Versatile C++ game scraper: Skyscraper

edwardthehuman

Happy Easter to everyone!

muldjord

Skyscraper version 2.4.4 released: https://github.com/muldjord/skyscraper

Changed openretro 'wheel' type to 'marquee' type. It wasn't really a wheel
'openretro' now filters out variants to avoid bad screenshots (Thank you AnalogHero)
Now allows you to set custom dbFolder in config.ini both under main and platform sections
For Amiga it now searches for "Demo", "aga", "cdtv" and "cd32" in filenames and converts to [] bracket names (Thanks Dom)
Region 'wor' has been moved below 'eu' and 'us' for Screenscraper since it often returns Japanese titles (Thanks maroonout09)
Now turns '-' into ' ' in filenames before doing searches (Thanks maroonout09)
Simplified thread result communication with main thread from two functions to just one
Now again properly tests for a scraping run with 30 consecutive misses, then exits

Just wanted to get this out there while I am working on the mobygames module. In other words, the mobygames module is NOT implemented in this release.
Instead there's some user requested stuff and also some minor fixes. It's all there in the release notes. :)

bleuge

@muldjord You liar... xD
Thanks you very much!

muldjord

@bleuge I did take two days off ;)

AnalogHero

@muldjord Thanks for the update. How can i take advantage of the AGA brackets for amiga? When i run Skyscraper -p amiga --videos it doesnt change names.

muldjord

@analoghero If you're using the lha's and they have "aga" in their filename, it will create [AGA] brackets for them, unless you have '--nobrackets' defined.

AnalogHero

@muldjord Ok it works. Somehow i didnt update skyscraper facepalm

steptoe

Is there any way that this could be compiled for the Windows OS and a simple GUI to access ROMs via the PC instead of via commabd on the Raspberry Pi

If I wanted to do a full scrape of all my ROMs, while I try to get to grips with GNU emacs on Win7 so I can see a 'live' update as per your YouTube video so I can see exactly what changes do, is there a quick command via the Raspberry Pi to enable a full complete scan with snapshot and snapshot video (similar to sselph scraper) until I customise the your scraper for how I finally want it to look. I'm think then, I can either add to or use the scraped images and videos for a local cache to drastically speed up future scrapes and customizing

How did you manage to get the live update of the screenshot sample in your YouTube video, this would help me a lot in trying out different configs to get the one I'm happy with

Thanks

muldjord

@steptoe Somewhere in this thread there is a guide on how I made the "live view" but it is for Ubuntu Linux, which is what I run at home. I do not have a guide for Windows I'm afraid (and there won't be one as I don't use Windows).

You can compile it for Windows, but there will be tweaking to get it to work properly I think. I haven't done much testing of this myself, again, as I'm not really a Windows user.

But Qt5 is cross-platform, so with some tweaking it can be done. Just remember NOT to try and compile it through Cygwin, that will definitely fail. Instead use the Qt environment command prompt link that ships with the Qt5 installer.

Please read the documentation on the github page concerning locally caching data. Skyscraper already caches all data for later use, to significantly speed up the process of re-scraping. So whenever you have the artwork set up as you like, just scrape each platform with '-s localdb' and it will scrape using all cached data.

Wonderbread

Would it be possible to have it use a secondary artwork.xml if some elements are missing? For example I'd like to have it output just a full-size box art if there's no screenshot available.

muldjord

@wonderbread I thought about this at one point but decided against it. The reason being that I would have to basically do scripting inside the artwork.xml somehow. Since the artwork.xml is completely customizable I can't hardcode rules for it (because I can't know what the user wants), so it has to be user specified, and that would be tricky on several levels. It can be done of course, but it's a path I am not currently gonna walk down I'm afraid.

Brewskii

I've a question, I've installed retropie 4.4 n my ubuntu desktop and I recently today installed and started running Skyscraper against my Arcade directory. It seems to keep going through the same files over and over, it's on it's 4th recursion on the directory. Is this normal?
Thanks

AnalogHero

@brewskii If you run it in simple mode, then yes. Skyscraper scrapes with a different source each time, caches the data, and then does a local scrape with all stored data.

Brewskii

@analoghero Ah, I see that now, it's also mentioned in the dialog when working through simple mode questions. Thanks!

bleuge

@muldjord I've just read this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/8dqim8/announcing_thegamesdb_beta_site_api/

Maybe of your interest. Thanks!

muldjord

@bleuge Thanks for the heads up, that is indeed interesting.

bleuge

@muldjord https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/8eip7n/if_you_need_your_collection_scraped_for

Some public exposure 😏

AnalogHero

@muldjord From now i support you on patreon. I know its not much, but i hope it helps.

muldjord

@analoghero Everything is appreciated mate :)

AnalogHero

@muldjord For some strange reason patreon cant process my pledge. I tried several times adding and removing my mastercard my paypal account. Is there any other way i can send you money? Paypal maybe?