[PainToad]

Your awesome

[Angelscry]

This is the last version of the launcher addon (v1.12): plugin.program.launcher.zip

What's new :
- Add "Get Game Infos" option for roms and stand-alone launcher. Infos are scraped directly from http://www.allgame.com.
- Add "Edit Game Infos" option for roms and stand-alone launcher. Game infos can be edited directly from XBMC. Thumb and fanart images can also be manually selected from here.

Please, give me feedback about the scraper functionnality. It surely still has bug and could to be improved.
Ideas and suggestions are also welcome.

Direct scraping of thumbs and fanart images is not supported yet by this addon version, but I will found time to work on this later.

Actually my main problem is with with XBMC and python coding. I hit a wall. With the scraper I was able the get a list of games corresponding to a game title research (accuracy sorted). But I'm not able to display this list into XBMC (to allow users to select the real game corresponding to their search). Is there someone here who could help me to display this search result list into XBMC?



For better experience use a skin which support thumbnails, fanarts and information display for programs addons.

[rausch101]

Tried it out, it's good for the most part but a few things:

• It doesn't scape games with underscores in them, but if I replace the _'s with spaces then they scrape fine.
  EDIT: It seems to work with some of them. It works with "Battle_toads.nes".
  
• Alot of my games are labeled like "Another World (E) [!]" and it scrapes most of them, but when I scraped "Aladdin (E).smc", it was scraped as "Aldynes"
  
• On your Alaska Revisted MOD, if there is no data scraped yet for a game, then no names (only icons) show up in Panel Tall, Panel Square, Panel Wide or the unlabeled view after Panel Wide which I think is Landscape
  
• Not sure if you were aware, but there is the option to "Get Game Infos" when you select the emulator systems. It tried to scrape them just like roms. Is it possible to scrape systems?
  
• Maybe change the text from "Get Game Infos" to "Get Game Info" since there is only one scrape being done ( I know English is not your first language )
  

I think you should put in your scraper regex to ignore single letters in parenthesis like "(E)" when scraping. Also I think [!] is a very common thing at the end of rom files names too.

GREAT work !

[PainToad]

Love your work! Any chance of a "Get all info" type thing?

[Angelscry]

It doesn't scape games with underscores in them, but if I replace the _'s with spaces then they scrape fine.
It seems to work with some of them. It works with "Battle_toads.nes".
Alot of my games are labeled like "Another World (E) [!]" and it scrapes most of them, but when I scraped "Aladdin (E).smc", it was scraped as "Aldynes"
I think you should put in your scraper regex to ignore single letters in parenthesis like "(E)" when scraping. Also I think [!] is a very common thing at the end of rom files names too.

Yes, it is because the http://www.allgame.com search engine do not recognize the underscores characters or symbol like "(E)" or "[!]" that it return wrong games or was not able to found them. Actually you always can change the game title before when starting "Get Game Info" (and so remove the undesired characters). But it will be better if it was automatic. I will try to add this functionality into the "Import Files from Path" option.

On your Alaska Revisted MOD, if there is no data scraped yet for a game, then no names (only icons) show up in Panel Tall, Panel Square, Panel Wide or the unlabeled view after Panel Wide which I think is Landscape

Yes, I already notice this bug. It is fixed on my computer but I do not found the time to upload the last version of the mode. It happen when "Release" and "Publisher" tags of a game are empty. I have planned to post the update of my Alaska Revisted MOD soon.

Not sure if you were aware, but there is the option to "Get Game Infos" when you select the emulator systems. It tried to scrape them just like roms. Is it possible to scrape systems?

I know that some people use stand-alone launchers to start stand-alone games, like PC games or do not may want to sort their game by video game system but by style, genre, etc. So what's why you have the "Get Game Infos" for launchers. So people ask me for. And this is why I do not think I will add a spraper for video game systems. There are not so many system. It could be done manually.

Maybe change the text from "Get Game Infos" to "Get Game Info" since there is only one scrape being done ( I know English is not your first language )

It will be fixed in the next version.

Thank you for your feedback !!!!

[Angelscry]

Love your work! Any chance of a "Get all info" type thing?

What do you exactly mean by "Get All Info"?

[PainToad]

Instead of downloading games info one by one, get all of the games info at once.

[Angelscry]

Instead of downloading games info one by one, get all of the games info at once.

