Max Number of roms

[shadow666]

Recently i tried to load a large number of roms onto the 4GB card in my tx and have found the limit of 1024 roms per list to be a problem.

Is there anyway to make LJP read from several folders and switch between (without having to keep resetting the paths).

Or is it possible to increase the limit? Around 3000 - 4000 would be good then its possible to load complete sets of roms (the atari 2600 has a few thousand roms out there and only a few meg in total).

Any chance of this being added in the next version?

[icefire]

That feature did exist...but it was to unstable so it was removed. Try asking metaview for a version with it enabled.

BTW, there is a way to manually SORT of enable it, i posted it somewhere (search).

[astroraptor]

Might want to make it 3072 or 4096 ... wait, why would you need more than 1024 ROM's anyways? I mean, cycling through 3-4K of ROM's is unnerving.

[shadow666]

I just like the idea of being able to carry all the roms made for a given system in my Palm.

I think i will have a bit of a go at setting up an easy to change folder structure for the roms to cover this in the short term. somthing like vcs1 vcs2 etc.

Hey Metaview, any chance this could be added or will just cause too many problems?

[Tinnus]

Yes The problem is that the current code just loads the entire list at all times the console is selected, and that takes a huge amount of memory because other stuff besides fila name is loded, not to mention the time needed to build the list.

This limit originally was smaller, like 256 or 512, but I expanded it to 1024. The categories feature was originally meant to ease that since IIRC there was support for 1024 categories or something which would give you space for more than 1 million games ;D TOo bad the cat. feature is so buggy in LJP.

[icefire]

THAT was what i forgot in my LJX mockup!

[vilmos]

It is slower, but in PalmMAME I had to dump the memory for the list when launching a game, then reload when coming back to the list.

It causes a noticable delay, but the amount of info in the PalmMAME roms list is huge and prevents a lot of games from running otherwise.

[_Em]

One suggestion is to use a dynamically linked list: only store a master list of file names and populate the current screen of the rest of the details and then one screen on either side. This will speed things up considerably, while decreasing wait times for out of sequence screens to populate and draw.

[maxer]

i share the same opinion. i like to have ALL the roms for a particular system, well all the systems actually, in one place.

I do like _Em's suggestion tho ...

What I do is keep all my roms in another folder and only the ones I want to use at the moment in the actual rom folders - reduces load time.

besides, you can easily move a rom with filez or similar

[_Em]

Considering all ROMs for all systems currently weigh in at around 300GB, I can't see a reason to store them all on SD cards.

All ROMs that are actually playable in LJP is another issue... but that sounds more like goodtools sets, which includes bad dumps, 3 alternate good dumps, all the header hacks, games that never worked, games that don't work in LJP, etc. Why not just include the ones that you will actually want to play in the LJP folder and store the rest somewhere else (if you keep them at all)?

[natepless]

Help im at 1023 roms, and I can't decided if I want Shaq-Fu, Beethoven, or Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City, I shant be able to make it with out my Shaq-fu, NO ROOM FOR SHAQ-FU,

[_Em]

That made me laugh Thank you for bringing a smile to my day!

[vilmos]

The problem is that any list of any kind stores a lot of information.

You think what it can't be that big right? Well lets say you have a few thousand roms and the filename, path, and config are stored with that. Well now you are up to 2megs of data.

Since the lower end palms only have 4-6M of data that can be used for running programs you start to see the problems.

What would be preferred, SNES working, or the ability to see all the roms at once?

Note: I haven't touched the LJP code in ages so I might be talking out of my butt. The principal is true though, more features use more memory.

[icefire]

Not neccesarally with lists. You need only the filename, because the other stuff can be generated dnyamically at game launch.

[metaview]

The list only holds the filenames and is discarded when you actually start the emulation.

[shadow666]

Yeah i spose it is a little over the top to have this many roms, but i just like having lots ;D

so my solution so far is just having a few folders for each large rom set.
sms1\roms
sms2\roms

then you just change the path to get the second list. It would be good if there was some kind of shortcut to do this but it seems not to many people really need it so i spose its best not to clutter up the UI

[_Em]

I bet most people don't even realize you can change the paths in LJP Kudos to the team for providing that option though.

I do have one idea: Since you're doing full romsets, why not use the folder option when running your audits? That way, all US games are in their own folder, broken down into !, b, a, o, etc. subfolders. Then just point your path at the one you want -- it should make things easier than if you do it alphabetically.

This also reminded me of a feature request for LJX (not really for this page, but I don't know that this is even practical): support for goodmerge 7z files

[tgwaste]

it would be cool (in LJX) if the list screen worked kind of like windows explorer where it could list directories (at the top) as well.. then you tap a directory and get the list of games with a '..' at the top of course to go back. then you could do dirs a-Z and organize your games that way.

[maxer]

i want to second the two previous requests:

support for 7z
&
win explorer directories

while were at it, could LJP also be modified to play videos and mp3s so we can just have the most ultimate app in the universe? ;D

id toss out ptunes in a heartbeat!

[Tinnus]

It's kind of an idea to enable directory browsing

I won't add any music or movi-playing abilities though, sadly