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MAD - MAME Artwork Downloader (c) Copyright 2009 Roger Meier All rights reserved http://freeware.the-meiers.org VERSION HISTORY =============== 1.0.0 - 3/3/2009 ---------------- - Initial Release LICENSE ======= THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR HOLDERS INCLUDED IN THIS NOTICE BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, OR ANY SPECIAL INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. WHAT IS IT? =========== MAD is an application that facilitates downloading arcade image artwork such as screenshots, title, marquees, etc., for given MAME ROM names. HOW TO USE IT ============= INSTALLATION ------------ MAD comes without an installer and can be placed anywhere on the harddrive as long as the correct folder structure is maintained. I.e. the "mad.ini" must reside in the same location as the "mad.exe" executable. EXECUTION --------- mad.exe can be executed via the command line or by double-clicking the application icon in Explorer. Upon launch, MAD opens a window with a textfield, labeled "ROM Name:", a "Go" button, and a listbox whose "Row Height" can be adjusted via a slider at the bottom. Sources to download artwork from need to be configured via the mad.ini configuration file (see "CONFIGURATION" below for details). To download artwork for a given MAME ROM, simply enter the romname in the textfield and press "Go". Example: type "galaga" (without the quotation marks) in the textfield and press "Go". As the images are downloaded, a preview for each downloaded image file is displayed in the listbox below. While a download is in progress, the pushbutton can be used to "Cancel" the download. The downloaded images a stored in folders inside the folder where mad.exe resides. The folder are named after the "artwork type" as specified in mad.ini. These folders are created automatically in case they do not already exist. To download the artwork for an entire set of ROMs, select "File/ROM Folder..." to navigate to your ROM folder. MAD will then attempt to download artwork files for all the ROMs it finds in that folder. Note that only ROMs with a .zip file extension are recognized as MAME ROMs. CONFIGURATION ------------- The configuration of MAD is achieved via the "mad.ini" configuration file. "mad.ini" is loaded at startup of mad.exe, and it contains a list of artwork types and urls, separated by a TAB character (ASCII code 9). Each line has to be terminated with a line break. The entries in "mad.ini" must be in the following format: ARTWORK_TYPE<TAB>ARTWORK_URL where ARTWORK_URL is the link to the artwork file. In order for MAD to download the correct file for a given ROM, the place holder [romname] must be included in the appropriate location in the ARTWORK_URL. E.g. for MAD to download screenshots and titles from M.A.W.S., the "mad.ini" file requires the following entries: Screenshots http://maws.mameworld.info/maws/img/shots/progettosnaps/ingame/[romname].png Titles http://maws.mameworld.info/maws/img/shots/progettosnaps/titles/[romname].png When downloading artwork, MAD replaces the [romname] place holder with the ROM name for which to download artwork. |