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[RELEASE] Rom Collection Browser - Browse and launch emulator game ROMs - Printable Version

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+---- Thread: [RELEASE] Rom Collection Browser - Browse and launch emulator game ROMs (/showthread.php?tid=70115)



- malte - 2011-01-30

Thanks for the hint with the pathes. I did not know that it behaves like this.

We are discussing ways to make scraping a background process but I am not sure if it will be easy/possible to do this. Additionally there may be some improvements in the future that will speed up scraping (scraping in general and new sites with faster APIs).


- cyberdad - 2011-01-30

I thought it would be difficult. But if possible I am sure you ll figure it out.
What I noticed was that, while scrapping, you cant really cancel the process. I tried, but in the end, I just had to kill the xbmc process. If that is indeed the case then maybe you could work on making the canceling process effective. This way one could stop at a time and continue scraping at a later time. Of course this could just be me and I am talking nonsense.
Anyway, keep up the good work!


- Thrasher666 - 2011-01-30

No, it is not only you. I tried again and gave rom collection browser a new chance...but without adding singular roms or manually add without editing so much code by hand i use advanced launcher ...the big big negative of advanced launcher addon is, that you cant sort by genre...with a lot of roms it is too hard to use it in a useful way, on the other hand the scraping procedure is much too long for collection browser...

The guys do their best i think but to manage big collections it is still too hard for regular people

The best way at the moment is, to manage the important roms you like put them in one folder and scrape a limit.


- malte - 2011-01-30

The Cancel button works in version 0.8.0. There are also some more features included. You can download it manually and install via zip file.

Yes, scraping is very slow in RCB. With the default settings it scrapes 3 different sites and most of the sites require several requests to get all data. Additionally RCB supports 5 different types of artwork that need to be downloaded. The slowest scraper is mobygames as we have to request 7 different pages to get all data we need. But atm mobygames has the most complete database (with more or less non-restrictive terms of use). So we can't drop it.

There are two new game database projects in the pipeline that promise to have an equal or even bigger database than moby or others and both provide fast APIs where we can fetch all data with 1-2 requests. I hope they will both be up and running in the next months.

For the next version we are working on some improvements of the scrape process that will make the handling a bit more easy. E.g. you will be asked what scrapers you want to use before scraping is started. There will also be different scraping modes (Automatic:Accurate - will only import the rom if we are 100% sure that it is the correct game, Automatic:Guess Matches - will try to guess the correct game and may lead to wrong results, Interactive: Select Matches - import all 100% roms automatically and ask for the ones that we are not sure about). But this is more for accuracy than speed.


- cyberdad - 2011-01-30

<EDIT>
I was asking something in this post but I was mistaken. So I will just say that 0.8.0 is very nice.
</EDIT>


Question from new user - caylor02 - 2011-01-31

Hello, I just installed dharma and Rom Collection Browser worked great before but now when I go to launch games it won't launch SNES or NES games automatically. These are the only emu's I have setup at the moment.

Please help!!

Thanks

Adam


- malte - 2011-01-31

I guess that you updated RCB with dharma from version 0.6.x to 0.7/0.8? Just a guess but this would explain the behaviour.

Please check the file config.xml in XBMC/userdata/addon_data/script.games.rom.collection.browser. There should be two elements per RomCollection looking like this (depending on your emu and params of course):
Code:
<emulatorCmd>zsnes -m "%ROM%"</emulatorCmd>
<emulatorParams>please move your params here</emulatorParams>
If this is the case change these lines to:
Code:
<emulatorCmd>zsnes</emulatorCmd>
<emulatorParams>-m "%ROM%"</emulatorParams>

This changed in version 0.7.4 and I did not want to write code that guesses which part of your commandline is command and what is parameters. So I decided to let the user do this on his own.


If my guess was wrong and you have another problem please post your log file after you tried to launch a game.


- caylor02 - 2011-02-02

malte Wrote:I guess that you updated RCB with dharma from version 0.6.x to 0.7/0.8? Just a guess but this would explain the behaviour.

Please check the file config.xml in XBMC/userdata/addon_data/script.games.rom.collection.browser. There should be two elements per RomCollection looking like this (depending on your emu and params of course):
Code:
<emulatorCmd>zsnes -m "%ROM%"</emulatorCmd>
<emulatorParams>please move your params here</emulatorParams>
If this is the case change these lines to:
Code:
<emulatorCmd>zsnes</emulatorCmd>
<emulatorParams>-m "%ROM%"</emulatorParams>

This changed in version 0.7.4 and I did not want to write code that guesses which part of your commandline is command and what is parameters. So I decided to let the user do this on his own.


If my guess was wrong and you have another problem please post your log file after you tried to launch a game.


Well, that worked great. However when I go to add my genesis roms it always stops working at "building file list"

Any ideas?

Thanks

Adam


- malte - 2011-02-02

Not without a log. Please upload your xbmc.log at pastebin and link it here. Then I can check what went wrong.


- caylor02 - 2011-02-02

malte Wrote:Not without a log. Please upload your xbmc.log at pastebin and link it here. Then I can check what went wrong.

I'm apparently not good with log files, one I pulled it I found an error in the xml and I restarted XBMC and it worked fine. However, when you launch a rom and after you exit out, I can't get out of the XBMC interface. Anybody else have this issue?

