2012-08-01, 10:40
First off - THANK YOU. This is a fabulous addon that has really inspired me to turn my home theatre into a properly old school arcade. Speed is a major challenge for me, as I'm using one of those little ASRock machines, and I have 700 NES, 700 SNES, 6000 MAME and a whole lotta 2600. However, with a little patience, and some careful use of the favourites feature, all is well. Next step is to add video previews.
It hasn't been all smooth sailing, however, so I thought you'd like some feedback. I'm using 1.01 on xbmcbuntu Eden 11.0 and all roms and artwork are stored locally - CACHEALL slowed things down, so now its just CACHEITEM. (I tried RCB 1.05 but it was a bit unstable). Pity - the 'ignore all future errors' is a great help during import:
* The degree symbol (as in 720°) in a rom file name will crash the plugin during an import. I looked at xbmc.log to confirm that it was an RCB error that caused the unexpected xbmc termination. I can fetch this for you if this is news to you, but I suspect that it's not.
* Nox skin compatibility has been a major issue - I've had to revert xbmc back to confluence. The documentation suggests that RCB is skin-independent, but this hasn't been my experience. Specific problems in Nox are speed (xbmc confluence+rcb confluence is 10 times faster) and interface. The nox version of RCB sets the filters to the left, and does not let you see the prev+next options for each category. This results in a column of options that all say 'all'. Your default in confluence is much better, as I can clearly see which one is year, publisher etc. The InfoWall option of Nox, however is a great balance between pretty and functional for a large collection, as it displays over a dozen roms at a time, and cover recognition is often faster and easier than reading a list of text.
* As speed has been such a large issue for me, I miss a feature to interrupt a collection load. Say I accidentally click on MAME with favourites de-selected for example - that mistake will cost quite a bit of time.
* Another thing that takes some getting used to is if I accidentally choose NES, instead of SNES, then quickly correct my filter it will not interrupt the NES collection load. But, once NES has loaded it won't trigger the selected SNES one automatically either. So I then have to load a third collection (or toggle favourites), wait for that to load, then make the correct choice. I guess this is really just another side-effect of not being able to interrupt a collection load.
As I said though, this is a fantastic addon in it's current form, and I am grateful for it as is. If you intend to continue development, then by all means add this feedback to the pile.
It hasn't been all smooth sailing, however, so I thought you'd like some feedback. I'm using 1.01 on xbmcbuntu Eden 11.0 and all roms and artwork are stored locally - CACHEALL slowed things down, so now its just CACHEITEM. (I tried RCB 1.05 but it was a bit unstable). Pity - the 'ignore all future errors' is a great help during import:
* The degree symbol (as in 720°) in a rom file name will crash the plugin during an import. I looked at xbmc.log to confirm that it was an RCB error that caused the unexpected xbmc termination. I can fetch this for you if this is news to you, but I suspect that it's not.
* Nox skin compatibility has been a major issue - I've had to revert xbmc back to confluence. The documentation suggests that RCB is skin-independent, but this hasn't been my experience. Specific problems in Nox are speed (xbmc confluence+rcb confluence is 10 times faster) and interface. The nox version of RCB sets the filters to the left, and does not let you see the prev+next options for each category. This results in a column of options that all say 'all'. Your default in confluence is much better, as I can clearly see which one is year, publisher etc. The InfoWall option of Nox, however is a great balance between pretty and functional for a large collection, as it displays over a dozen roms at a time, and cover recognition is often faster and easier than reading a list of text.
* As speed has been such a large issue for me, I miss a feature to interrupt a collection load. Say I accidentally click on MAME with favourites de-selected for example - that mistake will cost quite a bit of time.
* Another thing that takes some getting used to is if I accidentally choose NES, instead of SNES, then quickly correct my filter it will not interrupt the NES collection load. But, once NES has loaded it won't trigger the selected SNES one automatically either. So I then have to load a third collection (or toggle favourites), wait for that to load, then make the correct choice. I guess this is really just another side-effect of not being able to interrupt a collection load.
As I said though, this is a fantastic addon in it's current form, and I am grateful for it as is. If you intend to continue development, then by all means add this feedback to the pile.