Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone
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Alright @Folly and @DTEAM, I am finally done with my work on Zemmix. It has 434 working games! That's more than dreamcast, saturn, etc... lots of other big systems. And that is still with only cartridge games and only games that don't need a keyboard at all. There are a huge number of MSX-exclusives, especially shmups, so I am glad I spent the effort to do this. Hopefully some others will use the work too.
In the same google drive link as before you will still find correctly-nested folders that have both a gamelist (in the gamelists/zemmix) and matching art (in two different folders, (downloaded_media/msx2 and downloaded_images/zemmix). I know this is clunky and weird, but MSX is really poorly-scraped in all databases, and I had to do a LOT of descriptions from scratch (by watching/playing games) or by digging them up in weird places, often from Japanese-language MSX fan websites (I used google translate). So after I initially tried normal scraping in screenscraper I figured out a better way but had to switch the folder location. I'm too exhausted to do the work to combine all the art in one place and edit the gamelist entries one by one accordingly, but it will work perfectly this way even if it's kind of strange.
There are still at least two other similar systems that can install via your script that I would like to add and I can share them too: Commodore 64 Games System and Atari XEGS. They are both computers that usually have keyboards turned into game consoles, which shipped with no keyboard. So I'd like to do the exact same thing I did here.
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Great work, as you see I did the themes for the Zemmix ones now too.
I will have a look at your gamelists when I can.Can you add your base google drive folder id, I can't seem to find it anywhere.
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@Folly one other thing, I did briefly try the XEGS and the system installed correctly with the script, games are loading properly with xegs bios in the right place, but for some reason no matter what I try controls do nothing. I checked and the games are properly loading the two controllers both as a standard atari 1-button joystick (joy) which is what they should be doing. I tried disabling player 1 and player 2 each, still no luck. Also tried messing around in keyboard selection... emulated vs. natural, etc. Still no controls :(. If you have any ideas I'd welcome them, nothing like this happened with any of the other systems that I can recall.
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I tested the keyboard as joystick with airball and it worked by default on mame and lr-mess in my x86_64 VM.
Can't test right now with a real joysick.Also tested choplift and some other game but these didn't seem to load as the roms seems to be still old. Have to look again later.
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@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
Added zemmix / zemmix2 to the theme.
Thanks Folly! Now merged
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Thanks !
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I have taken a look at your zemmix/zemmix2 gamelists and overall it looks quite good.
Only not sure why the images have quite a low resolution.
I have re-ordered the folder structure so it can be shared with the script.
I placed them (zemmix/zemmix2) over here.If you are happy you an ask @DTEAM if he wants to host it for you/us.
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@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
I have taken a look at your zemmix/zemmix2 gamelists and overall it looks quite good.
Only not sure why the images have quite a low resolution.
I have re-ordered the folder structure so it can be shared with the script.
I placed them (zemmix/zemmix2) over here.If you are happy you an ask @DTEAM if he wants to host it for you/us.
I'm not sure about the resolution, they are the standard pics from usual sources (mostly screenscraper). But it's fine with me, use it however you'd like, thanks for reordering!
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@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
I tested the keyboard as joystick with airball and it worked by default on mame and lr-mess in my x86_64 VM.
Can't test right now with a real joysick.Also tested choplift and some other game but these didn't seem to load as the roms seems to be still old. Have to look again later.
That's interesting, joystick with airball is a different option than standard joystick? I am not near my computer but I will test it out later. Is that something that could be loaded by default from the runcommand or saved somehow in a config?
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@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
I tested the keyboard as joystick with airball and it worked by default on mame and lr-mess in my x86_64 VM.
Can't test right now with a real joysick.Also tested choplift and some other game but these didn't seem to load as the roms seems to be still old. Have to look again later.
That's interesting, joystick with airball is a different option than standard joystick? I am not near my computer but I will test it out later. Is that something that could be loaded by default from the runcommand or saved somehow in a config?
Didn't do anything worked OOB.
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@Folly Well that's odd. Thanks for checking, I will try to see what is going on with me. Which emulator choice are you picking via runcommand?
