Versatile C++ game scraper: Skyscraper

AlCzervik · 9 Sept 2020, 17:22

@muldjord Any reason when I rescraped my NES many of them now are showing "load screens" (e.g., Select 1 or 2 player screen) vs. gameplay screens?

muldjord · 10 Sept 2020, 09:12

@AlCzervik What source is it using for the screenshots? (you can check it with Skyscraper -p nes --cache edit FILENAME. The reason is that sometimes the source has the title screens in their databases as screenshots. It's quite normal, but is a bit of a challenge when scraping from them, since I don't know one screenshot from another.

AlCzervik · 10 Sept 2020, 14:54

@muldjord I'm using screenscraper. Is it random? As in, if I scrape again would it pull different images they've stored? Some examples I know changed were Super Mario 3, Metroid, Zelda 2.

muldjord · 10 Sept 2020, 19:33

@AlCzervik When scraping with -s screenscraper it will first look for a screenshot of the type ss which is usually a normal screenshot. If it doesn't find that, it will look for one called sstitlewhich, obviously, is the game title screen screenshot. So in this case, my guess is that it doesn't find any of type ss and therefore uses the sstitle screenshots.

AlCzervik · 15 Sept 2020, 17:54

@muldjord That must be it for those titles but it is strange that they changed recently. These are older NES titles so perhaps screenscraper changed for some of those titles. Not a big deal, just wanted to point it out. Thanks!

theshadowzero · 19 Sept 2020, 16:29

@muldjord i've got a quick question about skyscraper, i've tried messing with the --cache settings but haven't been able to quite hit my use case. i scraped all my roms over a couple days with skyscraper from screenscraper, but i had videos disabled. now, i'd like to add videos, but i haven't been able to figure out how to get skyscraper to just scrape videos. because the roms already have metadata in the cache, skyscraper seems to want to either skip them entirely, or with a --cache refresh completely scrape them fresh. is there a way to tell skyscraper "the metadata is fine, i just want you to scrape the videos that are missing and not rescrape all the other fields?"

ive tried running it with just --flags videos and it asks me if i want to skip already existing game list entries. saying yes obviously skips all the roms, and saying no will show that it finds the rom, show all the metadata and media i have (with a big red NO() for video), and then do nothing and proceed to the next rom. if i scrape with --cache refresh it finds the rom and the video and will download and include it. i was under the impression skyscraper would automatically add media that is missing but that doesn't seem to be the case, or more likely i am doing something wrong. guidance would be appreciated! i don't want to spend another 2-3 days hammering screenscraper.fr to get videos when i already have 90% of the scrapes i need

edit: i also tried with --cache edit:new=videos but it errors saying it only supports certain resources. not sure that would have solved it for me anyway since i fear it would have expected manual input rather than scraping but i tried it regardless

muldjord · 19 Sept 2020, 19:05

@theshadowzero said in Versatile C++ game scraper: Skyscraper:

is there a way to tell skyscraper "the metadata is fine, i just want you to scrape the videos that are missing and not rescrape all the other fields?"

No, it will always scrape the metadata since it's "free". When a game is looked up, the metadata is already there in the data received from the server. So it would be pretty silly to not use it.
It's the media that might take some time to grab - especially the videos of course.

I would simply rescrape all of the games with videos enabled. That's the easiest for this use case. You will need --cache refresh for that to work.

i also tried with --cache edit:new=videos but it errors saying it only supports certain resources. not sure that would have solved it for me anyway since i fear it would have expected manual input rather than scraping but i tried it regardless

Correct, you cannot use --cache edit for this use case. It can only edit metadata and add metadata. Not media.

muldjord · 24 Oct 2020, 21:15

Skyscraper 3.5.9 released: https://github.com/muldjord/skyscraper

Implemented the new IGDB v4 authentication method. IGDB will now work again, and requires free credentials. Read more about that here
Improved memory consumption when handing entries back to main thread
Added '.au3' file extension to id script exception list (Thank you to 'o0alucard0o' for reporting this)

Most prominent feature is the updated IGDB v4 API authentication method. This was broken due to IGDB moving away from their old v3 API. This is now fixed and requires free personal credentials. Read more about that here.

Let me know if you run into issues.

Clyde · 24 Oct 2020, 21:39

@muldjord Perfect timing as ScreenScraper is currently down! 😉

Seriously, thanks for still working on this awsome tool. 👍

muldjord · 24 Oct 2020, 21:40

@Clyde Yeah, they seem to be hit hard this time. I hope they aren't about to shut down... :S

EDIT: Ok, just visited your link. So they are working on it. Good to know. :) Thanks.

Clyde · 19 Nov 2020, 22:36

Hi,
I just noticed that Skyscraper doesn't seem to generate a valid gamelist.xml for Daphne, at least not from the file structure for Daphne that's described in the Docs.

