Public Domain ROM Sites - Printable Version +- Kodi Community Forum (https://forum.kodi.tv) +-- Forum: Support (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=33) +--- Forum: Game support (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=292) +--- Thread: Public Domain ROM Sites (/showthread.php?tid=173355) |
RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - garbear - 2015-03-10 no he didn't RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - enen92 - 2015-03-31 My really small contribution to the cause: It lists and downloads games for dosbox emulator from archive.org. My idea was to make it executable (to be run from programs) but I found out if the addon does not provide video (in the addon.xml) we can't set the content type to movies and take advantage of the movie views. So, decided to make it a plugin video despite it doesn't provide video at all. PS1: I'm not really interested in making and having to maintain another plugin. Made this really quick just for the fun of it and to have something to play after retroplayer is out PS2: If you find the images to take a lot of time to load you can reduce the resolution on the addon settings PS3: The database has over 2000 games so as a tradeoff between load time and information the game plot is only a preview. You can read the full details by selecting the context menu of a game. PS4: I have no idea how to feed games to retroplayer and dosbox seems to have some problems in the version I have (it doesn't accept zip files). If anyone knows how to pass games to retroplayer let me know. PS5: The code has literally no license. Feel free to take it, use it, change it, eat it, whatever. PS6: So many good memories looking at the list of games Hope you enjoy Download here (no depends): https://github.com/enen92/script.retrogames/archive/master.zip RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - natethomas - 2015-03-31 Nice work, enen! RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - Scourge - 2015-04-01 That looks really nice. Just remember this 'store' will be limited to homebrew, free-/shareware and abbandonware. RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - zag - 2015-04-01 Very very cool. And not bad games either!! RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - RockerC - 2015-04-01 (2015-03-31, 17:10)enen92 Wrote: It lists and downloads games for dosbox emulator from archive.org.Very nice! Used archive.org digital library for old movies and music before but didn't know they hosted public domain software, never mind have games to download! https://archive.org/details/software Looks like archive.org have downloadable games libraries for many more game consoles and computer platforms https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom https://archive.org/details/tosec Any plans to add games for other emulators to your plugin, or other public domain sources? (2015-04-01, 10:08)Scourge Wrote: Just remember this 'store' will be limited to homebrew, free-/shareware and abbandonware.Archive.org (Internet Archive) is a registered non-profit organization that only host content that is believed to be in the public domain, such as abandonware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive Doesn't that mean that anything available to be downloaded from their digital library should be fully legal to be downloaded from there for free? RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - Scourge - 2015-04-01 As far as I know, the answer to that question is somewhat ambiguous. The rights to certain brands / titles have been sold to their current owners. Sim City, PoP and Street Fighter are all owned by publishers nowadays. The games themselves are often developed by studios that no longer exist, and that makes the question of ownership difficult. A nice read on the subject can be found here: http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2009/01/24/abandonware-the-ethics-and-essentials/1 RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - enen92 - 2015-04-01 (2015-04-01, 13:20)Scourge Wrote: As far as I know, the answer to that question is somewhat ambiguous. The rights to certain brands / titles have been sold to their current owners. Sim City, PoP and Street Fighter are all owned by publishers nowadays. The games themselves are often developed by studios that no longer exist, and that makes the question of ownership difficult. Nice read, didn't know there was such an ambiguity with abandonware. Since it is on archive.org and it is a legit organization I think any issues with content providers regarding any of the titles they have on the website will be their problem first. They'll remove it and this plugin can't list them. This simple plugin doesn't use any hack to download the media, I thought it was necessary at first but found out they have an api where they list all the files/metadata. In my opinion if this is not published on the official repository nor distributed by kodi we shouldn't have any issue at all. There is however an archive.org video plugin in the repository, I assume most of the videos belonging to studios that no longer exist will fall in the same category, am I right? If there is any concern, some moderator will most likely trash the post. For me, there's no problem with doing it at all RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - Solo0815 - 2015-04-01 @enen92: Nice one! Looking forward to use it together with the first retroplayer release from garbear RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - enen92 - 2015-04-01 (2015-04-01, 11:34)RockerC Wrote:(2015-03-31, 17:10)enen92 Wrote: It lists and downloads games for dosbox emulator from archive.org.Very nice! Used archive.org digital library for old movies and music before but didn't know they hosted public domain software, never mind have games to download! I in fact had a look at most of those public domain/homebrew games websites the problem is: 1) That should be done for a game store addon and for that to happen the game library and new content types should come first to kodi otherwise it's a terrible waste of effort making specific xml for loads of skins or a xml interface that falls completely out of the bonds of kodi UI/UX. This script is not intended at replacing or making the game store idea a reality. It is really a simple, simple script for us to have something in the meanwhile. 