on the P/C files for these.

I've also discovered Europe is one of those words that starts to look really weird after seeing it about 20,000 times in one sitting.

First of all, I've never dealed with the DATs you are working on. More experienced No-Intro datters, please feel free to correct me.





Thanks for all your efforts. However I want to be honest here and say that I'm not going to revise your work. I don't have time. Unless you want to take the (hard) task of verify all your changes and provide reference DATs up to the quality standars of currently maintained DATs I'm not going to create P/C DATs for them. Quality of reference DATs must be first priority.

I understand. I plan on checking the dats against the original before I post them, so any region errors in the dats won't be mine. As for the language codes, those are going to be more difficult. When I finish with the region codes, I'll post a draft version of the dats with (Mx) codes so other people can retag them. I may decide to do that myself, but I'm busy with the P/C files right now, so it would be great if someone else took that up. Besides, some of them, like the GP32, I don't even have the ability to check the languages.

I'll also try to get into contact with the dat maintainers, see if they want to verify my work.

Until then, here's the P/C files for the systems already using the new names, except for GBA multiboots, which I'm still working on. This covers the Lynx, WSC, Vectrex, Odyssey2, Super Grafx, Nintendo Famicom Disk System, Virtual Boy and Videopac+.
[File deleted. Get the newer version below.]

I've also compiled an updated list of systems and their merge status.

In the Dat-O-Matic:
Nintendo DS
Nintendo Game Boy Advance
Nintendo 64
Sega Game Gear
Sega Master System

No duplicates, therefore no merge needed:
Hartung Game Master
Nintendo GBA e-Cards
Sega PICO
Tiger Game.Com

Already posted to the forums:
Atari Lynx
Bandai WonderSwan
Bandai WonderSwan Color
GCE Vectrex
Magnavox Odyseey2
NEC PC Engine
Nintendo Game Boy
Nintendo GBC
Nintendo SNES
Sega 32X
Sega Genesis

Under construction by others:
Commodore Amiga
Nintendo NES

Posted by me, needing verification/XML dat generation:
NEC Super Grafx
Nintendo Famicom Disk System
Nintendo GBA Multiboots
Nintendo Virtual Boy
Philips Videopac+

Systems with clones, old names:
Atari 5200
Atari Jaguar
Coleco ColecoVision
Fairchild Channel F
Microsoft MSX
Microsoft MSX 2
Nintendo Pokemon Mini
Sega SG-1000
SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color
VTech CreatiVision

Systems without clones, old names:
Emerson Arcadia
Entex Adventurevision
RCA Studio II
SNK Neo Geo Pocket
Tiger Gizmondo
Watara Supervision

Multifile sets, need updating to merge:
Commodore 64
Commodore 64 PP
Commodore 64 Tapes
Commodore Plus/4
Commodore VIC-20
GamePark GP32
Nokia N-Gage

The GP32 and N-Gage are both large sets that could use merging, but with the way the roms are structured that could be difficult. It might be easier just to do them manually - zip them up into groups and make dats from those.

I disagree with your assessment of the Bandai Wonderswan.

Clones:
Digital Monster - Ver. WonderSwan (Japan)|(JPN PARENT)
Digimon - Ver. WonderSwan (Asia)|(ASI PARENT)

Robot Works (Japan)|(JPN PARENT)
Robot Works (Asia) (En,Ja)|(ASI PARENT)

Those were the only two I found, but based on name alone, these would appear to be clone, thus justifying a P/C dat.

You can post the drafts if you want, but please note that I'm not going to generate P/C DATs for old naming DATs/half converted/non-approved full conversions. I should have stated this clearly before. I apologize.



I'll convert these. However a quick inspection reveals that you are not picking the proper parent in some cases: when several ROM revisions are available for a given region, parent for that region is latest revision. Please check that.

You're right, I missed those. I'll build the P/C dat.


Got it. When I finish the conversions, I'll send the new dats to the maintainers, and see if they're interested in approving them and updating the official dats.


Fixed. I had it backwards, I thought the first full version was the parent. But I guess this would make more sense.

Here's the fixed P/C dats: http://www.mediafire.com/?qtimo1yhzwe
I've also included a WonderSwan dat and fixed a few errors in a couple of other ones. Also included in this is a GBA multiboot P/C dat. This one is a bit different from other dats, so for now I'm labeling it as a release candidate. Many games in the multiboot dat aren't tagged with a region, so I looked up the matching GCN games and used the regions they were released in. I also didn't know what "XXXX - Joy Boot Sample (MultiBoot)" should be, as it seems to be a test program, so I just labeled it as USA - everything is in English in it. It probably doesn't make difference as they all have the same base name, so they would all merge to the same names regardless of version anyways. One more thing - I didn't know what the code for New Zealand is, so I used NZE.

I've also updated my last post to reflect the new information.

I noticed that there were no P/C xmdb files for the below systems. I'm guessing the reason that a P/C xmdb file doesn't exist for these systems is because their aren't any duplicate roms from other regions in these sets (correct me if I'm wrong).

- Commodore - 64
- Commodore - 64 (PP)
- Commodore - 64 (Tapes)
- Commodore - Amiga
- Commodore - Plus-4
- Commodore - VIC-20
- GamePark - GP32
- Nintendo - Game Boy Advance (e-Cards)
- Nokia - N-Gage
- Tiger Telematics - Gizmondo

The reason I bring this up is because using a P/C xmdb file with goodmerge is the only way that I know how to mass 7zip large number of files into individual archives without having to do it by hand, which would be very tedious considering the large number of roms in the above list.

Even if there are no duplicate roms in the above files, can anyone explain to me how to create a goodmerge xmdb file for those systems listed above?