[atsumori]

Just a quick comment (with no log I'm afraid, at this time I'm at work) but I'm an old time user of advanced launcher, so decide to test your evolution of it but add on give me an error while importing launcher from my advanced launcher add on...Does it require specific things?
My advanced launcher is quite loaded with different launcher, I'm using the favorite categories also ( something like super favorite but in advanced launcher) ,also I'm hiding the "default" category on advanced launcher...Maybe some of these option are not compatible with your add on?
Anyway, i'lltry to post a log as soon as I can, this was just to let you know...
Thanks for your work, advanced launcher is very useful and I'm glad that you keep on updating it!
Cheers

I am having the exact same issue with as far as I can tell the exact same setup (ancient and massive Advanced Launcher config, hiding default category). Here's the applicable section of my log file:

Code:

17:15:52 T:732796   ERROR: Previous line repeats 1 times.
17:15:52 T:732796   ERROR: AEL ERROR: (ParseError) Exception parsing XML categories.xml
17:15:52 T:732796   ERROR: AEL ERROR: (ParseError) mismatched tag: line 305, column 635
17:15:52 T:732796   ERROR: EXCEPTION Thrown (PythonToCppException) : -->Python callback/script returned the following error<--
                                             - NOTE: IGNORING THIS CAN LEAD TO MEMORY LEAKS!
                                            Error Type: <type 'exceptions.UnboundLocalError'>
                                            Error Contents: local variable 'roms' referenced before assignment
                                            Traceback (most recent call last):
                                              File "C:\Applications\Kodi\portable_data\addons\plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher\addon.py", line 47, in <module>
                                                plugin.run_plugin()
                                              File "C:\Applications\Kodi\portable_data\addons\plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher\resources\main.py", line 266, in run_plugin
                                                self._command_import_legacy_AL()
                                              File "C:\Applications\Kodi\portable_data\addons\plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher\resources\main.py", line 3798, in _command_import_legacy_AL
                                                fs_load_legacy_AL_launchers(LAUNCHERS_FILE_PATH, AL_categories, AL_launchers)
                                              File "C:\Applications\Kodi\portable_data\addons\plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher\resources\disk_IO.py", line 1191, in fs_load_legacy_AL_launchers
                                                return roms
                                            UnboundLocalError: local variable 'roms' referenced before assignment
                                            -->End of Python script error report<--

For the record, this is line 305 of my launchers.xml:

Code:

                    <gameplot>Another 3-D Sega game rendered with their superb sprite-scaling technology; this time putting the player into the seat of a powerful jet fighter.<br>A number of colorful, fast-moving environments await the player, as he or she takes on the hordes of enemy planes intent on the player's destruction.<br>At the end of every 2nd stage, the player's jet fighter is re-fueled and re-armed, either by the appearance of a large support plane, or by landing on a military airstrip.<br>After Burner's straightforward shoot'em up game-play is unremarkable and repetitive, but fun - largely down to the game's incredible visuals.</gameplot>

[Slapster]

Hello again, is thegamesdb site usually as slow to respond as it has been the last few days? I've been adding the same rom library for over 36 hours and I'm at 84%. Only about 600 files. Pulling the site up in a browser loads eventually, after a literal minute or two, but it does load.

Is the below resource known about and would it work? I was doing some reading about others having issue with thegamesdb being down and it seems that the folks at launchbox aquired most of the info and artwork from the games db to build their own database. Is it just so new that it's not known about or is there another reason it's not used as a scrape source?

http://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com

[Wintermute0110]

Just a quick comment (with no log I'm afraid, at this time I'm at work) but I'm an old time user of advanced launcher, so decide to test your evolution of it but add on give me an error while importing launcher from my advanced launcher add on...Does it require specific things?
My advanced launcher is quite loaded with different launcher, I'm using the favorite categories also ( something like super favorite but in advanced launcher) ,also I'm hiding the "default" category on advanced launcher...Maybe some of these option are not compatible with your add on?
Anyway, i'lltry to post a log as soon as I can, this was just to let you know...
Thanks for your work, advanced launcher is very useful and I'm glad that you keep on updating it!
Cheers

