Creating ES gamelists with media for MAME/lr-mame/lr-mess

[Folly]

@jamrom2

I see the problem here for you.
Converting it all manually is a ton of work.
Though gamelists, in general, can be patched on the fly to get the locations we use.
So I understand if you don't want to do all this hard work.
Though, I ask you to reconsider.
In this forum we are trying to help each other and share information so we can do things in an easier way.

Earlier we choose our directory structure so :

• we can backup the gamelists together with our roms
• gamelists + media could be shared
• original gamelists are not overwritten

The problem is that scrapers don't work perfectly.
What we are trying to do here is make gamelists that will match the mame driver data and/or the mame solftlist hash tables and add more if we want to.

So the work is done 1 time and then can be shared/downloaded within our script.
So when everyone is making a gamelist with media the workload is shared and it will be easier in the long run focusing later on improving stuff rather then building it up again and again.

To give you an idea of how I did it for videopac.
I have made a script that will extract data from a desired mame hash table and converts it into a csv.
Then I convert it back to a gamelist.xml.

Only thing I have to do is add info that wasn't in the hash table.
I used the internet and the scraper to get some cover images.
The movies can be made simply by running the mame command for every rom in the directory, one by one, and add the -aviwrite ./<filename> option, saving it it in the same folder as the rom, like this :

for game in *.zip;do [[ ! -f /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/videopac/media/emulationstation/$(basename $game .zip).mp4 ]] && /opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/odyssey2/mame -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame\;/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/odyssey2 -aviwrite ./$(basename $game .zip).avi -v -c -ui_active videopac $(basename $game .zip);done

Then we can convert all the movies to mp4 and cut out the first 3 seconds like this :

for game in *.avi;do ffmpeg -ss 00:00:03 -i $game -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 30 -vcodec libx264 -acodec aac $(basename $game .png).mp4;done

I hope you see the bigger picture here.

[Folly]

This post is deleted!

[jamrom2]

@folly I'm happy to post them here, maybe to be converted into whatever they can be used for. I took the time to research each game from several sites as to assure I had Meta data for each. I'd hate to see all of that time go to waste.

I'm definitely not saying no to offering what I have, it's just I gave up on the scrapers finding all of these titles, so when I did that, I used my own method that worked for my rig... unfortunately, it didn't help this situation.

Here is an example of the Ti99_4a game Bigfoot using the bigfoot.rpk rom.

<game>
	<path>./bigfoot.rpk</path>
	<name>Bigfoot</name>
	<desc>In Bigfoot, your ultimate goal is to scale a mountain and capture the eponymous creature, who stands at the summit. Along the way, you collect food and gold. However, in order to collect one bundle of gold (yellow piles), you must first collect one bundle of food (green boxes). Using the fire button, you throw ropes which are used for climbing up the platforms. Once thrown, you can scale up and down the ropes. Bigfoot hurls boulders at you as you go. If your rope is near the edge of a platform instead of near the middle, you run the risk of being smashed by a boulder as you climb up the rope, so throwing the rope near the center of a platform is safest. During later levels, birds will come along and snag the ropes - fatal if you happen to be on a snagged rope at the time.</desc>
	<image>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/ti99_4a/bigfoot-image.jpg</image>
	<releasedate>19830101T000000</releasedate>
	<developer>Milton Bradley</developer>
	<publisher>Texas Instruments</publisher>
	<genre>Action</genre>
</game>

I don't use videos as many of these older systems don't have any, so there is no listing for them...and I didn't want them in my build anyway. That would need to be added along with any other extra display pieces aside from what I have listed for "image".

[Folly]

@jamrom2

Do you have a github account ?

Then you can fork my "media repository" and add your files to that.
Just keep your gamelist.xml the same and add the ti99_4a directory to your fork just like my videopac directory and place the pictures in ti99_4a/media/emulationstation.

I can then look at the files and convert the gamelist.xml to the correct locations.

If you have more that 100 files then can't add them all at once, then you have to add them in 2 or 3 steps.

[jamrom2]

@folly I don't. I'm not as tech savy as that... lol.

I'm better off emailing you each set one at a time if you want to do that instead.

