(Another) skyscraper help topic!

showstopper

I have issues with the code tags and getting spammed!!

This is what i am typing in:

Skyscraper -p gba -s thegamesdb --noscreenshots --nowheels --nomarquees --query 'Cartoon Network Block Party / Cartoon Network Speedway' "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gba/2 Games in 1 - Cartoon Network Block Party + Cartoon Network Speedway (USA).7z"

mitu

I don't see any actual errors in your scraping command output. Maybe the game doesn't exist on the source site ?

showstopper

@mitu It does exist as i copied the wording from thegamesdb exact since they dont seem to have CRC numbers.
No matter i just manually downloaded images and edited the db.xml. All good now.

muldjord

@showstopper, Just a side-note, you are using a really old version of Skyscraper. I would strongly suggest you update it. Also, I would like to point you to the Skyscraper documentation. It has examples for pretty much all of the available options. https://github.com/muldjord/skyscraper/blob/master/docs/CLIHELP.md

If you want to use the --query option with the thegamesdb module, you'll need to know their query format. I believe it basically needs you to simplify things a bit so "Rick Dangerous" would become --query "rick+dangerous". It is a bit of an expert option and sometimes it is quite hard to get it right, especially with the name searched based modules such as TheGamesDb. So it expects users to know a bit more about the underlying API. But it is very useful to fill in the missing roms.

showstopper

@muldjord Thank you for this great application! I did an update today and so i'm surprised it is an old version. I'll try and update again.

EDIT - I did an update from within the app - looks like i need to do it outside the application. Thanks again for your hard work with this scraper.

muldjord

EDIT - I did an update from within the app - looks like i need to do it outside the application. Thanks again for your hard work with this scraper.

You're welcome! Yes, you need to stick to one or the other (the one installed from the RP script or the one installed manually as describe on Github). Mixing them can cause problems.

showstopper

I didnt want to make a new thread so....

I have this working for all my systems but i noticed that the Mame (Arcade) scrape for option Covers seems to get the artwork (from ArcadeDB) Flyer. Is there anyway to change this?

For example Super Street Fighter II uses the Flyer image and i would like it to use the Decal image (or other).

Is that possible?

muldjord

@showstopper No, it's hardcoded to first try for the flyer and then the title artwork if it doesn't find a flyer. That's the problem with the arcade artworks, there are so many different ones and none of them match up well with an actual game box cover. So it comes down to a subjective thing and I personally like the flyer artwork best.

If you want, you can import them into the cache yourself by using the import module. Read more about that here.

showstopper

@muldjord Thanks for replying. I totally agree that it is a subjective preference. Some of them look good as flyer. I manually checked a few and Decal seems to be quite a good one (for me).
Just reading your KB - i expect that i am reading it wrong but it looks like it would be a manual individual import - is that right? Is there no way to add 'Decal' as a bulk import option?

muldjord

@showstopper Well, I guess you could compile Skyscraper from source and just change the hardcoded "flyer" to "decal" in src/arcadedb.cpp. That would probably do it.

The import module is manual to the degree that you have to prepare each file. But once all files are placed correctly and named correctly, it's a bulk import.

showstopper

@muldjord do you have a compile KB by any chance? I'm happy to give it a go.

muldjord

@showstopper I don't know what a KB is, but the compile process is described in the documentation. :)

showstopper

@muldjord KB = Knowledge Base (or documentation!)
I am running this on a Raspberry Pi so not sure how i would compile it on there. Can i change the aracdedb.cpp file on the Pi already - or does the app need compiling first with that change?

EDIT - Actually could i do this by editing the artwork.xml file?

EDIT 2 - Ah no looks like it would need compiling

showstopper

Is there anyway to download a single game artwork for a different region? For example 'Another World' on the Amiga is currently set to 'Out of this World'. I see you can change region in the config file but i just want to manual scrape this game with the European artwork and name.

muldjord

@showstopper Yes, you can scrape a single file by adding it to the end of the command-line. And you can set a temporary region with with the --region option. Check the region documentation. Check it all here: https://github.com/muldjord/skyscraper/tree/master/docs

Remember to regenerate the game list afterewards and be aware that not all sources have regional support.