[quakes]

Neither 1964 nor PJ64 work...maybe if I put the %ROM% in quotes...

This is hopefully fixed now. There were actually two things causing Project 64 to fail (at least for me). First of all, I had a bug where spaces in emulator paths wreaked havoc. This caused Project 64 to never open at all. Secondly, Project 64 for some reason wants an unquoted ROM path, and will refuse to properly parse a quoted ROM path. So, I added an %UNESCAPED_ROM% argument that should work with Project 64. I didn't try 1964, but hopefully one of these bugfixes fixed it as well...

Anyway, latest version is up for grabs in the original post. Try it out and report if it fixed your issues.

[malte]

I will however start on a personal project of my own for one system (SMS) to display to you guys making these scripts to see if we can start working on a scraper that makes sense.

You are talking about a scraper or a site with content?

The scraper will first attempt to fetch the covert art from the "releases" part of the article (http://www.giantbomb.com/alex-kidd-h...7108/releases/)

Just to be sure: Did you notice that they provide an API?. Anyway it will not fix your problem. I got the same wrong images with the API and I decided to disable giantbombs cover search completely (same with thegamesdb in its current state).

[wimpy]

You are talking about a scraper or a site with content?

I'm thinking about creating a "www.emuxtras.net/scraper/". I'm not going to use the existing Xtras packs, but rather build a new set with better folder structure, less content (read: no maps, gamefaqs, videos etc) and possibility to download/scrape. (but like i said this is a personal project/test to see how much work would be needed to remove some of the obvious flaws of the scraping out there (depending on sources).

[quakes]

Just to be sure: Did you notice that they provide an API?. Anyway it will not fix your problem. I got the same wrong images with the API and I decided to disable giantbombs cover search completely (same with thegamesdb in its current state).

Yes, I am using the API. As you say though, it still does not solve the problem.

[Sranshaft]

Just wanted to say thanks a lot for the great work you've done so far in getting this to work. Of all the emulator launcher, this one is by the easiest to setup and is the only one to actually work for me.

I wanted to ask a quick question though regarding the covers it uses for the games. Is there any chance you'd be able to add in the ability to use the images found with the roms for the covers?

I've spent the last 2 days getting high quality images for all of my games and at the moment it seems to have been time wasted with the low quality images the addon pulls from GiantBomb. I have all of my images set up as {name of game}_thumb.jpg as I suspect a lot of users do. Perhaps a quick look to see if the file exists while scraping the library kind of what XBMC does when adding movies to its library?

Also, some of the games I have do not seem to appear in the list after letting the addon scrape. I'm not sure if this is because they aren't available on GiantBomb but it would seem like a good idea to ignore the missing info and add them any way. This is mostly occurring with my NeoGeo CD games.

These are the two biggest issues I've noticed so far. I see some of these issue are on your to-do list and hopefully may be addressed in the future. In any case, this is a great start and I definitely hope you'll continue work on this!

[quakes]

Just wanted to say thanks a lot for the great work you've done so far in getting this to work. Of all the emulator launcher, this one is by the easiest to setup and is the only one to actually work for me.

I'm glad you like it!

I wanted to ask a quick question though regarding the covers it uses for the games. Is there any chance you'd be able to add in the ability to use the images found with the roms for the covers?

I've spent the last 2 days getting high quality images for all of my games and at the moment it seems to have been time wasted with the low quality images the addon pulls from GiantBomb. I have all of my images set up as {name of game}_thumb.jpg as I suspect a lot of users do. Perhaps a quick look to see if the file exists while scraping the library kind of what XBMC does when adding movies to its library?

While I do want to add support for local covers/description/etc, I have not decided exactly how to do this yet. I might add several methods; one way to manually add information from within XBMC (using the context menu, for example), and another way to somehow import batches of data for many games at once.

Anyway, I will have to think a while about how to do this before I implement it. In the mean time, the only thing you can really do is to upload your images to GiantBomb. In a way, this is the best solution, since it means everyone can enjoy your high quality images. If you decide to do this, do note that the scraper prioritizes release images over article images for cover art (these images, rather than this image) (if you worry that release images are scaled down to low resolution, don't worry, the API can fetch the original high resolution images).

Also, some of the games I have do not seem to appear in the list after letting the addon scrape. I'm not sure if this is because they aren't available on GiantBomb but it would seem like a good idea to ignore the missing info and add them any way. This is mostly occurring with my NeoGeo CD games.

This is strange though. By default, if a game can not be scraped, it is simply left in the list using the file name (sans extension) as the title. It could be that the game was assigned a different title due to some sort of mismatch though.

An example:
Say I have a ROM named "Probotector". Contra was released under this name in Europe on the NES. When searching on giantbomb for "Probotector", it will match an alias on the game "Contra". Thus, the title assigned to the game will be "Contra", not "Probotector" (it chooses the main title over the aliases).

There is a setting under the general settings category that turns off this behavior, and instead always uses the file name as a game title.

[Death-Axe]

Does this launch the emu now? I noticed alot of these launcher apps forget to include the most basic of things like having the path names in quotes. ALL shortcuts with in windows work this way, and it is such a silly thing to forget.

Not to put you down guy, you have obviously put allot of work into this. it's a shame the mame front end also suffers from this. It's got all those nice features etc.... but the most basic thing of launching mame cannot be done as they didn't include the quotes.

A shame there is no other decent launcher for mame out there at the moment (even advanced launcher cannot do it right as it errors scanning roms...)

Not saying I can do any better though, but I would suggest putting together the basic bits first and adding the bells and whistles later.

Again, I'm not insulting your work just wanted to throw some project management experience in there.

