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Beta Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Printable Version

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RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2019-03-15

(2019-03-15, 16:28)Nibako Wrote: Ok Smile Yes, I can download them all manually and put the in over "edit rom" but it is a very slow process... Moreover I am not sure how to import the metadata and where to get them for my Wii-Roms..

You can do that, but it is quicker to download the assets in a bunch and then place them in the appropriate directories. Then, in the Launcher context menu rescan for the assets and AEL will pick them up.

You have links for artwork download on the first post, check them out.

For the metadata currently you have to rely on the offline scraper (I know now is total crap for some platforms...) or export the NFO files, then edit the NFO files, then reimport the NFO files.


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Nibako - 2019-03-15

(2019-03-15, 16:36)Wintermute0110 Wrote:
(2019-03-15, 16:28)Nibako Wrote: Ok Smile Yes, I can download them all manually and put the in over "edit rom" but it is a very slow process... Moreover I am not sure how to import the metadata and where to get them for my Wii-Roms..

You can do that, but it is quicker to download the assets in a bunch and then place them in the appropriate directories. Then, in the Launcher context menu rescan for the assets and AEL will pick them up.

You have links for artwork download on the first post, check them out.

For the metadata currently you have to rely on the offline scraper (I know now is total crap for some platforms...) or export the NFO files, then edit the NFO files, then reimport the NFO files. 
 Ok sounds good! Thank you! Is there something to support this project?


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Nibako - 2019-03-16

Is there a way to stop the emulators with the controller? I found one for dolphin, but for Project64 i have no clue.


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2019-03-19

(2019-03-16, 04:10)Nibako Wrote: Is there a way to stop the emulators with the controller? I found one for dolphin, but for Project64 i have no clue.

You need what I call a media center friendly emulator or app. A MCF emulator allows total control of the menus with a gamepad, including exiting the emulator. Both Retroarch and MAME are MCF emulators. I recommend you try Retroarch, you have access to over 50 emulated platforms, including Gamecube/Wii and Nintendo 64, with a common user interface.


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Brian D - 2019-03-21

(2019-03-15, 16:28)Nibako Wrote: Ok Smile Yes, I can download them all manually and put the in over "edit rom" but it is a very slow process... Moreover I am not sure how to import the metadata and where to get them for my Wii-Roms..

The easiest way I found is kind of ironic but if you install RCB (Rom Collection Browser) the scraper still works. So scrape everything with that and then you can remove it w/o issue. In fact RCB uses the same folder structure for boxart as far as I can tell.

Just make sure you get the latest online, the one that supports retroplayer. That way you don't have to select an emulator setting it up. The one in the repo is older and doesn't support selecting kodi/retroplayer as the emu during setup.

Once RCB is done scraping go into AEL and under each launcher Edit Launcher > Manage Roms... > Import ROMS metadata from NFO files. Just make sure the NFOs have the right path to the boxart, which it should. RCB will create an NFO for every file, even if it can't find any info online. Just edit those with any missing info.

AEL IMHO is better then RCB, just not at scraping right now...


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2019-03-22

(2019-03-21, 19:55)Brian D Wrote: ...

AEL IMHO is better then RCB, just not at scraping right now...

I don't like to make comparisons. AEL started as a fork of AL (which was itself a fork of the original Launcher addon) and has taken some ideas from RCB. Malte is free to cherrypick whatever feature from AEL he thinks fit. That's the motto of FOSS software Smile

I think RCB is perfect for small, curated collections where all your games are in one place. For big or huge collections, for example a full No-Intro set including most platforms, about 40,000 ROMs in total, then use AEL which can perfectly handle that.

Over the last year I did a lot of work on Advanced MAME Launcher and I am quite happy with the final result. The premise of the AML project was to see if Kodi can handle a complete MAME frontend, capable of dealing with 40,000 MAME machines and 100,000 Software List items satisfactorily, with reasonable delays when displaying the games. The premise proved to be true Smile

I will release AML 0.9.9 today and then focus on getting AEL 0.10.0 back on track. In addition to the many new features contributed by Chrisism there are many things that need to be ported from AML into AEL, like the PDF manual reader. Please be patient.


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Steel99 - 2019-04-02

I know it is more a skin question, but in the skin thread i did not get an answer yet.....

Aeon MQ8 has support for AEL now. Does anyone use this skin and has managed to get AEL working as expected? I mean setting up AEL games as widget with artwork or something....

....i couldn't find a way to set this up so far .....

Thanks.


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2019-04-02

(2019-04-02, 17:05)Steel99 Wrote: I know it is more a skin question, but in the skin thread i did not get an answer yet.....

Aeon MQ8 has support for AEL now. Does anyone use this skin and has managed to get AEL working as expected? I mean setting up AEL games as widget with artwork or something....

....i couldn't find a way to set this up so far .....

Thanks.

I installed Aeon NOX MQ8 to do some tests.

This is how a launcher looks like. This view is displaying the plot metadata and the Poster, Clearlogo and Fanart. By the way, there is a bug in the skin, the width of the list items is wrong.