I am having the exact same issue with as far as I can tell the exact same setup (ancient and massive Advanced Launcher config, hiding default category). Here's the applicable section of my log file:

Code:

17:15:52 T:732796   ERROR: Previous line repeats 1 times.
17:15:52 T:732796   ERROR: AEL ERROR: (ParseError) Exception parsing XML categories.xml
17:15:52 T:732796   ERROR: AEL ERROR: (ParseError) mismatched tag: line 305, column 635
17:15:52 T:732796   ERROR: EXCEPTION Thrown (PythonToCppException) : -->Python callback/script returned the following error<--
                                             - NOTE: IGNORING THIS CAN LEAD TO MEMORY LEAKS!
                                            Error Type: <type 'exceptions.UnboundLocalError'>
                                            Error Contents: local variable 'roms' referenced before assignment
                                            Traceback (most recent call last):
                                              File "C:\Applications\Kodi\portable_data\addons\plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher\addon.py", line 47, in <module>
                                                plugin.run_plugin()
                                              File "C:\Applications\Kodi\portable_data\addons\plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher\resources\main.py", line 266, in run_plugin
                                                self._command_import_legacy_AL()
                                              File "C:\Applications\Kodi\portable_data\addons\plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher\resources\main.py", line 3798, in _command_import_legacy_AL
                                                fs_load_legacy_AL_launchers(LAUNCHERS_FILE_PATH, AL_categories, AL_launchers)
                                              File "C:\Applications\Kodi\portable_data\addons\plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher\resources\disk_IO.py", line 1191, in fs_load_legacy_AL_launchers
                                                return roms
                                            UnboundLocalError: local variable 'roms' referenced before assignment
                                            -->End of Python script error report<--

For the record, this is line 305 of my launchers.xml:

Code:

                    <gameplot>Another 3-D Sega game rendered with their superb sprite-scaling technology; this time putting the player into the seat of a powerful jet fighter.<br>A number of colorful, fast-moving environments await the player, as he or she takes on the hordes of enemy planes intent on the player's destruction.<br>At the end of every 2nd stage, the player's jet fighter is re-fueled and re-armed, either by the appearance of a large support plane, or by landing on a military airstrip.<br>After Burner's straightforward shoot'em up game-play is unremarkable and repetitive, but fun - largely down to the game's incredible visuals.</gameplot>

Looks like you have unescaped characters in the xml. AL xml reader/writer did not conform with the xml standard whereas AEL uses ElementTree XML parser, which is strict and hence the error. Please send me your launchers.xml and I will have a look: will do a "sanitizer" before loading launchers.xml.

Also, for the rest of the people: currently I'm on holidays but taking note of all your problems and feature requests. Will try to solve them ASAP.

Sent from my SC-02G

[Slapster]

Hello again, is thegamesdb site usually as slow to respond as it has been the last few days? I've been adding the same rom library for over 36 hours and I'm at 84%. Only about 600 files. Pulling the site up in a browser loads eventually, after a literal minute or two, but it does load.

Is the below resource known about and would it work? I was doing some reading about others having issue with thegamesdb being down and it seems that the folks at launchbox aquired most of the info and artwork from the games db to build their own database. Is it just so new that it's not known about or is there another reason it's not used as a scrape source?

http://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com

Also, looking in the image folders it seems to be grabbing a good deal of incorrect artwork. Is this all dependent on my file naming (fresh scrape, no local library yet) or could it be caused by the slow response of the site?

[Wintermute0110]

Hello again, is thegamesdb site usually as slow to respond as it has been the last few days? I've been adding the same rom library for over 36 hours and I'm at 84%. Only about 600 files. Pulling the site up in a browser loads eventually, after a literal minute or two, but it does load.

Is the below resource known about and would it work? I was doing some reading about others having issue with thegamesdb being down and it seems that the folks at launchbox aquired most of the info and artwork from the games db to build their own database. Is it just so new that it's not known about or is there another reason it's not used as a scrape source?

http://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com

Also, looking in the image folders it seems to be grabbing a good deal of incorrect artwork. Is this all dependent on my file naming (fresh scrape, no local library yet) or could it be caused by the slow response of the site?

