(2016-03-11, 16:16)Tetriser Wrote: hi

I'm new to both Kodi and RCB.

I want to find a good emulator frontend for my laptop, but none of those I found is useful. The frontends that I found is EmulationStation (broken scraper, cannot find games with punctuation marks like F-Zero or Pac 'n Roll), LaunchBox (since the developer changed the app to include paid features, I've no idea if I want to use this anymore...), AdvanceMenu (customizable, but not really good) and mGalaxy (tad outdated...).

Finally, I downloaded and installed Kodi and RCB. But there's a block that prevents it from working properly.

When I want to scrape infos for a Pokémon game, it wasn't updated. After observing the log file, I've found the problem:

ERROR: C:\Users\Tetriser\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\addons\script.games.rom.collection.browser\resources\lib\dbupdate.py:692: UnicodeWarning: Unicode unequal comparison failed to convert both arguments to Unicode - interpreting them as being unequal

I'm not sure if I'm correct, but I'm really sure that this could be Python's limitations with Unicode characters (as the word Pokémon has a Unicode character "é", I dunno), so it rollback into an emty response or "null result".

(2016-03-18, 06:56)Zpectre87 Wrote:

(2016-03-11, 16:16)Tetriser Wrote: hi

I'm new to both Kodi and RCB.

I want to find a good emulator frontend for my laptop, but none of those I found is useful. The frontends that I found is EmulationStation (broken scraper, cannot find games with punctuation marks like F-Zero or Pac 'n Roll), LaunchBox (since the developer changed the app to include paid features, I've no idea if I want to use this anymore...), AdvanceMenu (customizable, but not really good) and mGalaxy (tad outdated...).


Finally, I downloaded and installed Kodi and RCB. But there's a block that prevents it from working properly.

When I want to scrape infos for a Pokémon game, it wasn't updated. After observing the log file, I've found the problem:

ERROR: C:\Users\Tetriser\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\addons\script.games.rom.collection.browser\resources\lib\dbupdate.py:692: UnicodeWarning: Unicode unequal comparison failed to convert both arguments to Unicode - interpreting them as being unequal

I'm not sure if I'm correct, but I'm really sure that this could be Python's limitations with Unicode characters (as the word Pokémon has a Unicode character "é", I dunno), so it rollback into an emty response or "null result".

In my list I usually don't have ROMs whose names have accents in them. In LaunchBox the problem is the opposite, it can't scrape Pokémon metadata from my ROMs because it requires the accent.

The plugin itself is fine, but these scraper sucks, not the code's fault but the websites don't function right. Recently TGDB was struck by their host because of data overload, which sucks because it's the most reliable DB. GameFAQs is a walled garden unfortunately, which is why malte didn't even bother coding a scraper for it, and the others are either slow or broken.

The LaunchBox DB will be open to contribution but I have some bad suspicion that they won't allow anyone but LaunchBox itself to scrape it for data, since if you can use a free program that looks better and integrates better with Kodi instead of the $20 BigBox then what is the point of BigBox, right?

Nevertheless, if the RetroPlayer manages to make its way into Krypton 17 then these launcher addons will become obsolete, I think.

(2016-03-18, 07:57)sudopinion Wrote: I think you may find that ultimately, kodi is far superior to launchbox if given a bit of effort. If you want more granular control, Advanced-Launcher is great.
Launchbox has extensive features, and it's quick to setup.

HOWEVER

The developer of launchbox is using a proprietary cataloging scheme which obfuscates the names of artwork assets so I would suspect that even if the db is open to contribution, there is little to no reason in maintaining a standardized convention, in fact, given that it's payware it would seem that it's inevitable.

I don't know how he views himself in the community. Perhaps he's just trying to feed himself like any normal person.

(2016-03-18, 07:57)sudopinion Wrote: I think you may find that ultimately, kodi is far superior to launchbox if given a bit of effort.

(2016-03-23, 09:40)Loto_Bak Wrote: I added a small patch to the %romname% variable to handle custom pcsx2 config directories.

(2016-03-23, 18:08)Loto_Bak Wrote: Sure,

In rom collection browser code I added

/lib/launcher.py line 420
https://github.com/anarcat/romcollectionbrowser/blob/master/resources/lib/launcher.py

Code:

    romname_nospace = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(rom))[0].replace(" ", "_")
    emuParams = emuParams.replace('%romname_nospace%', romname_nospace )
    emuParams = emuParams.replace('%ROMNAME_NOSPACE%', romname_nospace )
    emuParams = emuParams.replace('%Romname_Nospace%', romname_nospace )

Be aware that python is white space aware! Make sure the indentation is correct otherwise you'll get errors.

My config.xml uses the options (from memory sorry!)

Code:

--fullscreen --fullboot --cfgpath="c:\users\<username>\Documents\PCSX2\<config directory>\%ROMNAME_NOSPACE%.ini"

Thats from memory... I think thats right.
I forget the name of the <config directory> in the pcsx2 directory. Just look for the one with ini's in it.

The problem with this setup is that it makes a new config for each and every game.
this means the first time you run EVERY game the config screen pops up and you have to select a bios, change to 16:9 and configure the gfx plugin.
Its kind of a pain the first time you play each game but it allows custom configs when some games need different settings
I needed it for Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 which needs skipdraw:5

Hope that helps

(2016-03-23, 18:08)Loto_Bak Wrote: Sure,

In rom collection browser code I added

/lib/launcher.py line 420
https://github.com/anarcat/romcollectionbrowser/blob/master/resources/lib/launcher.py

Code:

    romname_nospace = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(rom))[0].replace(" ", "_")
    emuParams = emuParams.replace('%romname_nospace%', romname_nospace )
    emuParams = emuParams.replace('%ROMNAME_NOSPACE%', romname_nospace )
    emuParams = emuParams.replace('%Romname_Nospace%', romname_nospace )

Be aware that python is white space aware! Make sure the indentation is correct otherwise you'll get errors.

My config.xml uses the options (from memory sorry!)

Code:

--fullscreen --fullboot --cfgpath="c:\users\<username>\Documents\PCSX2\<config directory>\%ROMNAME_NOSPACE%.ini"

Thats from memory... I think thats right.
I forget the name of the <config directory> in the pcsx2 directory. Just look for the one with ini's in it.

The problem with this setup is that it makes a new config for each and every game.
this means the first time you run EVERY game the config screen pops up and you have to select a bios, change to 16:9 and configure the gfx plugin.
Its kind of a pain the first time you play each game but it allows custom configs when some games need different settings
I needed it for Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 which needs skipdraw:5

Hope that helps

*edit
Don't be tempted by the -cfg="file" setting. It does not store plugin settings which are the ones that need to be changed for some games.

(2016-03-23, 18:28)Loto_Bak Wrote: Oh sure. I havn't had need for custom configs on retro really.
I just use

Code:

-L /path/to/retro/code.dll %ROM%

Has anyone had issues with kodi not going back fullscreen after closing retroarch?
ppsspp, pcsx2 and others do not seem to have this problem

(2016-03-26, 19:17)trihy Wrote: I can scan lnk and url and windows games have sound.