Kodi Community Forum

(2018-03-16, 03:25)trihy Wrote: [ -> ] PM sent! 

Ok, thanks a lot.

I am still not able to reproduce it. I tested with Krypton and latest nightly. No issues on local hd or smb.

Can you also send me your config.xml file?

(2018-03-16, 11:40)malte Wrote: [ -> ]

(2018-03-16, 03:25)trihy Wrote: [ -> ] PM sent! 

Ok, thanks a lot.

I am still not able to reproduce it. I tested with Krypton and latest nightly. No issues on local hd or smb.

Can you also send me your config.xml file? 

 Done. Put some details on pm.

Well, been doing some beta testing. Great things coming for rcb

@malte, I think is time to update kodi repository?

Thanks for all the testing!

Release is coming closer but there are still some issues on my list

I forgot about mame scrape. How is that going?

It is nearly done. The history.dat parser is available and works already. I am just in the process to integrate it into the config dialogs and wizards.

trihy Wrote:I forgot about mame scrape. How is that going?

MAME scraper is ready to use now in current github version. It will parse the history.dat file that is available here: arcade-history.com.

There is also a parser for billyc999 xml files that you can get here: link.

You can add the parser when you select offline scrape option in config wizard (when adding a new Rom Collection) or just add the scraper in Edit Rom Collection dialog to existing Rom Collections.

Great. Will try that.

Do you know if there is a way to bisect history.dat? 

I mean, showing entire mame library will be a pain to navigate.

And a lot of games are A, B, C version, or clones or different regions. There is a way to select that?

Latest build doesnt work fine.

If you select one platform to scrape, when scrape starts, rcb closes and starts scraping on background, but also will try to scrape the entire library, not the platform selected.

Also no images or videos are displayed on info2 view.

I think synopsis scroll should add 3 or 4 seconds more when finish scrolling. It goes too fast to top and some are really longs to read.

trihy Wrote:Do you know if there is a way to bisect history.dat? 

I mean, showing entire mame library will be a pain to navigate.

And a lot of games are A, B, C version, or clones or different regions. There is a way to select that?

Tbh, I am not that deep into MAME. I just have some games here to test and they scrape fine with the new parser.

What do you mean exactly? Should the versions/clones/regions be removed from the file before scraping so that it does not match the wrong version of a game? Or should it be removed from your games and not be imported at all?

trihy Wrote:If you select one platform to scrape, when scrape starts, rcb closes and starts scraping on background, but also will try to scrape the entire library, not the platform selected.

In import options dialog there is a new option button: "Scrape in background (exit RCB)". If you do not select this button, scrape process should run as in earlier releases. But yes, if you select it, RCB starts a new process outside of RCB and I have to check how I can pass the selected scrape configuration to that process. Atm it just reads scraping settings from config.xml.

trihy Wrote:Also no images or videos are displayed on info2 view.

This is working fine for me. I guess this is due to an error with new clearlogo option. If you add the new filetype to config.xml it should work:
But I also added a check that it will work without. (When "official" release is build this code will be added to config.xml automatically).

trihy Wrote:I think synopsis scroll should add 3 or 4 seconds more when finish scrolling. It goes too fast to top and some are really longs to read.

Added. Thanks.

Hi, Oh, I forgot of clearlogo when updated build. Guess that was the problem.

I didnt thick the option "Scrape in background (exit RCB)" but will check again. In case is thicked, dont you think it should scrape the selected platform and not all platforms?

----
 

Yes, I was refering to before scraping, so unnecesary games wont be imported at all. When I first added mame to rcb, I read here https://github.com/maloep/romcollectionb...AMEOffline

There is a offline mame txt file in that link (MAME synopsis RCB 201202.zip) which adds 4900 roms. And there arent repeated games. Its kind of cool. Not sure how was that done. But you have one game per region or version (ie. instead of mk1 1.0, mk1 2.1, mk1 4.1 you just have mk1). Not sure what filters were applied before building that txt. If you add mame that way, you will get a better example. I even added a few games to that txt. But now is just too old and is missing newer games.

