Hi all,
I was recently attempting to set up my front end with ES-DE and was looking to create some M3U files to make the directories a bit cleaner and not having to disc swap on multi disc games.
I found this to be a bit tedious and couldn't really find a tool that suited all my needs which was simple/fast to use.
I ended up working on a small project over the last few days which I'm going to leave here in case anyone else wants to use it themselves. Having been a few years since I've done any programming it was partially vibe coded but not entirely mostly kinking out some errors and setting up the GUI since I'm not the best with aesthetics.
I currently have no plans to add anymore features or continued support so I left the script fully open source. On the releases page there is a pre compiled exe or you can download the zip where I left the full script to be run on Linux or modified to your liking.
https://github.com/DonkeyW4nker/Simple-Multi-Disc-M3U-Generator
I have limited the extensions that can be used with the program to only include extensions for most if not all of the consoles with multi disc games for ease of use. I just remembered my first time trying to setup these files I had tried to use the bin files on psx instead of the cue files which caused me a headache so this way there should be no room for error.
There are currently 3 use cases for the generator in place with single file generations, Multi file generation, and editing existing m3u files.
- Single FIle - The base use case where you can go 1 by 1 and select your files to generate a single game at a time
- Multi File - Will scrape and entire folder and auto detect all games listed with Disc 1, (disc 1), CD1, etc. and compile them into a list to make multiple files at once
- Editor - added in case you want to make a quick adjustment like adding a missing disc, changing paths, or any other reason (Note. the editor adjusts path based m3u files into path based and filename into filename it cannot convert one to the other.)
To help prevent potential errors with the generation there is a tight check that file names are the same extensions and titles so you don't accidentally mismatch something like final fantasy VII (Disc 1) and Final Fantasy VIII (disc 2) with a bypass dialogue should the check be too stringent.
There is also a feature to swap between relative path generation and file name only generation. For anyone that doesn't know the difference:
- Relative Path - Will generate the m3u file along using the path that your rom is currently sitting in (Eg E:/Emulation/roms/psx/Chrono Cross (disc 1).Cue) this is useful for if you have the rom files sitting in a separate directory and you can reference multiple discs without having to move them
- Filename Only - This setting will generate just as the file names read (Eg Chrono Cross (disc 2).cue) when generating it will populate the m3u file into a folder named Chrono Cross.m3u where you will have to populate the folder with the rom files used for generation. This is more useful for front ends like ES-DE that will read the entire folder as 1 game
If any errors are encountered let me know and I will see about working on it given my free time but this program has already done what I've needed of it so far I just wanted to share for anyone else working on setting up bulk directories.