[Wintermute0110]

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.

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. Other sites implement more intelligent solutions like develper/user API keys, the user API key is really easy to get and limits the number of requests based on the user IP. Please be patient and wait for your key. ScreenScraper is currently the best scraper by far for retrogames overall, but it is true that for some specific platforms there are better alternatives.

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.

4. Is there a way to import the icon from executable during launcher import/creation wizard?                                                                                 
Just a convienience thing. Should be possible on windows and unix-like systems. Is that much work?

It is possible yes but I think it is better to keep things as they are now. The reason for this is to keep the wizard as simple as possible. The wizard must ask just for the essential parameters like executable, ROM path, etc. and then the user can use the context menu to change any optional parameter.

4. Views in Skin
Are there more display options? It seams that for AEL and the Estuary MOD V2 i got only "Icon-Wall" and "WideList". For TV-Shows there are much more:


Already read that you are programming python not doing skins. Isn't it possible to copy paste those somehow?

AEL is a program addon and traditionally in Kodi skins offer a limited number of views for program addons. I remember that some time ago some users requested the author of Estuary MOD V2 to enable more views for program addons by he/she refused.

Enabling the views from Video or Music sections into the programs sections is really easy so you can ask the author to please do it. It just requires some small changes in the XML code of the skin (if you are an skin coder it can take a couple of minutes, for amateurs it can take hours of trial/error to find exactly what needs to be changed). Also, game support is progressing in Kodi so maybe if you insist the skin author will change his/her mind.