RomVault has the ability to store your sets in a variety of ways using the Single Archive option in Directory Rules. This feature is unique to RomVault - no other ROM manager can manipulate the way sets are stored. The most common use case for Single Archives is to bundle potentially thousands of small ROMs into a single zip.

The examples below demonstrate what each option does. Assume a fictitious DAT with the following games:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<datafile>
  <header>
    <name>Demo - Single Archive Settings</name>
    <description>Demo - Single Archive Settings (20201126)</description>
    <version>20201126</version>
    <date>2020-11-26</date>
  </header>
  <game name="game1">
    <description>Game 1</description>    
    <rom name="game1.rom" size="0" crc="00000000"/>
  </game>
  <game name="game2">
    <description>Game 2</description>    
    <rom name="game2.rom" size="0" crc="00000000"/>
  </game>
  <game name="game3">
    <description>Game 3</description>    
    <rom name="file1.rom" size="0" crc="00000000"/>
    <rom name="file2.rom" size="0" crc="00000000"/>
  </game>
  <game name="game4">
    <description>Game 4</description>    
    <rom name="file1.rom" size="0" crc="00000000"/>
    <rom name="file2.rom" size="0" crc="00000000"/>
    <rom name="file3.rom" size="0" crc="00000000"/>
  </game>
  <game name="game5">
    <description>Game 5</description>    
    <rom name="game1.rom" size="0" crc="00000000"/>
  </game>
</datafile>

This will put every ROM into a subdirectory using the set name.

• game1/game1.rom
• game2/game2.rom
• game3/file1.rom
• game3/file2.rom
• game4/file1.rom
• game4/file2.rom
• game4/file3.rom
• game5/game1.rom

This will put every ROM into the base directory. If there are any ROM name conflicts, the ROMs will be renamed by appending an underscore character and an incrementing number. This setting is generally only useful if you know the DAT does not have any name conflicts across ROMs.

• file1.rom
• file1_0.rom
• file2.rom
• file2_0.rom
• file3.rom
• game1.rom
• game1_0.rom
• game2.rom

This will put every ROM into the base directory, however if there are ROM name conflicts across sets then those sets will be stored in subdirectories. This setting is useful if you prefer no subdirectories, but want to be certain you do not run into any scenarios where ROMs are renamed with an incrementing number.

• game1/game1.rom
• game2.rom
• game3/file1.rom
• game3/file2.rom
• game4/file1.rom
• game4/file2.rom
• game4/file3.rom
• game5/game1.rom

This will put ROMs into set subdirectories if the set contains multiple ROMs. All other ROMs will be placed in the base directory. Naming conflicts are handled by appending an incrementing number to the file name. This option is useful in combination with the “file” archive type for DATs that are predominately very large and poorly compressible single-file sets.

• game1.rom
• game2.rom
• game3/file1.rom
• game3/file2.rom
• game4/file1.rom
• game4/file2.rom
• game4/file3.rom
• game1_0.rom