Hi, scrapers downloading the same image always is a known problem. Please read first post of the thread carefully. In the mean time, you can get artwork in the hyperspin forum, emumovies, progretto Emma and pleasuredome.

Sent from my SC-02G

[Wintermute0110]

This addon is great! I'm using RCB on my living room retro gaming box because I'm running Kodi 16. On my laptop running Kodi 17 RCB doesn't work. AEL works like a charm and is quite easy to set up, especially thanks to the offline scrapers, which is a very nice touch. I have only set up my MAME collection so far, and it was a snap. There's only 1 problem: i set the setting to ignore BIOS files, but they still show up in my collection. Am I doing someting wrong?

Ignore BIOS only works for No-Intro ROMs. For MAME it is more difficult to separate BIOSes. Advanced MAME Launcher will deal with that.

Sent from my SC-02G

Mamedb has a list with BIOS roms (http://www.mamedb.com/category/BIOS). Maybe you could implement it in your parser (I guess you have a custom made parser for the mame rom list) and ignore the BIOS roms during import? It's quite a hassle to manually delete the BIOS roms, which then get added back the next time you import games.

Mamedb is dead, has not been updated in the last couple of years. Also, latest version in there is before the MAME/MESS merge and a lot of things have happened since then.

I will left this feature as it is now in AEL and focus on development of Advanced MAME Launcher. I will think later if there is an easy way to filter out MAME arcade bioses in AEL.

Sent from my SC-02G

[Slapster]

Hello again, is thegamesdb site usually as slow to respond as it has been the last few days? I've been adding the same rom library for over 36 hours and I'm at 84%. Only about 600 files. Pulling the site up in a browser loads eventually, after a literal minute or two, but it does load.

Is the below resource known about and would it work? I was doing some reading about others having issue with thegamesdb being down and it seems that the folks at launchbox aquired most of the info and artwork from the games db to build their own database. Is it just so new that it's not known about or is there another reason it's not used as a scrape source?

http://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com

Also, looking in the image folders it seems to be grabbing a good deal of incorrect artwork. Is this all dependent on my file naming (fresh scrape, no local library yet) or could it be caused by the slow response of the site?

Hi, scrapers downloading the same image always is a known problem. Please read first post of the thread carefully. In the mean time, you can get artwork in the hyperspin forum, emumovies, progretto Emma and pleasuredome.

Sent from my SC-02G

I've put in at least 2 hours searching, trying different combinations of words and phrases in Google to try and find full artwork packs to download. I guess you just have to know where to look. Even now, to check if I was crazy, just tried a few more phrases. Looks like adding "2d" or "3D" to the search gets you a whole different list than just "NES box art" or "emulator art pack" or any other thing I tried. I guess I should have just asked the professionals, I just assumed such a thing didn't exist.

Anyway, thank you, this should make things much less painful going forward. Keep up the good work and thanks for answering while on holiday. I hope you enjoy the rest of your time off.

[Slapster]

Hello again, is thegamesdb site usually as slow to respond as it has been the last few days? I've been adding the same rom library for over 36 hours and I'm at 84%. Only about 600 files. Pulling the site up in a browser loads eventually, after a literal minute or two, but it does load.

Is the below resource known about and would it work? I was doing some reading about others having issue with thegamesdb being down and it seems that the folks at launchbox aquired most of the info and artwork from the games db to build their own database. Is it just so new that it's not known about or is there another reason it's not used as a scrape source?

http://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com

Also, looking in the image folders it seems to be grabbing a good deal of incorrect artwork. Is this all dependent on my file naming (fresh scrape, no local library yet) or could it be caused by the slow response of the site?

Hi, scrapers downloading the same image always is a known problem. Please read first post of the thread carefully. In the mean time, you can get artwork in the hyperspin forum, emumovies, progretto Emma and pleasuredome.

