Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone

Folly

Thanks !

Folly

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.

bbilford83

@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@bbilford83

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!

bbilford83

@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@bbilford83

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?

Folly

@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:

@bbilford83

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.

bbilford83

@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.

bbilford83

@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.

bbilford83

@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.

DTEAM

@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.

bbilford83

@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.

Folly

@bbilford83

What about hosting it yourself ?
I can add a line in the script.

bbilford83

@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@bbilford83

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.

Folly

@bbilford83

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.

bbilford83

@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.

DTEAM

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

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,

You can create your own system with Skraper (like Zemmix) and choose where you want your search (ex.: MSX database) . I did that for Playchoice 10 and many other systems linked to MAME.

I added your systems to my Google drive.

Folly

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@Folly I think you would need to use this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jb4TsMcA_BQptnK9zKplWQdRgl5iN2Hp?usp=sharing

No , can't use it in my script I need a link with system folders and the correct gamelists with correct folder structures.
I already added the link with the stuff in the roms folder that is the correct stuff.

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.

Also, I can't use the zemmix content in the configs folder too as they have incompatible paths in them.
That is why I adapted yours over here.
For sharing you need to add my adapted zemmix and zemmix2 folders to your roms folder just like @DTEAM did over here

DTEAM

@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

For sharing you need to add my adapted zemmix and zemmix2 folders to your roms folder just like @DTEAM did over here

Done!

bbilford83

@Folly @DTEAM forgive me I am a little confused and trying to juggle some work at the same time, is there anything left for me to do about Zemmix or is what @DTEAM did sufficient? It looks to me like it is integrated - thank you for using it!

Folly

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@Folly @DTEAM forgive me I am a little confused and trying to juggle some work at the same time, is there anything left for me to do about Zemmix or is what @DTEAM did sufficient? It looks to me like it is integrated - thank you for using it!

I will summarise :

When we started with zemmix I added recognition in the script so the zemmix msx1 is detected as zemmix and the zemmix msx2 is detected as zemmix2

You made a zemmix gamelist with msx1 and msx2 games in them and called it zemmix and inside the gamelist you had fixed paths for the images created by the scraping you did.

To be sharing this zemmix gamelist, like any other predefined gamelist we added, we need to convert the gamelist to use relative paths instead of absolute paths.

All our shared predefined gamelist have the images in the roms/media/emulationstation subfolder so you can backup them with the roms. Another advantage is that you can use the same gamelist and images in any other system folder, if you somehow need to, for example msx.
By the way that is the about the only way my script can share it.

Your gamelist contained msx2 games but was called zemmix and zemmix is for msx1 only and so I had to split them up and give them relative paths too and rename the folders a bit so now they can be shared.

Above that, I wanted to have an index file in the roms directory of the games you picked so it is easier to find the games otherwise you need to look into the gamelist and that is not really an easy option.

So the zemmix folder contains msx1 only and the zemmix2 contains msx1 and msx2 games.

I have now added your google drive links folder in the script as an alternative host. So when you add something to that folder it will automatically be available to everyone who is using the script. Taking into account that you respect the predefined gamelist structure.

So DTEAM added my converted zemmix/zemmix2 stuff to his googledrive and therefor is now available to everyone who uses the script.
So as a mirror you can add that too in your folder.
I added your folder also as an alternative so if I or DTEAM will not host it then you can do that by yourself.

If you want to add stuff to the zemmix gamelists then it's best to add it to my gamelists which you can host by yourself now.

Hope I explained it good and that you understand the structure now.
If not then let me know.

Explore this :

bbilford83

@Folly Thank you I think I get it now! The relative vs. absolute paths makes sense to me, it is just easier for scraping purposes to use the absolute ones. But I think when I finish a gamelist I can change it as you did with some find and replace, nothing too brutal.

I didn't realize you had integrated the option to download the stuff in my google drive straight from the script, that is neat. I like and think it makes sense how you are keeping it separate as a WIP - people can look to see if they like it that way.

I have been working on and off on XEGS now, it is the same basic goals/issues/problems as with Zemmix. But an even higher percentage of Atari 8-bit games work for it, not many have required a keyboard so far. It will probably take a couple weeks but when I am done with that I will try to change the game lists to your structure. Then I will do C64GS which I think is the last "consolized computer," at least that I have found.