If I scrape using the history.dat, it will be show on list, even bios files, which are useless. If we can get a better history.dat will be cool. Maybe some apps like clearmame or romcenter can edit history dat. Not sure.

New test version available: 2.2.0
Thanks to trihy for tests and bug reports and for translating RCB to spanish language!

List of changes:

General

• lots of refactoring and bug fixing
  
• new supplement addon: RCB widget
  
• new translation: Spanish (thanks to trihy)
  
• fixed language ids in string-files
  
• create all artwork directories in config wizard
  

Import Games

• move from configurable scrapers to hard coded scrapers
  
• use mobygames API instead of website scraping
  
• offline scraper for MAME history.dat file
  
• offline scraper for Game-database-info xml files (provided by billyc999)
  
• remove addon setting: "Automatic: Guess Matches"
  
• remove addon setting: "Fuzzy Factor" (used in Guess Matches mode)
  
• remove explicit "local nfo" scraper
  
• new addon setting: prefer local nfo file if available
  
• always create nfo files while scraping
  
• existing nfo files will be updated with new information (no complete overwrite)
  
• remove "local artwork" scraper (not needed anymore)
  
• reduce number of sequentially invoked scrapers to 1
  
• re-enable scrape on startup option (background scraping)
  
• add background scraping option to import dialog
  
• new option in import options dialog: "Use configured default scrapers"
  
• download clearlogo artwork from thegamesdb.net
  Browse Games
  
• lots of small layout fixes
  
• load artwork files on RCB startup, no need to import artwork anymore
  
• adjust missing artwork filter to new image loading
  
• remove fullscreen video browser (replaced with fullscreen video view)
  
• removed caching options from addon settings
  
• adjust scrolling behaviour in Info 2 view
  
• set aspectratio for upper/lower/left/right images to scale in info and info2 view
  
• new addon setting: Use clearlogo as list title
  
• new addon setting: Load artwork for game lists
  
• new view: Fanart (with clearlogo and fullscreen video)
  

previous version: 2.1.5


This release changes a lot. Lots of features have been added or reworked, some features have been removed. We hope you like it.

Import Games
The main changes of this release are related to scraping and browsing games. We completely removed support for the old configurable scraper files. All scrapers are now hard coded, no chance to add new scrapers by just adding some xml parse instructions anymore. Currently RCB has three online scrapers (thegamesdb, mobygames and giantbomb) and two offline scrapers (MAME history.dat and billyc999 Game-database-info) on board.

Additionally we changed the mobygames scraper from website scraping to official API usage. This is good for us (more stable, more reliable, easier to maintain) but may be bad for you (API quota). The mobygames API is limited to 360 requests per hour. Downloading one game with all info requires 3-4 requests. In my tests I could scrape 98 games before the API quota exceeded. This limitation is valid for all RCB instances, not per user. So, if 2 or 3 users scrape at the same time you have 360 requests per hour all together. You will learn to love this error message:


So, please be gentle with the APIs. When it comes to online scraping I would suggest to do the basic scraping with thegamesdb and just fill the gaps with the mobygames or giantbomb scraper.

There are also 2 new offline scrapers available: MAME and billyc999s Game-database-info xml files. Both can be added during config wizard or via Edit Rom Collection dialog.
You can grab latest MAME history.dat file here: link
Game-database-info xml files can be grabbed here: link

Of course both of these options don't add any artwork to your collection. A good option to get artwork along with these scrapers would be emumovies.com or libretro-thumbnails. If you know any other good sources for artwork packs, please let us know.
More info about adding offline scrapers and artwork can be found in the wiki.

nfo files
There have also been some changes to the way nfo files will be handled. Like Kodi, RCB will now use available nfo files as default source if you scrape games. You can disable this behaviour in addon settings: just deactivate the option "prefer local nfo file if available" on Import Games tab.

When writing nfo files, the content of available nfo files and newly scraped data will be merged. In earlier versions, nfo files have always been overwritten.