Image

I'm now using the Right List view in a ROM launcher.

Image

Almost all AEL metadata is displayed. For artwork, Icon (mapped to Boxfront), Clearlogo and Fanart are shown.

Image

If you press Left Arrow the view displays the plot and the Snap.

Image

You can use the Matrix view in Estuary AEL to show all the artwork and metadata AEL has, to test your setup. Note how the Boxfront/Cabinet is mapped into the standard Kodi type Icon.

Image

To test if the artwork is correctly setup you have 2 options:

1) Open a Launcher or ROM context menu, and then go to "Edit assets". You should be able to see the assets in the select dialog.

2) Open a Launcher or ROM context menu, go to "View", and then "Display Launcher/ROM data". You will see the raw database entry AEL uses. Look for the fields named s_*, for example, s_boxfront, s_title, etc., and check that they point to the PNG/JPG files.

If you need help then you will need to describe what you are doing exactly. If there is some step you don't understand I will update the documentation.


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Steel99 - 2019-04-02

Thanks Wintermute for testing and explanation.

But what is new here, i don't see something, that did not work in Aeon MQ7 ....ok besides more artwork like clearart, but i'm fine with only boxart and fanart and the game description.

Where do you get to this views? Are you choosing AEL program addon or did you integrate it into the "Games" Main Menu item?

Actually i thought, i can use widgets in the main menu of the skin (press arrow up) to access the games including seeing artwork and metadata there. The only way to get widgets, is marking a game as Kodi Favorite and use it as widget, but then i only get a standard icon without any artwork.

Maybe i misunderstood this "new" feature of MQ8 .....i will do some further tests tomorrow.


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2019-04-03

(2019-04-02, 21:23)Steel99 Wrote: Where do you get to this views? Are you choosing AEL program addon or did you integrate it into the "Games" Main Menu item?

Actually i thought, i can use widgets in the main menu of the skin (press arrow up) to access the games including seeing artwork and metadata there. The only way to get widgets, is marking a game as Kodi Favorite and use it as widget, but then i only get a standard icon without any artwork.

I go to "Programs" main menu, then "Program addons", and open AEL. You have to enable the views in AEL, open the menu on the top, go to views, then press up and a dialog with ON/OFF buttons show. Enable all the views to test.

I tried to create a widget of AEL on the main menu, but apparently with MQ8 you can't. MQ8 seems to support only predefined widgets (for example, "Recently added Movies"). Other skins, like Titan, support dynamic widgets using the Skin Helper service addon. A dynamic widget means that you can choose the contents of any list in any addon as the widget content. For example, you choose AEL ROM Collections as the content of the widget. This widget is called dynamic because the contents change if you change the ROM Collections you have. Note that the widgets you see in Estuary AEL in the Home window (AEL Favourites, Categories and Launchers) are dynamic but hard-coded in the skin (you cannot change or configure them).

Yes, you can mark any item in AEL as a Kodi Favourite (which is different from AEL Favourite) and then create a widget with your Favourites in the Home window. However, Favourites only have the standard Kodi artwork types (Icon, Fanart, Poster, Banner, Clearlogo) and most skins just use Icon and Fanart and ignore the other artwork types. Before creating the favourite, make sure AEL is mapping the correct asset you want as Icon, and that the asset exists at the time of the Favourite creation.


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - sagrath - 2019-04-03

(2019-04-03, 10:01)Wintermute0110 Wrote: I tried to create a widget of AEL on the main menu, but apparently with MQ8 you can't.

Yes, you can, there's a small bug in code of the skin, but depends what version of AEL you using


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Mysticalp - 2019-04-08

I have been working for a while on an exporter from LaunchBox data into AEL and thought I would probably help someone if I sent the link here. Maybe it could even be added directly to AEL in some way.

The link is https://github.com/jmriego/emulation
The basic instructions are to download that repo, create a config.ini based on the config.ini.example and then run LaunchBox2AEL.py

It should export everything from LaunchBox and let AEL access the images in the LaunchBox folders directly
I use that to have categories, launchers and games populated as easily as possible

If you have any issue with it, please send me a message or open an issue in https://github.com/jmriego/emulation/issues
That way we won't annoy the rest of the people in this thread

Enjoy!


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2019-04-09

@Mysticalp Excellent work! Thanks a lot for sharing.

@everyone I know AEL 0.10.0 is taking longer than expected, but work is being done. Here you have sample of one of the new features: automatic generation of 3D Boxes from other assets (Boxfront and Clearlogo). Those images have been generated with the current AML development version, no gimmicks, no catches. Enjoy and please be patient Smile

Image

Image


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Mysticalp - 2019-04-10

@Wintermute0110 sure thing. I use AEL a lot so why not give something back? Smile

That looks amazing. Looking forward to the new version


RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - jrod10133 - 2019-04-12

hey how do i setup my own roms i went in the setting of AEL and enter the path of my roms in favorites and collections but im still getting a notification telling me no collections in database add a collection first im on a shield tv and my roms are in a external hd