[Solid One]

There's something I'd like to know if RCB can do or not.

I have two rom collections, one for NES and other one for PS1. On my NES collection, I have a lot of rom hacks from SMB, and I've organized the collection by zipping all these games and adding .ZIP extension to the list of supported files. This way, when I select SMB, a menu will show up with all romhacks from SMB. That's a great feature to avoid showing a lot of repeated games on my collections.

However, on my PS1 rom collection, I have some rom hacks and game translation and I'd like to do the same thing I've done on my NES collection. However, zipping ISO files will make XBMC slower, since it'll need to extract a big file everytime I want to play that game.

I know I can do something similar by using "Disk Indicator" parameter, but I don't know if I can have multiple "Disk Indicator" parameters for a rom collection. I mean, I'm already using that parameter on my PS1 rom collection for games with multiple disks, such as Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil 2. I just need a way to do the same thing for my romhacks and translations, by inserting a suffix to my ISO filenames such as "_hack" or "_translated".

Is there a way of doing it besides zipping file? Or maybe a special parameter I need to pass to "Disk Indicator" to make it recognize another games on a folder.

Sounds like having Game sets (similar to Movie sets). Right now this is not possible but could be a nice addition for later releases.

Can I at least fill "Disk Indicator" parameter like this: \(.*\)

I mean, I know I can group games with multiple disks this way. But I have these three files below:

Metal Gear Solid (Disk 1).bin
Metal Gear Solid (Disk 2).bin
Metal Gear Solid (Disk 1 PT-BR).bin

I know that if I fill "Disk Indicator" parameter like this: \(Disk .*\), the first two files will be recognized and show up. However, if I simply fill the parameter as \(.*\), will it show the three files?

[malte]

New test version available: 2.0.16

List of changes:

General

• bugfix: Delete Rom Collection dialog did not work language independent
  

Import Games

• bugfix: nfo import was broken with new version of elementtree
  

Just some bug fixes. Now this version should make it into the repo if you don't find any serious bugs.

Previous version: 2.0.15

[malte]

Can I at least fill "Disk Indicator" parameter like this: \(.*\)

I mean, I know I can group games with multiple disks this way. But I have these three files below:

Metal Gear Solid (Disk 1).bin
Metal Gear Solid (Disk 2).bin
Metal Gear Solid (Disk 1 PT-BR).bin

I know that if I fill "Disk Indicator" parameter like this: \(Disk .*\), the first two files will be recognized and show up. However, if I simply fill the parameter as \(.*\), will it show the three files?

Yes, I guess it would. Not tested but I am quite sure it will work.

[Maleficium]

I did my own offline scapper for MAME 0.153, it contains 4156 unique games (probably I missed some clones) 320 of them flagged as non working in MAME official list (some will run with a few problems) but running with other arcade emulators.
This scrapper contains genre, year and publisher for almost games and 1304 descriptions.

MAME.txt


I upladed too all my nfo files, probably the names will not match in lots of games but never know, it coud be useful to someone. It have 68 systems, 43750 unique games (I have all my clones merged in a single game file and yes, RCB can handle that ). From those 23373 have descriptions.

Rom Collection Browser nfo Files.zip

Thanks to Malte

[billyc666]

thanks Maleficium ill check these out. may save me some time. if I get to update any ill post back the update.

now at malte I tried scraping a removed system in 216 and again the same issue. so as I had just finished doing a new scraper file (system never been added to rcb) I thought I would see how that works in 216 . again when I scrape with offline scraper it doesn't add anything
just to make sure it wasn't the scraper file that was the problem I downgraded to 214 and everything was fine. can someone try an offline scraper file and try adding the system in 216 to see if they have the same problem

[malte]

@Maleficium: Thanks a lot. I updated the wiki and linked to your post: link

@joebloggs12: I guess I found the (next) issue. I will upload a new release soon.

[malte]

New test version available: 2.0.17

List of changes:

Import Games

• bugfix: flatfile scrapers were broken
  

Next try. I hope this one finally fixes the issues with scraping offline game descriptions.

Previous version: 2.0.16

[Solid One]

Can I at least fill "Disk Indicator" parameter like this: \(.*\)

I mean, I know I can group games with multiple disks this way. But I have these three files below:

Metal Gear Solid (Disk 1).bin
Metal Gear Solid (Disk 2).bin
Metal Gear Solid (Disk 1 PT-BR).bin

I know that if I fill "Disk Indicator" parameter like this: \(Disk .*\), the first two files will be recognized and show up. However, if I simply fill the parameter as \(.*\), will it show the three files?