[quakes]

Does this launch the emu now? I noticed alot of these launcher apps forget to include the most basic of things like having the path names in quotes. ALL shortcuts with in windows work this way, and it is such a silly thing to forget.

Not to put you down guy, you have obviously put allot of work into this. it's a shame the mame front end also suffers from this. It's got all those nice features etc.... but the most basic thing of launching mame cannot be done as they didn't include the quotes.

A shame there is no other decent launcher for mame out there at the moment (even advanced launcher cannot do it right as it errors scanning roms...)

Not saying I can do any better though, but I would suggest putting together the basic bits first and adding the bells and whistles later.

Again, I'm not insulting your work just wanted to throw some project management experience in there.

It is not quite as simple as you make it out, however. One would assume, for example, that launching

Code:

"C:\Program Files\Emulation\nestopia\nestopia.exe" "C:\Games\Emulation\NES\someROM.smc"

would work great. And it does! At least using cmd.exe. When this is executed through Python though, it does not work. Instead, one has to execute

Code:

""C:\Program Files\Emulation\nestopia\nestopia.exe" "C:\Games\Emulation\NES\someROM.smc""

A subtle difference, yet one works and the other doesn't...

Also, it is not a question of "putting together the basic bits first and adding the bells and whistles later", it is rather a question of "extensively testing the basic bits first and adding the bells and whistles later". If this were anything other than a project that I simply made to satisfy my own needs, I would have done very extensive tests, perhaps even using test-driven development with complete unit tests. However, since this is a simple project made primarily to satisfy my own needs, I have not made rigorous testing a priority - if it turns out something doesn't work, I'll simply fix it.

EDIT: I saw that you had a question in there. And yes, I think you were probably stricken with the "spaces in emulator path" bug, so the emu should hopefully launch for you in the newest version.

[Death-Axe]

Thank you for explaining, interesting stuff.

[fade23]

I really like that I can use this for PC games by just pointing it to a folder with .lnk files and rescan when I add new games (rather than having to setup new Launchers). However, I'm having trouble with Steam games, as these create .url files instead of .lnk. I can get them to work if I add a second collection and define .url as the extension to look for, however, if I specify system as "PC" for both collections the UI then shows duplicate entries for every game. If I choose a different system for the .url collection it solves that problem, but then things don't scrape properly. Would it be possible to define multiple extensions for a given collection?

[jawgee]

With the mention of MAME a few posts ago, will Emulatopia support MAME in the future?

Thanks,
jawgee

[quakes]

Would it be possible to define multiple extensions for a given collection?

Yup! Just type "lnk,url" in the extension field, and it should work. That is, separate extensions with commas.

With the mention of MAME a few posts ago, will Emulatopia support MAME in the future?

I don't have any MAME emulators/ROMs myself. What prevents them from being used by Emulatopia at the moment?

[DrMPS]

Pretty cool but....having some small trouble with it. The only way I'm able to add a new ROM to a collection is by erasing the collection's database and re-scanning the whole thing, not sure if I'm just not understanding something or if it is a design flaw.

More importantly---it really needs some way of editing the metainfo besides just relying on the giantbomb wiki. You suggested that it'd be easier to just edit the wiki, yeah, uh, no. The scraper isn't getting a LOT of files right, but that is not the fault of the scraper (which seems to work correctly) but the fault of how things are cataloged on giantbomb. Searching for "Alien 3" gives me a broad page dedicated to all seven titles (the game was made on multiple systems at the same time); there isn't a page per title per platform. Not surprisingly then, scraping for "Alien 3.smc" comes up with a blank.

How is the database stored? Is it like the main xbmc database? Couldn't it easily be exported to file/files?

[quakes]

Pretty cool but....having some small trouble with it. The only way I'm able to add a new ROM to a collection is by erasing the collection's database and re-scanning the whole thing, not sure if I'm just not understanding something or if it is a design flaw.

You should be able to simply run the import again from the settings (not clean or delete, just import). It should then find any new ROMs. Does this not work for you?

More importantly---it really needs some way of editing the metainfo besides just relying on the giantbomb wiki. You suggested that it'd be easier to just edit the wiki, yeah, uh, no. The scraper isn't getting a LOT of files right, but that is not the fault of the scraper (which seems to work correctly) but the fault of how things are cataloged on giantbomb. Searching for "Alien 3" gives me a broad page dedicated to all seven titles (the game was made on multiple systems at the same time); there isn't a page per title per platform. Not surprisingly then, scraping for "Alien 3.smc" comes up with a blank.

Yeah, I know, it's a bit hit and miss.. I was aiming to add some way to influence scraping manually or edit metadata manually (it's one of the "possible future features"), but this hasn't been done. I also have an unreleased version that scrapes data from "archive.vg" (manages to scrape some things that the giant bomb scraper misses) , but as I was warned that the API would probably change soon, I have refrained from releasing it.

Anyway, to resolve the platform issue, my giantbomb scraper attempts to scrape "releases" rather than just games (http://www.giantbomb.com/alien3/61-14356/releases/ instead of http://www.giantbomb.com/alien3/61-14356/). This sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't.

Do you have any examples of games that get mismatched entirely (i.e., game exists as a "release" on giantbomb, but is not properly scraped)?

How is the database stored? Is it like the main xbmc database? Couldn't it easily be exported to file/files?

It is an sqlite database stored in %appdata%/xbmc/userdata/script.games.emulatopia/games.db or some such. There is currently no easy way to import or export data directly to/from the database (unless you happen to know SQL).

[Ferdnand]

Hello, need a program to rename my collection of snes and mame roms to match the actual game.. if anyone knows of a program let me know..

Thanks..