2) Most of those websites lack either metadata or simple information about the game and you end up with a name and a link. You don't know anything about the game you're browsing in the big screen... 3) pdroms is in fact really nice but it's a complete mess. It's just a blog aggregator of another blog posts that redirect to another blog post. Terrible and almost impossible to scrape Nicely done finding all those platforms, I haven't noticed them before. Just used the post from natham on the other thread to do "something" and to contribute to this amazing project. Adding a few more platforms to the addon is really easy. In fact I just added genesis, gamegear and atari 2600 since they have really sweet games there: Code changes: https://github.com/enen92/script.retrogames/commit/c5513bee0986cd2ea7a3624788b2da670526ea80 Download (same place): https://github.com/enen92/script.retrogames/archive/master.zip There are also a lot of other platforms according to your links. Let's do something like this: you or someone else investigate which platforms do have libretro cores available and I'll make the changes needed to add all of them to this plugin. Most of them I haven't heard of to be honest, my first video console was an atari (don't ask me the model cause I had 3 years old) in 88 or 89 and then the sega genesis in 94/95. Cheers RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - Ragnarok - 2015-04-01 So I might be wrong, but just to be safe... If memory serves, Sony and Nintendo have both won suits against folks distributing 'backups' of their games. The way may public domain sites get around that is to post a disclaimer to the effect of "By downloading this ROM you affirm that you own a physical copy of the game blah blah". To avoid legal trouble, it might not be a bad idea to put something like that in, just in case. We have a lawyer on the board that can shed some light? RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - enen92 - 2015-04-01 Well let's wait for someone with knowledge on the matter to deliberate. Wost case scenario...bin it Even if this is in a grey are I don't know how in the end this is a kodi's problem. Archive.org is a legit site and by reading the terms of use I havent found anything there that might be violating them. The big majority of game titles that lead to Takedown notices arent there (mainly NES/snes). But as written before, did this just for the fun and it was not my intention to develop it more or turn it into a complex plugin. RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - natethomas - 2015-04-01 My impression is very much that Internet Archive is a fairly well respected non-profit institution that works pretty hard to remain on the up and up. For the purpose of us using them as an Addon source, I think we're fairly safe. If a copyright dispute does arise with a content provider, they'll be the first to remove the game without our needing to worry about it. Overall this is substantially different than relying on something like one of the piracy addons, but for games. RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - RockerC - 2015-04-02 (2015-04-01, 17:13)enen92 Wrote:Latest version RetroPlayer have or will have support almost all libretro cores with exception of a few of the newer platforms which would require that RetroPlayer first support OpenGL.(2015-04-01, 11:34)RockerC Wrote: Looks like archive.org have downloadable games libraries for many more game consoles and computer platformsNicely done finding all those platforms, I haven't noticed them before. Just used the post from natham on the other thread to do "something" and to contribute to this amazing project. Adding a few more platforms to the addon is really easy. In fact I just added genesis, gamegear and atari 2600 since they have really sweet games there: Upstream there are currently libretro cores for; 3DO, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx, Atari Jaguar, Bandai WonderSwan, Sony MSX, Sony MSX2+, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Nintendo Super Famicom (Super NES), Nintendo N64, Nintendo Game and Watch, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Game Boy Color, Nintendo Virtual Boy, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii, NEC PC-Engine (TurboGrafx-16), NEC PC-FX, Magnavox Odyssey 2/ Philips Videopac G7000, MESS, SNK Neo Geo Pocket (NGP), SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color (NGPC) , PlayStation (PSX), PlayStation Portable (PSP), Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, Sega 32X, Sega MegaDrive, Sega MegaDrive CD, Sega Saturn, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Vectrex, Then there is also libreto cores for multi-platform emulation via MESS (Multi Emulator Super System), MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), UME (Universal Machine Emulator), and Final Burn Alpha (FBA) multi-platform emulation engines, plus DOS (DOSBox), LucasArt Game Engines (ScummVM), Quake (TyrQuake), and Doom (PrBoom). With MAME and FBA alone can emulate additional systems like Capcom CPS-1, Capcom CPS-2, Capcom CPS-3, Cave, Data East DEC-0, DEC-8 and DECO IC16, Galaxian, Irem M62, M63, M72, M90, M92 and M107, Kaneko 16, Konami, Neo-Geo, NMK16, Pacman based hardware, PGM, Psikyo 68EC020 and SH-2 based hardware, Sega System 1, System 16 (and similar), System 