I am thinking maybe it is a problem with the keyboard being active conflicting with the joystick controls. But I can't figure out a way to deactivate the keyboard.
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@Folly so this is strange... I tried out the lr-atari800 emulator and it is working but I have to hit start first before the game is playing. When you tested with a keyboard was there something you were pressing first before the game would load? I see there is a choice for "Conso.0: Start" in mapping but when I mapped that to start it still didn't do anything.
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@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
@Folly so this is strange... I tried out the lr-atari800 emulator and it is working but I have to hit start first before the game is playing. When you tested with a keyboard was there something you were pressing first before the game would load? I see there is a choice for "Conso.0: Start" in mapping but when I mapped that to start it still didn't do anything.
Edit: I don't know what I was smoking, that did work! Now it is working fine. Silly.
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@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
If you are happy you an ask @DTEAM if he wants to host it for you/us.
If a site like Screensrcaper or other support MSX/Zemmix, i'll not host it. The results from those sites will be better.
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@DTEAM said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
If you are happy you an ask @DTEAM if he wants to host it for you/us.
If a site like Screensrcaper or other support MSX/Zemmix, i'll not host it. The results from those sites will be better.
Hi @DTEAM. I won't take offense if you don't want to host it but to clarify, nothing (including screenscraper) will scrape anything if the system is installed as Zemmix, as the script will do here (and I think is correct since it's not installing an MSX system). That is the problem I was trying to avoid - it is the same now with XEGS (even though atari800 is scrapable). The way I thought might work was to first put all the roms in an MSX folder and then scrape that (using screenscraper as the source) and then replace all the rom filepaths afterwards, but even that only worked for maybe one out of five games. I am not sure why - screenscraper just wouldn't pick up the rom names for most. For the rest, I was using the internal retropie scraper by re-naming the roms temporarily to the name in the thegamesdb.net database - that is the other database that the retropie scraper can use - and then scraping one by one and replacing the images with the better compilation ones from screenscraper. That works because for whatever reason retropie will search all systems when using thegamesdb.net as the source; when you use screenscraper it just immediately says no results because Zemmix isn't supported. But even when a game was technically "scrapable" that way, I often ended up pulling info from other sources, or discovering wrong info - for example on screenscraper a lot of games had descriptions describing other games with the same name.
But again, even with all of that I would say about 1/4 of the games just weren't scrapable anywhere under any circumstances. I had to create a ton from scratch because they just aren't on any databases. So I mean it that I won't take offense if you choose not to use it, but I can 100% guarantee results from screenscraper or anywhere else won't "be better." It took dozens of hours of work to get it complete and I was just hoping others wouldn't have to replicate the same (or go without descriptions for many games).
Sorry for the long explanation!
Edit: I forgot probably the most useful thing about the gamelist - I was testing which games run without a keyboard (and thus can be played on Zemmix) and which require it (and so can't really be a "zemmix" game). If you don't want to use the art/descriptions but there's still some way to integrate that info that would be fine with me too of course... but I think since nowhere on the internet is there a list of zemmix-compatible MSX games (and trust me, I looked everywhere), that is probably what is most useful about my uploads.
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What about hosting it yourself ?
I can add a line in the script. -
@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:
What about hosting it yourself ?
I can add a line in the script.I'm happy to do it however you and @Dteam like - I was going to leave it in my google drive regardless but thought since probably nobody reads this thread that carefully it would be more useful integrated with your whole setup and on your main google drive. But really I am fine with whatever, it's just an offer if it is useful. I'd be doing all this work for my own build either way.
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If you make a separate folder for gamelists that we agree upon hosting then I will add a line with your gamelists.
So I changed your zemmix/zemmix2 folder structure for hosing.
Can you add these folders to a separate link and share that with me ?I think I can use this one, right ? : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19h16tSYtksWU1EfC92KxJBi-8zYTYkYr
Edit :
The script has been updated to 260.21. -
@Folly I think you would need to use this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jb4TsMcA_BQptnK9zKplWQdRgl5iN2Hp?usp=sharing
The one you shared is the subfolder from there "roms," but all the content for Zemmix is in "configs." That link should take you to both.
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