[Jachin99]

Moby games actually denied my request for a personal API Key when I emailed them.  I think it took a week or two for them to get back to me.  It costs money but my new approach is to use launchbox combined with a Emu Movies account to collect all of my artwork.  I'm going to try to transfer all of the artwork from Launchbox's folder structure to AEL's artwork asset library.  Launchbox nests artwork types in a folder structure that might make it easy to just drag and drop files into my AEL folder structure.

[Jachin99]

I did a few searches around this thread, and screenscraper seems to be the way to go for most images.  I also came across a post that mentioned problems with the Kodi image cache, and AEL's offline scraper which might explain my issues trying to scrape local artwork.  I can easily get AEL to rescrape for images at this point but I don't see a way to to do a bulk search for .nfo files.  Is there a direct weblink I can get to somewhere to just download .nfo files?  Are they stored somewhere in AEL's folder structure?  Thanks.

[csidirop]

Not sure if it matters, but im using Estuary MOD V2 - KODI 18 (UPDATED 17/01/19) as skin. So far Im testing on my Laptop and Kodi is showing my test folders (nearly) correkt. (it was not easy to gather all the information for that)

Sorry. I know the documentation for AEL is still precarious. I have many changes in my mind to do in AEL. Sometimes I have an idea, implement it and then when I test in my HTPC it does not work, etc. I do not want to spend time writing documentation that will became obsolete soon. Writing good documentation takes as much time as development, sometimes even more. In any case, eventually one day I will be happy with how AEL works and write a proper tutorial.

No need to apologize!

1. mobygames api key
Regarding this page, it seams to be mandatory to write Tracy a PM, explaining your purposes. But it takes a while till you get an answer (waiting for 4 days now). Is this normal? I want mobygames, because for my most of my "retro games" metadata and artwork ScreenScraper worked fine. But for the Steam games only TowerFall got two images.

...

MobyGames requires an API key and that's MobyGames owners decision, I have little control over it. [...] Please be patient and wait for your key.

Of cource! Just wanted to know if I did something wrong.
 

2. www.steamgriddb.com has an API. So is there any chance, to add this scraper?
Here more information about the API: https://www.steamgriddb.com/api/v2#
Dont know how much work this is. Just thought you are interested.

We have plans to improve the Steam support in the future. But to be honest with you, I am not an Steam user and development is going slowly. Also, I am reluctant to implement a scraper just for one platform, Steam in this case. The only exception to that is MAME which has its own scraper, but MAME is a special case always.

3. Is there a way to change the whole asset directory, not every folder?
So while testing and trying a round I had to change the asset directory for a launcher with several roms inside. Doing this requires changing the folder path of every image. Any easier way for this (exept editing the xml file)?

That is something I am implementing right now, I call it "unified asset directory". In any case, I always recommend to edit the XML configuration file, the wizards in AEL are for really small collections and for testing mainly. Any setup with more than 2/3 launchers should always use XML files.

That is great! Im curious about.

Thanks, and keep on with that gread work!

[csidirop]

Does anyone knows if there is anywhere a bundled asserts pack for use with AEL outside there?

[Wintermute0110]

Does anyone knows if there is anywhere a bundled asserts pack for use with AEL outside there?

Have you tried the AEL asset library?

[Wintermute0110]

I did a few searches around this thread, and screenscraper seems to be the way to go for most images.  I also came across a post that mentioned problems with the Kodi image cache, and AEL's offline scraper which might explain my issues trying to scrape local artwork.  I can easily get AEL to rescrape for images at this point but I don't see a way to to do a bulk search for .nfo files.  Is there a direct weblink I can get to somewhere to just download .nfo files?  Are they stored somewhere in AEL's folder structure?  Thanks.

AEL allows you to export information on its database to NFO files or if the NFO files exists to use them during the scanner process to import the metadata. If you do not have NFO files then first you must use an scraper (it could be offline or online) and then export the NFO files. If you want to try then remember that the scanner only scapers new ROMs it founds, that means if you want to apply an scraper again the you must delete our ROMs from the launcher and then rescan again. If you delete ROMs from the launcher you discard all metadata you may have but not artwork. Artwork files always remain, AEL never deletes them.

[Jachin99]

AEL seems to do much better with smaller collections at the moment. I'm still trying around with my scraper settings but only one out of three large room collections that I have scraped received complete artwork and metadata. The other two were maybe twenty or thirty percent complete. I'll try deleting one of the large collections to see if that helps. Thanks for your response

[csidirop]

Does anyone knows if there is anywhere a bundled asserts pack for use with AEL outside there?

Have you tried the AEL asset library?

Oh no, I totally forgot that... I''ll give it a try in a few days, thanks.

[csidirop]

I did a few searches around this thread, and screenscraper seems to be the way to go for most images.  I also came across a post that mentioned problems with the Kodi image cache, and AEL's offline scraper which might explain my issues trying to scrape local artwork.  I can easily get AEL to rescrape for images at this point but I don't see a way to to do a bulk search for .nfo files.  Is there a direct weblink I can get to somewhere to just download .nfo files?  Are they stored somewhere in AEL's folder structure?  Thanks.

