Move Roms into category folders (Publisher / Genre)

Requested by Bob_Morane

Available since ARRM 2.0.2.3 Beta 6

Operating principle

ARRM allows you to distribute Roms by folder according to the publisher or genre or a custom folder without losing the scrape information

You have to choose which criterion (Publisher or Genre) and the Roms will be automatically moved into the folders corresponding to the names of the publishers or genres.

If a game is not found, or if the chosen category does not exist, it is possible to move the Roms to a custom folder by checking the checkbox If category empty or game not found, create this folder: and by entering the name of the desired folder.

Following the scrapes on the different engines, the names of genres and publishers can be multiple for a given Rom. If several publishers are present, only the first one will be kept.

In order to standardize the names of publishers and genres and to keep only one genre / publisher per Rom, it may be preferable to use the publishers / genres from the reference XML files. It will then be necessary to choose Publisher / Genre via XML and select the reference XML file.

By choosing as source: Publisher / Genre via ARRM, ARRM will distribute the Rom files (and their associated files: CHD folders, .fs file) in folders with the names of publishers or genre names already scraped

By choosing as source: Publisher / Genre via XML:
- ARRM will base itself on the XML file Reference to find Roms by their file name to distribute the Rom files (and their associated files: CHD folders, .fs file) in folders with the names of publishers or names from the XML file (therefore standardized).
- With this mode you can also choose a Custom folder. This is useful if you take an XML file in which there are Roms that meet a particular criterion like the files proposed by r0man0's website

WARNING: by choosing the source Publisher / Genre via XML, the arcade file names must be normalized and respect the names as found in the XML / DAT files, otherwise the search for game information will return nothing

Following scrapes on the different engines, the genre and publisher names can be multiple for a given Rom. If several editors are present, only the first one will be kept.

following this treatment, only the path to the ROM will be modified in the database, no other element will be updated

Arcade systems are defined in the Settings tab then configuration files, in the Arcade systems section

How to proceed

As a precaution, a backup of gamelist.xml and gamelist_arrm.xml is made before processing. This backup is located

in the folder: %appdata%\Nexouille soft\arrm\temp\backup\%systeme%

Select the system (only one) then click on Show

When the Database is filled with the Roms found,

Select the Roms you want to move
Click on the button Move Roms to folders (Genre / Publisher) of the panel Selected Roms

The A popup below appears :

You will need:

Choose the system
- Arcade System
- Other System : in this case you can't use Editor / Genre via XML. Only the Publisher / Genre via ARRM is allowed. The Publishers and Genres selected will be those from the scrape and already present in the ARRM database.

Choose the category:
- Publisher: a folder with the name of the game's publisher will be created
- Genre: a folder with the name of the game's genre will be created
- Custom: only when Publisher / Genre via XML is checked. Select an XML file containing Roms that meet a particular criterion, such as the files offered by r0man0's website. Roms found in this XML file will then be moved to the Custom folder
- If the category is empty or the game is not found, create this folder:: If checked, allows you to move Roms that were not found or those that do not have a Genre or Publisher to the indicated folder.

Choose Data Source :
- Publisher / Genre via XML : ARRM will query the specified XML file (Mame 0.267.xml in this case) for each game to obtain the genre or publisher of the game (and will only keep one genre / publisher).
- Publisher / Genre via ARRM : ARRM will retrieve the genre or publisher already scraped (and will keep only one genre / publisher)
XML file used : In the case of the source choice: Publisher / Genre via XML, ARRM will use the information from the XML file indicated to retrieve the publisher and the genre or to move the Roms to the folder indicated in Custom →

The XML file must have this structure

<game name="10yard" index="" image="">
	<description>10-Yard Fight (World, set 1)</description>
	<cloneof/>
	<crc/>
	<manufacturer>Irem</manufacturer>
	<year>1983</year>
	<genre>Football</genre>
	<rating/>
	<enabled>Yes</enabled>
</game>

* Click on Run to start the procedure.

It takes less than 3 minutes to manage about 500 roms.

A backup of gamelist.xml and gamelist_arrm.xml is made before processing. This backup is located in the folder: %appdata%\Nexouille soft\arrm\temp\backup\%systeme%

How to use the custom folder option

On the r0man0's website , you can find XML files containing only MAME Roms that match certain criteria.

Let's take as an example the file Mame_XML_Full_Lists_0.267_Arcade.zip that he offers on his site. By unzipping it we obtain this tree structure.

In our example, I want to put the games 8 ways Games in a specific directory.

So I select the XML file: 8 Ways Games.xml
In Choose category, in the Custom → section, I give a name to the directory I want to create. Here I put 8 ways games but you can choose the name you want.

For the Roms not found, it is possible to move them to another directory, by checking:

If empty category or game not found, create this folder
Enter the name of the directory.

Then click on Run to start the processing.