Adding new games to your master list has been made as painless as possible. Before we begin you should understand that the master list is merely a list of all of the possible games that the emulators you have installed will run. With that out of the way let me assure you that this tutorial is CRUCIAL and you need to know this. If not you will be dependant on someone else to update your list for you when a new version of your favorite emu comes out. (This will NOT be me btw as I will only update the master list when I feel like it, if then.)
Ok enough of that on to the important stuff.....
You are going to need one thing (optionally two things) to get your new list running. You need to go to your favorite "dat" site and download a "dat" file for the emulator in question. If this is the first time you've updated your list you'll need a "dat" file for every emu you intend to support, if not then you'll only need a new "dat" file for the emu you wish to update. Dat files are information files that rom managers use to verify roms and can be found at various places for various emulators. There are links to some of the more popular dat sites on the homepage. Lazarus needs CMPro (also known as clrmamepro) dat files to operate. These are in the popular "listinfo" format that mame can output and thus you can generate a mame dat via mame itself if none are available. Place all of these dat files in the "\list generator\dats\" folder.
Technically this is all you need but if you are going to make virtual game lists in Lazarus that sort by category or version, you are going to need some "catver" files. A catver file is simply an extended info file that stores data about games. The official mame catver file can be found here. Catvers for other emus can be found at the Lazarus homepage. Place all of your catvers in the "\list generator\catvers\" folder. If catvers can't be found during master list generation, the generator will make you a catver file with blank entries, ready for you to fill out in that folder.
Ok that's done, it's time to generate your list....
By now you've probably noticed the exe in the list generator folder. When your ready you can run this to generate your list. It's fully automatic and all you have to do is wait. When it's done you'll be ready to go. You can optionally call this within Lazarus by using the "generate gamelist" option. If you ran the generator externally you'll have to run the "rescan for roms" option when you enter Lazarus for new games to show up.
Well your done. One thing of note is that you'll want to add any extra rom paths and artwork paths in the lazarus.ini. New game will NOT show up until you do this.
Also note that for future reference, the emulator name of the dat you added is known to Lazarus by the "name" entry in the header file of the dat. (Open the dat file in notepad to see what I mean.) Your emulator cfg files and any other relevant files will use this name.
Also note that visual pinball is "goofy" and requires a special setup. You'll need to check out the vp tutorial on how to set it up properly.
Utilities to make your own custom dat files for console emus and pc games will be made available shortly.
Copyright © 2007 Howard Casto. All Rights Reserved.