Since that structure requires directories instead of archive files, Skyscraper writes a <folder> element instead of <game>:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gameList>
  <folder>
    <path>./ace.daphne</path>
...

This makes Emulation Station ignore the game's entry:

Nov 19 23:26:24 lvl2: 	Parsing XML file "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/gamelist.xml"...
Nov 19 23:26:24 lvl1: 	gameList: folder doesn't already exist, won't create
Nov 19 23:26:24 lvl0: 	Error finding/creating FileData for "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/ace.daphne", skipping.

Can you confirm this? Should I open an issue on Github?

Thanks
Clyde

Clyde · 20 Nov 2020, 12:30

And another question about Daphne:

SS scrapes Space Ace wrongly as the MAME aircraft game Ace, probable because of SA's rom directory ace.daphne. How can I fix that?

Thanks again
Clyde

muldjord · 20 Nov 2020, 16:49

@clyde I spend quite a lot of time getting Daphne to work some time ago I think, but I can't remember how it works. I'll have to spend some time looking into that when I get the time.

EDIT: @Clyde, please check the release info here. That version (3.5.0 and 3.5.1) is where I implemented daphne properly.

Clyde · 20 Nov 2020, 16:52

@muldjord Of course, take your time. And please tell me if I can help you with that in any way (other than coding, which I am not proficient in).

Clyde · 20 Nov 2020, 16:55

@muldjord said in Versatile C++ game scraper: Skyscraper:

EDIT: @Clyde, please check the release info here. That version (3.5.0 and 3.5.1) is where I implemented daphne properly.

Alas, I'm using version 3.6.1 already, and I have four roms in daphne/roms (ace.zip, dle21.zip, lair.zip, lair2.zip).

muldjord · 20 Nov 2020, 17:33

@clyde said in Versatile C++ game scraper: Skyscraper:

And another question about Daphne:

SS scrapes Space Ace wrongly as the MAME aircraft game Ace, probable because of SA's rom directory ace.daphne. How can I fix that?

Thanks again
Clyde

By SS do you mean Skyscraper or Screenscraper in this case? :D

muldjord · 20 Nov 2020, 17:34

@muldjord Another thing, do you adhere to the folder layout as specified here?

Clyde · 20 Nov 2020, 18:32

@muldjord Yes, I do:

$ tree /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/
├── ace.daphne
│   ├── ace.commands
│   ├── ace.dat
│   ├── ace.m2v
│   ├── ace.ogg
│   └── ace.txt
├── daphne_log.txt
├── dapinput.ini
├── dapinput.ini.backup
├── dle21.daphne
│   ├── dle21.commands
│   ├── dle21.dat
│   ├── dle21.ogg
│   └── dle21.txt
├── gamelist.xml
├── lair2.daphne
│   ├── dl2-00001.dat
│   ├── dl2-00001.m2v
│   ├── dl2-00001.ogg
[... many more dat/m2v/ogg files ...]
│   ├── dl2-44550.m2v
│   ├── dl2-44550.ogg
│   ├── dl2-framefile.txt
│   └── lair2.txt
├── lair.daphne
│   ├── lair.commands
│   ├── lair.dat
│   ├── lair.m2v
│   ├── lair.ogg
│   └── lair.txt
├── media
│   ├── covers
│   │   ├── ace.png
│   │   ├── dle21.png
│   │   ├── lair2.png
│   │   └── lair.png
│   ├── marquees
│   │   ├── ace.png
│   │   ├── dle21.png
│   │   ├── lair2.png
│   │   └── lair.png
│   ├── screenshots
│   │   ├── ace.png
│   │   ├── dle21.png
│   │   ├── lair2.png
│   │   └── lair.png
│   ├── videos
│   │   ├── ace.mp4
│   │   ├── dle21.mp4
│   │   ├── lair2.mp4
│   │   └── lair.mp4
│   └── wheels
├── README.txt
└── roms
    ├── ace.zip
    ├── dle21.zip
    ├── lair2.zip
    └── lair.zip

Clyde · 20 Nov 2020, 18:33

@muldjord said in Versatile C++ game scraper: Skyscraper:

By SS do you mean Skyscraper or Screenscraper in this case? :D

Skyscraper :)

Clyde · 20 Nov 2020, 18:36

@clyde said in Versatile C++ game scraper: Skyscraper:

├── dle21.daphne
│   ├── dle21.commands
│   ├── dle21.dat
│   ├── dle21.ogg
│   └── dle21.txt

There is a m2v missing ~~that I plan to hard link to~~ because my dle21.txt points to ../lair.daphne/lair.m2v (edit: as I just remembered :*) ), but that shouldn't concern my problem, since none of the four games are put correctly in the gamelist.xml by Skyscraper. All have the <folder> element instead of <game>.