I will be difficult. I think that the main problem with a game scraper is that a same game can be ported on several game system at the time and a scrapper cannot make the difference between those game systems from only a simple file name. The user have to step in at a moment or another.

You can use the rom extension (smc, z64, etc...) to detect the game system. But it will not work if the roms are zipped or use CD-rom support (.cue, .bin. .iso extensions). It will also have a problem with all the MAME roms, because their filename cannot be renamed. For example "The King of Fighters '97" filename MUST be kof97.zip.

So user will always have to step in to select the right game system or the right game title. Starting from this you still have 3 options:

- Create a "Full-automatic" scrapper that will make all automatically but that will surely make some mistakes (wrong game system and so wrong corresponding info, or not able to found the game title for all MAME roms). At the end you will have to check and correct all the mistakes manually by yourself.
- Create a "semi-automatic" scrapper that will ask you to confirm for each game the right name and the right game title.
- Create a "manual" scraper for each game (like actually)

Not easy. I'm staring from "manual" one. When this one will be ok, I will try the "Semi-automatic" one (if I found how to generate and control lists into XBMC). Then, I will maybe try the "Full-automatic" one but I have some big doubts on is perfect efficiency.

[rausch101]

I will be difficult. I think that the main problem with a game scraper is that a same game can be ported on several game system at the time and a scrapper cannot make the difference between those game systems from only a simple file name. The user have to step in at a moment or another.

Just an idea, how about this:

1. After adding a "Game Launcher" e.g. Emulator to the Launcher, give a pop-up window that says, "Before scraping game data for these games, please specify the console by pressing menu on an emulator launcher".

2. Create a "Specify Console" menu item when the user presses menu on an emulator. You can then add that selection when you are scraping games within that emulator.

Would that work?

[Angelscry]

Just an idea, how about this:

1. After adding a "Game Launcher" e.g. Emulator to the Launcher, give a pop-up window that says, "Before scraping game data for these games, please specify the console by pressing menu on an emulator launcher".

2. Create a "Specify Console" menu item when the user presses menu on an emulator. You can then add that selection when you are scraping games within that emulator.

Would that work?

I think I could add a <platform></platform> tag into the launchers.xml file for all the games/roms and launchers (for example <platform>Nintendo 64</platform> or <platform>IBM PC Compatible</platform>).

This tag will be defined for the launchers at its creation (or you can always edit it after).

This tag will be defined for the each game/roms during the "Import files from path" option by showing, before the scan, a list of all the possible gaming platforms present on http://www.allgame.com (the list can be scraped here). So the scrapper will search by gametitle and then it will remove all the games not corresponding to the expected gaming plaform.

Yes it could works. I just still need, more than before, to found how manage and control lists into XBMC.

[marjanovich]

for a tutorial on how to add games etc ...

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=84275

[Angelscry]

This is the last version of the launcher addon (v1.13): plugin.program.launcher.zip

What's new :
- Improvement of the filename -> game title conversion (import from path). Special characters like (E), (!), [Rev.1] or _ are now automatically removed from the title.
- Add of a <platform></platform> tag for roms and launchers which define the game system.
- Add of a game select list into the "Get Game Info" option for roms and launchers
- Add of a game system select list into "Edit" option for roms and launchers
- Add of Thumbs and Fanarts previews into the "Edit" option for roms and launchers.
- Fix text "Get Game Infos" to "Get Game Info"


Games select list


Game systems select list


Thumbnails and Fanarts previews

Please, give me all your feedback about this addon. It surely still has bug and could to be improved. Ideas and suggestions are always welcome.

Direct scraping of thumbs and fanart images still not supported yet by this addon version. But now that we could exactly identify a game (title and game system) it will be more easy to scrap the good thumbnail and fanart image. I will start to work on that part this week-end.

Also a big thanks to ppic for his help on the dialogselect command. Sans toi je serais encore en train de m'arracher le peu de cheveux qu'il me reste.



For better experience use a skin which support thumbnails, fanarts and information display for programs addons.

[rausch101]

This is the last version of the launcher addon (v1.13): plugin.program.launcher.zip

Wow. This is amazing...I can't wait to try this out when I get home. Very very nice job yet again, Angelscry.

[ppic]

Also a big thanks to ppic for his help on the dialogselect command. Sans toi je serais encore en train de m'arracher le peu de cheveux qu'il me reste.

welcome in python world

for cover search, it may be good to use google image addon

[ghostelement]

Looks good! I can't wait till scraper support is built in!