2018-01-30, 11:35
(2018-01-25, 05:17)dugan26 Wrote: I wanted to thank the developers for continuing the development of this product. Forgive me in advance if i use incorrect context for historical reference. The Advanced Launcher had a scraper and a pretty decent following for comics and magazines.
Yes, Advanced Emulator Launcher started as a fork of Advanced Launcher and it is the third iteration of the original Launcher addon. You can find more information here if interested.
(2018-01-25, 05:17)dugan26 Wrote: I know reading a comic on your TV is not ideal, however - it makes for ridiculous eye candy and show off time when you have company over.
Does AEL have similar features? Im looking to launch comic readers and have all the art work that you can scrape for comic books.
Is this possible with AEL? I know i can launch the comic reader - anything with scrapers?
A lot of things have changed in AEL compared to AL, but I think launching a comic viewer must be still possible. The argument variable substitution that AEL uses have changed a bit: instead of %ROM% you must use $rom$. Currently %ROM% is deprecated but still supported (although it will be removed in future releases of AEL). If you have the Icons and Fanarts for your comics, AEL should be able to pick them up and use them.
The scraper for comics was removed in AEL. The reason is that I myself do not use comics at all and have no idea about which websites will be good to scrape comic metadata and artwork. In order to develop the scraper again, I will need to dowload some comics, make a test environment for development, etc. and that will take a lot of time. Currently I do not have much time because developing AEL, Advanced MAME Launcher and Advanced Doom Launcher will require my attention for a long time from now.
Also, Advanced Launcher only supported Icon and Fanart assets. AEL supports more than 10 kinds of assets and by default it maps Boxfront to Icon and Fanart to Fanart.
Having said that, if you or somebody else are willing to contribute I will help you doing so. I can create a new platform, named for example "Comics and magazines". AEL allows customization of the scrapers on a per-platform basis, so if you create a launcher with platform "Comics and magazines" then you can choose the scraper specifically tailored for comics. The new scraper should be also developed and I can tell you the files that need to be modified. Please tell me what you think about this.
