FB Alpha Database Issue - Descriptions

[iggins]

Hi, I'm trying to set up FB Alpha, and I can't get the full game names to show up in the games list. It only shows the ROM names.

In the xmlout.xml file, the description field contains the ROM name after "Create Database," not the full game name.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Rob

[Aeliss]

I m not sure, but only Mame can make a convertion beetween rom name > game name. Try to use the xmlout.xml made with mame. The 2 applications use the sames roms..
If you are premiun you can try the "update database" tab, but from my memory the fisrt tips works fine, I m using it for other emul like cave or zinc ones.

[mgalaxy]

I second aeliss suggestion!
You should create a Mame system, pick you FB rom folder, generate a database then copy the xmlout.xml file from the MAME system folder to the FB system folder!
(TIP: you can easily locate and open the data folder for each system by clicking on the 'Open data folder' button  )

[iggins]

Good suggestion. I think I have the same ROMs for both my MAME install and the FBAlpha one. That is much easier than what I've been trying to do, manually update the Descriptions.

[iggins]

That seemed to do the trick! Why can't the DB update pull the correct game names? Or pull the names from another pre-generated XML file?

Now I need to figure out why DB Update takes forever, and stops many times before it finishes. All of the updates have taken the better part of a day, for each system, and I need to keep an eye on it to restart the updates.

[jmd]

Why can't the DB update pull the correct game names?

Because if you submit "fotns" to 'TheGamesDB' (which is the DB used by mGalaxy) it will return nothing!
Only Mame 'knows' that 'fotns' is 'Fist Of The North Star'
Those web database hold the 'real' name of a game and will return info if this name is correct ( this is particularly true for Mame. With other systems, mGalaxy algorithms will do their best to find a game even if the submitted name is misspelled)

That's the reason why you get the 'Do you want to get data from MAME embedded database ?' message when you create a database!
So you might think: "If so, why this message if I won't get result rather submitting it to the DB server?"
The answer is: to allow to create your database in 2 steps!

First step: You press the 'UPDATE' button and you reply 'YES' to the message and your database is initiated with the 'real name', 'genre', 'players' info (taken from mame itself, catver.ini & nplayers.ini)
Second step: You press the 'UPDATE' button and you reply 'NO' to the message and mGalaxy goes on the webserver...but this time it has the real name for the request and you get your screenshots/marquees/movies from the server! 

Now I need to figure out why DB Update takes forever, and stops many times before it finishes.

There too, this is not a mGalaxy related problem. Unfortunately, TheGamesDB and Screenscraper (the two web sources for database info requests) are sometimes off or working very poorly!

[mgalaxy]

[quote="jmd"]
That's the reason why you get the 'Do you want to get data from MAME embedded database ?' message when you create a database!
So you might think: "If so, why this message if I won't get result rather submitting it to the DB server?"
The answer is: to allow to create your database in 2 steps!

First step: You press the 'UPDATE' button and you reply 'YES' to the message and your database is initiated with the 'real name', 'genre', 'players' info (taken from mame itself, catver.ini & nplayers.ini)
Second step: You press the 'UPDATE' button and you reply 'NO' to the message and mGalaxy goes on the webserver...but this time it has the real name for the request and you get your screenshots/marquees/movies from the server!  [/quote]

I couldn't have said better! This is exactly how it works and the the raison d'être of this message!

[iggins]

Why can't the DB update pull the correct game names?

Because if you submit "fotns" to 'TheGamesDB' (which is the DB used by mGalaxy) it will return nothing!
Only Mame 'knows' that 'fotns' is 'Fist Of The North Star'
Those web database hold the 'real' name of a game and will return info if this name is correct ( this is particularly true for Mame. With other systems, mGalaxy algorithms will do their best to find a game even if the submitted name is misspelled)

That's the reason why you get the 'Do you want to get data from MAME embedded database ?' message when you create a database!
So you might think: "If so, why this message if I won't get result rather submitting it to the DB server?"
The answer is: to allow to create your database in 2 steps!

First step: You press the 'UPDATE' button and you reply 'YES' to the message and your database is initiated with the 'real name', 'genre', 'players' info (taken from mame itself, catver.ini & nplayers.ini)
Second step: You press the 'UPDATE' button and you reply 'NO' to the message and mGalaxy goes on the webserver...but this time it has the real name for the request and you get your screenshots/marquees/movies from the server! 

Now I need to figure out why DB Update takes forever, and stops many times before it finishes.

There too, this is not a mGalaxy related problem. Unfortunately, TheGamesDB and Screenscraper (the two web sources for database info requests) are sometimes off or working very poorly!

Thanks. All of that makes sense, except that if I do a DB update for FB Alpha, I don't get the option to use the MAME embedded database, so I never got the chance to get the full names. I happened to have the FB Alpha ROMs in a different directory than the MAME ROMs, and the XML file is different anyway.

I figured that the DB update issue wasn't due to mGalaxy.

In any case, I appreciate all of the help!

Rob