18, X-Board and Y-Board, Super Kaneko Nova System, Toaplan 1, Toaplan 2, Taito F2, X, Z and others. While MESS and UME supports even more computer platforms. http://wiki.libretro.com/index.php?title=Main_Page https://github.com/libretro https://github.com/kodi-game I think that it's now safe to assume that there are libretro cores available for almost all or at least most game consoles and computer platforms available on archive.org Anyway, here is a list of systems that it all looks to already have emulator engines as libretro cores today: Atari 8-Bit https://archive.org/details/Atari_8_bit_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Atari ST https://archive.org/details/Atari_ST_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Atari 2600 https://archive.org/details/atari_2600_library Atari 5200 https://archive.org/details/atari_5200_library Atari 7800 https://archive.org/details/atari_7800_library Bandai Wonderswan https://archive.org/details/Bandai_Wonderswan_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Magnavox Odyssey 2 & Philips Videopac G7000 https://archive.org/details/Magnavox_Odyssey_2_TOSEC_2012_04_23 NEC PC-Engine & TurboGrafx 16 https://archive.org/details/NEC_PC-Engine_TurboGrafx-16_TOSEC_2012-04-23 NEC SuperGrafx https://archive.org/details/NEC_SuperGrafx_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Neo Geo Pocket (NGP) & Neo Geo Pocket Color (NGPC) https://archive.org/details/ngp_library Nintendo Super Famicom https://archive.org/details/Super_Famicom_and_Super_Entertainment_System_TOSEC_2012_04_14 Sega Mark III & Sega Master System https://archive.org/details/Sega_Mark_III_and_Master_System_TOSEC_2012_04_13 Sega MegaDrive / Sega MegaDrive CD & Sega Genesis https://archive.org/details/Sega_Megadrive_and_Genesis_TOSEC_2012_04_13 https://archive.org/details/sega_sms_library https://archive.org/details/sega_genesis_library Sega 32x https://archive.org/details/Sega_32x_TOSEC_2012_04_13 Sega Game Gear https://archive.org/details/Sega_Game_Gear_TOSEC_2012_04_13 Sinclair ZX Spectrum https://archive.org/details/Sinclair_ZX_Spectrum_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Sony MSX MSX2+ https://archive.org/details/MSX_MSX_Plus_TOSEC_2012_04_23 And here below are additional systems that I'm not sure if they have emulator engines as libretro cores today (but have not checked with MESS, MAME, or Final Burn Alpha): Acorn Archimedes https://archive.org/details/Acorn_Archimedes_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Amiga CDTV https://archive.org/details/Amiga_CDTV_TOSEC_2009_04_18 Amstrad GX-4000 https://archive.org/details/gx4000_library Amstrad CPC https://archive.org/details/Amstrad_CPC_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Apple II https://archive.org/details/Apple_2_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Apple IIgs https://archive.org/details/Apple_II_GS_TOSEC_2012_04_23 APF-MP1000 https://archive.org/details/apfm1000_library Bally Professional Arcade & Astrocade https://archive.org/details/Bally_Professional_Arcade_and_Astrocade_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Camputers Lynx https://archive.org/details/Camputers_Lynx_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Coleco ColecoVision https://archive.org/details/Coleco_ColecoVision_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Commodore C64 https://archive.org/details/Commodore_C64_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Commodore C-128 https://archive.org/details/Commodore_C128_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Commodore VIC-20 https://archive.org/details/Commodore_VIC20_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Commodore C16, C116 & Plus-4 https://archive.org/details/Commodore_C16_C116_Plus_4_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Commodore Amiga https://archive.org/details/Commodore_Amiga_TOSEC_2012_04_10 Emerson Arcadia Library https://archive.org/details/emerson_arcadia_library Epoch Super Cassette Vision https://archive.org/details/Epoch_Super_Cassette_Vision_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Epoch Game Pocket Computer https://archive.org/details/gamepocket_library Entex Adventure Vision https://archive.org/details/adventurevision_library Fairchild Channel F https://archive.org/details/channelf_library Mattel Aquarius https://archive.org/details/mattelaquarius Mattel Intellivision https://archive.org/details/intellivision Mega Duck WG-108 https://archive.org/details/megaduck_library Sinclair ZX81 https://archive.org/details/Sinclair_ZX81_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Sinclair QL https://archive.org/details/Sinclair_QL_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Sega SG-1000 https://archive.org/details/sg_1000_library Sega Visual Memory System https://archive.org/details/Sega_Visual_Memory_System_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Super A'Can https://archive.org/details/superacan_library Socrates https://archive.org/details/socrates_library Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer https://archive.org/details/Tandy_TRS80_Color_Computer_TOSEC_2012_04_23 VTech Creativision https://archive.org/details/vtech_creativision_library RE: Public Domain ROM Sites - Scourge - 2015-04-02 (2015-04-01, 19:59)natethomas Wrote: My impression is very much that Internet Archive is a fairly well respected non-profit institution that works pretty hard to remain on the up and up. For the purpose of us using them as an Addon source, I think we're fairly safe. If a copyright dispute does arise with a content provider, they'll be the first to remove the game without our needing to worry about it. Overall this is substantially different than relying on something like one of the piracy addons, but for games. Thanks for settling this debate If that's the guideline, we're in the clear for this. |