[...] If you want to try then remember that the scanner only scapers new ROMs it founds, that means if you want to apply an scraper again the you must delete our ROMs from the launcher and then rescan again. [...]

So does the option under: Context Menu -> Edit Launcher -> Mange Roms -> Scape Roms artwork do not scape nfo files?

[Wintermute0110]

I did a few searches around this thread, and screenscraper seems to be the way to go for most images.  I also came across a post that mentioned problems with the Kodi image cache, and AEL's offline scraper which might explain my issues trying to scrape local artwork.  I can easily get AEL to rescrape for images at this point but I don't see a way to to do a bulk search for .nfo files.  Is there a direct weblink I can get to somewhere to just download .nfo files?  Are they stored somewhere in AEL's folder structure?  Thanks.

[...] If you want to try then remember that the scanner only scapers new ROMs it founds, that means if you want to apply an scraper again the you must delete our ROMs from the launcher and then rescan again. [...]

So does the option under: Context Menu -> Edit Launcher -> Mange Roms -> Scape Roms artwork do not scape nfo files?

That command only rescans for artwork in ROMs you already have in AEL database. Use it if you make changes in the files in your artwork directories.

Launcher CM -> Edit Launcher -> Manage ROMs -> Import ROMs metadata NFO files does what you want. It traverses the list of ROMs in AEL database and checks for a companion NFO file. If found, it copies the metadata from the NFO file to AEL database overwriting AEL database contents.

Launcher CM -> Edit Launcher -> Manage ROMs -> Export ROMs metadata NFO files does exactly the opposite, creating (and overwriting!) NFO files as necessary.

[curro88]

Hi there!

I've managed to setup AEL on my Pi 3 with LibreELEC through GameStarter. Everything works great, but I've noticed that if I use "AEL Offline" as my "Metadata scraper" my NES ROM collection doesn't show any metadata for my games, so... I've changed "AEL Offline" to "ScreenScraper" (introducing my username and password) and when I rescanned my ROMs again the metadata wasn't updated, so I've deleted my launcher and started again and then the problems started and this is what my "kodi.log" says:

Anyone can help me?

I have been looking at the problem but just the crash point is not enough to track it down. I need a full debug log to see what AEL is doing that produces the crash. Follow the instructions of the first post and use https://paste.kodi.tv/

Sorry @Wintermute0110. Here is the debug log: https://paste.kodi.tv/pujuyageti.kodi

By the way... I found another error using AEL but this time with FBA roms. I cannot execute the roms from the addon but I have no problem if I execute them from inside RetroArch. I know this is because of the core used by the addon which is fbalpha_libretro instead of fbneo_libretro. How can I solve this?

[Wintermute0110]

Sorry @Wintermute0110. Here is the debug log: https://paste.kodi.tv/pujuyageti.kodi

By the way... I found another error using AEL but this time with FBA roms. I cannot execute the roms from the addon but I have no problem if I execute them from inside RetroArch. I know this is because of the core used by the addon which is fbalpha_libretro instead of fbneo_libretro. How can I solve this?

Please enable debug in AEL settings and not in Kodi settings. The log has so much clutter when Kodi debug is ON I cannot read it. Generate another log file when reproducing the problem and upload it.

Regarding the second question, you can use the launcher context menu (Launcher CM -> Edit Launcher -> Advanced Modifications -> Modify Arguments) and change the arguments of the launcher. Also, notify the author of Gamestarted so he can fix the error in the XML configuration file.

[curro88]

Sorry @Wintermute0110. Here is the debug log: https://paste.kodi.tv/pujuyageti.kodi

By the way... I found another error using AEL but this time with FBA roms. I cannot execute the roms from the addon but I have no problem if I execute them from inside RetroArch. I know this is because of the core used by the addon which is fbalpha_libretro instead of fbneo_libretro. How can I solve this?

Please enable debug in AEL settings and not in Kodi settings. The log has so much clutter when Kodi debug is ON I cannot read it. Generate another log file when reproducing the problem and upload it.

Regarding the second question, you can use the launcher context menu (Launcher CM -> Edit Launcher -> Advanced Modifications -> Modify Arguments) and change the arguments of the launcher. Also, notify the author of Gamestarted so he can fix the error in the XML configuration file.

Here is the new log with AEL debug: https://paste.kodi.tv/ecuzupiwuj.kodi

And about FBA arguments, I've changed fbalpha with fbneo but when I execute a rom retroarch still looking for fbalpha core:

[WARN:
 --libretro argument "/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/game.retroarch/cores/fbalpha_libretro.so" is neither a file nor directory. Ignoring.]

[AndyHandy]

Hi

I use this to launch BT sport app etc from within kodi
Is there a way to set get it to turn off the kodi power management when I launch an app and turn it back on when I close it or would I have to do it another way?

Any suggestions much appreciated

Andy

[Wintermute0110]

Hi

I use this to launch BT sport app etc from within kodi
Is there a way to set get it to turn off the kodi power management when I launch an app and turn it back on when I close it or would I have to do it another way?

Any suggestions much appreciated

Andy

Hi,

I added that feature to AML recently. If you need it I can port it to AEL.