Background scraping
Older releases of RCB already had the feature to start scraping on XBMC/Kodi startup. This feature has been re-enabled and made an option in import options dialog. So you can choose to run every scrape process in background. This means RCB will be closed and you will see the standard Kodi update message:

If you want to cancel the running import, just start RCB again and it will ask you if you would like to cancel the import process.

Reduce number of scrapers to 1
In RCB you could always use up to 3 scrapers per scrape process. This has now been reduced to 1. You can still scrape one game with different scrapers and RCB will merge the data of all scrapers but you have to do this in subsequent scrape processes.


Browsing Games
The main change in the browsing area is related to artwork loading. Artwork is now loaded on the fly, no need to import artwork anymore. So, since this release you can just drop new artwork files in RCBs artwork directories and it should be shown on next run. More info about loading artwork in the wiki.

Performance options
As loading artwork during list creation is a performance killer you can now decide to suppress this. There are two new options in Addon settings:
"Use clearlogo as list title" and "Load artwork for game lists". If you disable both of these options, list creation performance will increase significantly. Of course, this is only useful if you prefer views that don't make use of these artwork types. In current Estuary views this is only valid for "Info 2" view. So, if you want best performance, use this view and disable both of these options. More info in the wiki.

Clearlogo
Five years later I finally managed to add clearlogo support in RCB
Clearlogo can now be scraped from thegamesdb or you can get it on your own from emumovies.com. You will need to add the path to your clearlogo directory via Edit Rom Collection dialog or you can add it manually in config.xml (when you add new Rom Collections it will be added automatically). Clearlogo may be shown along with other artwork (Info or Info 2 view) or may be used as list title in Shift or Fanart view (all in Estuary skin).
This is how the Shift view looks with clearlogo artwork:



Fanart view
RCB also gets a new view in this release. This should give some room for fanart or may be used for fullscreen video playback:


RCB widget
There is a new supplement addon for RCB: Rom Collection Browser Widget
This addon will work in all skins that support the skin shortcuts addon and can be used to get your games on Kodis home screen. Currently available are the following options:

• Most played roms
  
• Random roms
  
• Recently added roms
  
• Favorite roms
  

All of these options can search inside all Rom Collections, a specific Rom Collection or a random Rom Collection.
More info how to install and configure the widget can be found here

And this is how the widget looks like on Arctic:Zephyrs home screen:



Ok, I guess thats all. If you find any bugs please report them here or on RCBs issues page.

Have fun!

Thanks for your hard work malte.

Little things I d noticed.

When selecting rescrape selection, it´s supposed to rescrape highlighted game? That way worked before. Now it takes like 1 minute and then import dialog appears, but the entire platform will be rescraped. Will be handy to have an option to rescrape a single game in case there is some name missmatch and cant be found automaticaly.

---

The other thing, when a game has video, the scroll gets affected. If you dont wait until video is played, you have to press twice to go to another game (info2 view) Not a problem, but I think before was better.

Ohter stuff works really great

(2018-04-15, 20:59)trihy Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks for your hard work malte.

Little things I d noticed.

When selecting rescrape selection, it´s supposed to rescrape highlighted game? That way worked before. Now it takes like 1 minute and then import dialog appears, but the entire platform will be rescraped. Will be handy to have an option to rescrape a single game in case there is some name missmatch and cant be found automaticaly.

There are already two options. Rescrape game and Rescrape selection. Rescrape game is what you are looking for. Rescrape selection rescrapes all games that are currently shown in the list.

Quote:The other thing, when a game has video, the scroll gets affected. If you dont wait until video is played, you have to press twice to go to another game (info2 view) Not a problem, but I think before was better.

This is what I talked about here: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2711148
For me it works good with 500. Maybe you need another value. Unfortunately I could not make it a config option.
I think the problem happens when kodi starts to prepare the video playback. You can scroll fine before this happens and when it is ready.

Hi. Thanks. Missread the options. Maybe rescrape selction is not the best choice probably rescrape collection fits better, or even better rescrape this collection.

malte, what do you think about game name editing? I mean, games that cant be found on database, gets also an nfo file.  Editing the name inside the nfo file, makes the name rcb display changes. RCB could let you manually edit that part of the nfo, for collections that doesnt have a know database.