[Folly]

@jamrom2

That would be ok, but email has probably a limit in how big the attachment can be.
Probably about 50Mb.
So if you stay below that limit we are probably ok.

On the other hand I searched for a reasonably good website that we can use to share these files.
It looks like this website is a good alternative :
https://ufile.io/
Just zip your files to 1 file and share the link.
I did a test with videopac gamelis+media files :
https://ufile.io/tutqgnwc

[jamrom2]

@folly Ok. All done.

https://ufile.io/f/9qjlu

Dragon64
Ti99_4a
classich (Classic Handhelds)
Coco2
Coco3

Are all uploaded. Bare in mind that many of the graphics I made I took from all kinds of sources like eBay, MobyGames, Launchbox, RetroGamer... etc... on and on. And some I actually made myself using parts of images I had to cobble together as there were no complete box/manual/screen images available.

It was a ton of work and does not cover ALL games of ALL systems...just many that I hand picked based on "top 100" lists for each system.

I hope they come in handy for you and others!

[Folly]

@jamrom2

Link is working good !

Already seen some nice picture :-)

Will have better look later on.

[Folly]

@DTEAM

Shall we also make some gamelists for megaplay and playchoice10 ?

[DTEAM]

It's already covered by site like Screenscraper and others with MAME system

[Folly]

@DTEAM

Off-course, I will try ;-)

Edit :
Well I tried in emulationstation, but it only works if I have the files in the arcade folder.
Screenscraper doesn't add a picture to it.
The gamesDB doesn't recognise correctly.

Scraping isn't really a nice solution, if you ask me.

[DTEAM]

@Folly said in Creating ES gamelists with media for MAME/lr-mess:

Screenscraper doesn't add a picture to it.

It works with screenscraper. You have to add a system and customize the rom path in SKRAPER

[duglor]

@DTEAM @Folly and how do you do this? what do you actually type? etc?

[duglor]

@Folly @DTEAM @testudo Does the Mess-Archimedes work now with .adf (not the amiga type) files such as Hamsters? I have not been able to find a bios file or files that have made it run. :(

[Folly]

@duglor said in Creating ES gamelists with media for MAME/lr-mess:

@DTEAM @Folly and how do you do this? what do you actually type? etc?

These are examples on how to create gamelists.xml's manually together with media we put them in the ~/RetroPie/roms/<your_system> folder.
These above gamelists overrule the standard gamelists, that are created when scraping and saved in the /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/<your_system> folder .

Just use a text editor to edit a gamelist.xml.

[testudo]

@duglor said in Creating ES gamelists with media for MAME/lr-mess:

@Folly @DTEAM @testudo Does the Mess-Archimedes work now with .adf (not the amiga type) files such as Hamsters? I have not been able to find a bios file or files that have made it run. :(

@duglor
All of my Archimedes roms are in .adf format. I can run Hamsters .adf file under the mame-aa440-bios_310-4Mb-flop emulator option.

[duglor]

@testudo said in Creating ES gamelists with media for MAME/lr-mess:

mame-aa440-bios_310-4Mb-flop emulator optio
@folly

Ok. and How do you run the emulator using that option? Is that something you create yourself like a batch file? Is it something you type into the screen before you click on the little disk icon? Is it something that you choose in retroarch? I think once i can run the emulator with that option, i'll be fine. Right now i can click on the disks but only 2 games have worked so far :) the others bring up i/o files and errors and such. Be well all!

[Folly]

@duglor

No problem discussing a bit of topic but we reserved this thread for discussing "Creating gamelists" only.

If you make use of the "add-system-mamedev.sh" 3rd party module-script then you can discuss elsewhere,
over how to install the system archimedes and how to run games for a paricular system :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-lr-mame-and-mame-standalone

[duglor]

@testudo Btw, is that the demo or full version of Hamsters? I think the demo is 800 kb and the full version is 1600 kb.

-Doug

I have the demo working fine. Full version is not happy.

Great job on the emulator!!

[duglor]

Anyone create an ES gamelist with box covers or screenshots for the Acorn Archimedes that can be imported into one's archimedes directory?