Take and Scrape Your Own Screenshots

[meleu]

@herb_fargus
You're right... updated my script...
I deserve a downvote!

[herb_fargus]

@meleu alright I've taken some of your changes and just tweaked it a bit, and modified the original post. It seems to be working with my tests.

There may have been a slight lag either because I was taking screenshots too fast or I exited before it could be saved properly so it saved a screenshot from a couple seconds earlier rather than my latest one, so I'll have to look into that a little further. If you don't take a ton in a short period of time it seems to work as intended.

Also if anyone else cares, if you set it to 16:9 in the retroarch.cfg your screenshots will also be 16:9 rather than 4:3

[meleu]

@herb_fargus
I was thinking about this trick again and realized one thing:

When using this trick, the user can't get screenshots for any other purpose.

The runcommand-onend.sh will delete the screenshots.

While we don't make a workaround for this, I think it would be appropriate to add this warning at the first post disclaimers.

[herb_fargus]

@meleu They can as long as they change the screenshot directory to somewhere else other than the images folder within a rom folder.

[hiulit]

This tutorial could make a great entry in the RetroPie Wiki! What do you guys think?

[herb_fargus]

@hiulit perhaps once I've cleaned up the code a bit more, might even be able to make a module of sorts perhaps, idk. Id also like for 4.0 to be released before adding something like this.

[hiulit]

@herb_fargus Yeah sure, no rush! Just thinking out loud. Great work, btw!

[meleu]

@herb_fargus

@meleu said

When using this trick, the user can't get screenshots for any other purpose.

If they change the screenshot directory, they are not using this trick. :-)

[herb_fargus]

@meleu its a fair point. how I envisions it is that people will just go through their gamelist once to get titleshots and then disable it or something. Idk, thats what I did anyways ha ha

[meleu]

@herb_fargus
BTW: I'm working on RetroArch code to implement what is said here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2483/screenshot-with-rom-name
If it works as expected and the libretro guys accept my PR (not submitted yet), we must adapt this trick. Then, let's wait before the wiki...

[herb_fargus]

@meleu that would save a step ;) I think there are others that would be happy for that implementation as well

[meleu]

@herb_fargus
When I was playing with RetroArch code I found that there is an option named auto_screenshot_filename.

As far as I understood, if this flag is set to "true" in retroarch.cfg, the screenshot filename is always Game Name.png, therefore it overwrites the old screenshot. It would be a really really nice feature for the trick we want to do here. Because we could turn on/off the trick based on auto_screenshot_filename flag.

The only problem is: I didn't get it working!

I made some tests here and it seems to be ignored by RetroArch. What a pity...

Sorry for this good followed by a bad news...

[herb_fargus]

@meleu that auto screen name thing would be ideal.

If the filename retains the date and time that will require a bit more logic to clean for the filenames when scraping. Its a step in the right direction though

[meleu]

Oh! But I have good news now:
My PR was merged! Let's update RetroArch from source!! :D

Now we have a problem here... our trick here will be incompatible soon. And if we adapt to fit the changes in the screenshot names, it won't be useful for outdated versions of RetroArch...

Oh god! Good followed by a bad news again... :-/

[EDIT: well, maybe if we adapt the RegEx to get the timestamp instead of the "RetroArch" string it can work as we want. I'll take a look at it later...]

[herb_fargus]

@meleu simple enough fix, just have both versions or add a disclaimer for people to update from source - or we could figure out that extra setting ;)

[meleu]

@herb_fargus said in Take and Scrape Your Own Screenshots:

@meleu that auto screen name thing would be ideal.

damn! You hit me! I'll check what's wrong with the auto_screenshot_filename option and try to make it work!

[meleu]

@herb_fargus
Man! What a shame!

Actually the auto_screenshot_filename flag does his job very well!!

The trailing timestamp is what the "auto" means! If you want a screenshot with the "ROM Name.png" only, you just have to set auto_screenshot_filename to false (the default is true).

Our script here can take advantage of this feature!

[herb_fargus]

@meleu so you mean it worked this whole time? :P ha ha that's funny. Ok well I'll give it a test once I get some time to compile retroarch

[meleu]

@herb_fargus said in Take and Scrape Your Own Screenshots:

@meleu so you mean it worked this whole time? :P ha ha that's funny. Ok well I'll give it a test once I get some time to compile retroarch

yeah man! it works even before my PR was merged. There is no need to compile retroarch to get those changes I made, because the auto_screenshot_filename = "false" is what we want! My changes only takes effect when auto_screenshot_filename = "true", and the default (if this option aren't in retroarch.cfg) is true.

We can adapt the "take and scrape your own screenshots" trick to work only when the auto_screenshot_filename = "false". I'm at work now, but I check it as soon as get in home...

[herb_fargus]

@meleu heh talk about an over engineered solution well regardless a bug was still fixed as a result so good job :) I'll see if I can update it. Maybe there's a way I can have it automatically generate folders and/or configs this time around- perhaps maybe come up with a module for it or something