Thanks

Adam


- malte - 2011-02-03

Not sure, if I understand this correctly. I had a similar problem with Camelot (or my Camelot/Dharma side by side installation). When I was launching an emulator in full screen and went back to RCB it was not able to handle the onAction event anymore. Means that you can navigate around in RCB but you can't exit RCB or launch new games. Only thing that worked for me was Alt+F4 to close XBMC. Is this what you are talking about?

I did some debug sessions to get an idea what happens but I had no luck. I assumed that it was a problem with my special installation (Camelot and Dharma on the same PC) because it really looked like XBMC was behaving wrong, not RCB. And the problem only occured in Camelot, not in Dharma. You say you did update from Camelot to Dharma. Did you uninstall Camelot first? Maybe you still have some parts of Camelot in your environment?


- caylor02 - 2011-02-03

malte Wrote:Not sure, if I understand this correctly. I had a similar problem with Camelot (or my Camelot/Dharma side by side installation). When I was launching an emulator in full screen and went back to RCB it was not able to handle the onAction event anymore. Means that you can navigate around in RCB but you can't exit RCB or launch new games. Only thing that worked for me was Alt+F4 to close XBMC. Is this what you are talking about?

I did some debug sessions to get an idea what happens but I had no luck. I assumed that it was a problem with my special installation (Camelot and Dharma on the same PC) because it really looked like XBMC was behaving wrong, not RCB. And the problem only occured in Camelot, not in Dharma. You say you did update from Camelot to Dharma. Did you uninstall Camelot first? Maybe you still have some parts of Camelot in your environment?

Well, I removed my old XBMC install before I went to Dharma.

However, the problem you are describing is my exact issue.

If I make a copy of my userdata folder and uninstall XBMC and then reinstall xbmc and replace my userdata folder will all my settings be there?

Thanks for all your help.


Great Work - Alceste - 2011-02-03

Hey there I've been searching for a good solution to integrate my roms into my HTPC but none could convince me. Yours is on the best way to do so, and has already "persuaded" on giving up on Hyperspin. Anyways I have a little request: could you please post the platform ids for the moby games scraper ? As I configure the .xml by hand this might come in handy.
Finally I would like to take the opportunity to post some critique (constructive, I hope):
*it would be great to have some kind of a wall view, as known from movies
*a filter option might come in Handy, too. (like typing a "b", making the plugin search for all the titles beginning with a "b" in the selected platform\genre. typing an "a" would then make it display all titles beginning with "ba" etc. By the way I would really love to see such a search on movies and music, too)
*the 2 Menus (The filter menu on the top end of the screen and the view menu on the bottom end of the screen) aren't too practical. I often get stuck in between the 2. Maybe it would be a good idea to merge both and havon only 1 Menu either on the top or at the bottom of the screen.

So far my critque. I hope you guys will keep up the great work. Thank you so much!

Alceste


- malte - 2011-02-03

caylor02 Wrote:If I make a copy of my userdata folder and uninstall XBMC and then reinstall xbmc and replace my userdata folder will all my settings be there?
Not sure. I am also not sure where the cached data may reside. I guess it will be in the userdata folder, not in the install dir. So it could be a better idea to check the userdata folder for cached data and try to clean this up.

Alceste Wrote:Anyways I have a little request: could you please post the platform ids for the moby games scraper ? As I configure the .xml by hand this might come in handy.
You can find the ids here.

Alceste Wrote:it would be great to have some kind of a wall view, as known from movies
I would like to have this, too. So I am sure it will come some day but it has a low prio atm.

Alceste Wrote:a filter option might come in Handy, too. (like typing a "b", making the plugin search for all the titles beginning with a "b" in the selected platform\genre. typing an "a" would then make it display all titles beginning with "ba" etc.
There already is the option to select games by first character in the filter controls. Additionally there will come a search text box or similar that allows you to type a name or part of a name and it will search for all games matching this search text. I guess this will be available with one of the next releases.

Alceste Wrote:the 2 Menus (The filter menu on the top end of the screen and the view menu on the bottom end of the screen) aren't too practical. I often get stuck in between the 2. Maybe it would be a good idea to merge both and havon only 1 Menu either on the top or at the bottom of the screen.
Yes, I also don't like this. I thought about moving the bottom menu to the left like the usual Confluence menu, but I guess this won't solve your issueSmile

I will think about it again. Anyway, most options of the bottom menu will be moved to the new context menu. The only thing remaining in the bottom menu will be the "Change View" button. But I also think about adding new options there (like "Hide games without artwork", ...)


quick question - Alceste - 2011-02-04

Hey first of all: You're really quick in replying - I'm not used to this, since some addon programmers don't answer you at all (which is Ok, as long as there is no question involved) - so big compliment to you (I mean programming alone must be time consuming enough).
Anyway I have question:
I thought I had understood how this works, but unfortunately I was proven wrong. After having deleted the content of the media folder, i assigned in the config.xml, for one of my platforms I surprisingly saw that all the images are still being displayed in XBMC. How can this be? Are they being stored double?
Apparently I cant make them disappear (the reason why I want to erase them in order to rescrape them is, that I assigned the genesis platform by accident the mobygames id of the SNES giving me only covers from the SNES games) without assigning the whole platform a new id, which could make the whole thing quite confusing if for one reason I should have to repair or port my collection.

thanks in advance

Alceste