Sent from my SC-02G

I've put in at least 2 hours searching, trying different combinations of words and phrases in Google to try and find full artwork packs to download. I guess you just have to know where to look. Even now, to check if I was crazy, just tried a few more phrases. Looks like adding "2d" or "3D" to the search gets you a whole different list than just "NES box art" or "emulator art pack" or any other thing I tried. I guess I should have just asked the professionals, I just assumed such a thing didn't exist.

Anyway, thank you, this should make things much less painful going forward. Keep up the good work and thanks for answering while on holiday. I hope you enjoy the rest of your time off.

[Slapster]

Me again! I am trying add roms to a launcher and it was not pulling metadata from gamesfaq so I went to their site with my browser and found this wonderful little message. Is this because I've scraped 27 times in a row trying to get images to show up (now from local folder) or, as it states, the scraper does not identify itself?

Blocked IP Address
Your IP address has been temporarily blocked due to a large number of HTTP requests. The most common causes of this issue are:

1. Using a script or add-on that scans GameFAQs for box and screen images, overloading our search engine
2. Running a "scraper" or "downloader" program that either does not identify itself or uses fake headers to elude detection
3. Using a badly configured (or badly written) browser add-on for blocking content

If you promise to stop (by clicking the Agree button below), we'll unblock your connection for now, but we will immediately re-block it if we detect additional bad behavior.

Not sure if it's the repeated scraping or the scraper itself but thought I would post it just in case it is the scraper.

Aside from that, can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong with artwork?

Add new launcher. Files launcher. Select launcher. Select rom folder. Nes|zip. "%rom%". Name launcher. Select platform.
Next is "select artwork path". I assume I am supposed to choose the folder with the local artwork? They are box fronts that I got from emumovies. Do I need to put these into a certain assets folder? Do I need to do something with the xml file that came with them? File name of rom and artwork match. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, since I was too stubborn/stupid to ask about the boxart libraries available, are they places you can get .nfo files in bulk?

[Slapster]

Oh yeah, in settings:
Asset scan policy= local images

[foleyjo]

I find it shows fanart not frontbox art. Try putting your boxart in fanart

[atsumori]

Not sure if it's the repeated scraping or the scraper itself but thought I would post it just in case it is the scraper.

This is gamefaqs site policy (and occurred with Advanced Launcher as well back when AL was functional). All you have to do is go to gamefaqs and fill out a captcha and you can continue importing images, but it will shut you out every 5-20 image imports which makes handling a large library really annoying. It would be super cool if the import script detected when gamefaqs locked you out, paused and let you enter the capture somehow through AEL, but I can't imagine how complex that would be so I wouldn't hold your breath.

And Wintermute, I'll get you my launchers.xml as soon as I get home, thanks for the help.

[atsumori]

Wintermute0110, PMed you my launchers.xml file, please look at it when you have a chance and enjoy your time off!

[Girgl]

Ignore BIOS only works for No-Intro ROMs. For MAME it is more difficult to separate BIOSes. Advanced MAME Launcher will deal with that.

Sent from my SC-02G

Mamedb has a list with BIOS roms (http://www.mamedb.com/category/BIOS). Maybe you could implement it in your parser (I guess you have a custom made parser for the mame rom list) and ignore the BIOS roms during import? It's quite a hassle to manually delete the BIOS roms, which then get added back the next time you import games.

Mamedb is dead, has not been updated in the last couple of years. Also, latest version in there is before the MAME/MESS merge and a lot of things have happened since then.

I will left this feature as it is now in AEL and focus on development of Advanced MAME Launcher. I will think later if there is an easy way to filter out MAME arcade bioses in AEL.

Sent from my SC-02G

Ok. maybe I don't get what Advanced MAME Launcher is then. Don't we have the functionality to launch MAME in AEL already? Why develop another Launcher?

[Wintermute0110]

Ok. maybe I don't get what Advanced MAME Launcher is then. Don't we have the functionality to launch MAME in AEL already? Why develop another Launcher?

Try Advanced MAME Launcher and you will see yourself. Follow the same instructions as here to install (change plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher by plugin.program.advanced.MAME.launcher).

Currently AML is just a prototype. It won't launch anything, it justs contains a MAME 0.174 hard-coded database to test all MAME ROMs plus Software Lists browsing. Any feedback is welcomed.