Yes, I guess it would. Not tested but I am quite sure it will work.

That worked as expected! It was a little buggy (Not working sometimes. I had to remove and add my rom collection a few times to work), but now I can group my games.

The next thing I'm going to do is configure my Gameboy and GBA rom collections, but changing between two emulator versions: VisualBoyAdvance, for one player games, and VBALink for multiplayer games.

[Maleficium]

@Maleficium: Thanks a lot. I updated the wiki and linked to your post: link

You're welcome and thanks again for RCB

I think wikisend don't keep the files stored too much time, any idea where I could place them permanently ?

[billyc666]

Thanks malte . issue fixed :-)

[yamzzz]

I did my own offline scapper for MAME 0.153, it contains 4156 unique games (probably I missed some clones) 320 of them flagged as non working in MAME official list (some will run with a few problems) but running with other arcade emulators.
This scrapper contains genre, year and publisher for almost games and 1304 descriptions.

MAME.txt


I upladed too all my nfo files, probably the names will not match in lots of games but never know, it coud be useful to someone. It have 68 systems, 43750 unique games (I have all my clones merged in a single game file and yes, RCB can handle that ). From those 23373 have descriptions.

Rom Collection Browser nfo Files.zip

Thanks to Malte

This rules! Thanks for the huge collection. My roms are named a little differently than your nfo files so is there an easy way to match them up and then rename the nfo files so all will be detected and scraped properly? Thanks!

[billyc666]

I was thinking FatMatch for the naming.not sure if it would work

[Maleficium]

This rules! Thanks for the huge collection. My roms are named a little differently than your nfo files so is there an easy way to match them up and then rename the nfo files so all will be detected and scraped properly? Thanks!

You may try Fuzzy Rename or FatMatch like joebloggs12 posted to rename the nfo files according the game names you have or you may rename the games names using any massive renamer like Flexible Renamer.

Basically I use No-Intro dat files to rename and merge my collections and after that I remove the country with Flexible Renamer setting it to remove everything between ( and ). I think that its easier that way to collect the artwork.
For systems that No-Intro don't have dat files it could be a bit more tricky but I used mostly some gamebase packages or games collected from some easy to find webpages related to system itself. For those systems I usually used Flexible Renamer to move The, Das, El, La, and a few other to the end of the file name. With a bit of patience and the nfo and your games names will match with a few clicks

[yamzzz]

FatMatch worked really well and all those nfos saved me a lot of time scraping! Thanks!

This rules! Thanks for the huge collection. My roms are named a little differently than your nfo files so is there an easy way to match them up and then rename the nfo files so all will be detected and scraped properly? Thanks!

You may try Fuzzy Rename or FatMatch like joebloggs12 posted to rename the nfo files according the game names you have or you may rename the games names using any massive renamer like Flexible Renamer.

Basically I use No-Intro dat files to rename and merge my collections and after that I remove the country with Flexible Renamer setting it to remove everything between ( and ). I think that its easier that way to collect the artwork.
For systems that No-Intro don't have dat files it could be a bit more tricky but I used mostly some gamebase packages or games collected from some easy to find webpages related to system itself. For those systems I usually used Flexible Renamer to move The, Das, El, La, and a few other to the end of the file name. With a bit of patience and the nfo and your games names will match with a few clicks

[Solid One]

Another thing I can't find a way to change by default on RCB:

I'm using XBMC 12 with Confluence as default skin, and I've imported a few rom collections, all of them with videos downloaded on EmuMovies. I realize that there's three viewstates: Info, Info2 and Thumbs. Although RCB can memorize the last viewstate set by user, It looks like "Info2" is used by default on the first run, or when it crashes somehow. When I realize that "Info 2" viewstate is used, immediately I change to "Info", since I prefer browsing my games by its cartridge front box instead of its name.

My problem is: On "Info" viewstate, sometimes RCB gets me stuck on a black screen with all games gone. When this happens, I'm forced to go back to previous menu (by pressing Esc) and then opening RCB addon again. By doing this, RCB goes back to "Info2" showing the first game of my rom collection.

FYI, that issue where RCB gets me stuck on a black screen is happening on three different versions: 2.0.10, 2.0.14 and 2.0.17.

I don't know if that "black screen" problem can be solved for now, but is there a way to make "Info" as default one? That would solve the problem for me, at least for now.