Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections

UDb23

@Used2BeRX Everything clear so far. Will keep you updated.

Used2BeRX

There was a little miscommunication with the other guy that was helping me work something out and he created a python script for Linux that will make individual "game".xml files with tags for all of the game info and put the 10 file tags above it. It actually looks for the media if it's in the proper folders so it puts the proper extension too. Pretty cool, but I'm a Linux dummy and the only way I could really use it is in the Linux console with the Pi. The problem is I've got the Pi Zero with a small SD card so I couldn't really make use of it that way.

I've got really high hopes for what you're talking about doing here. Maybe if we iron out all of the kinks it could be actually turned into that executable you had mentioned as well. I'm thinking that what you're doing could be a valuable tool for anybody with Extra media for their games, even if they're not using my setup.

I've taken your advice and stepped away from this for a while, until you come back with something. I probably could have gotten the first half of the NES gamelist.xml done yesterday if I worked on it all day, but I'd be kicking myself for it once I had your program to work with I'm sure.

Let me know! Thanks.

cafarellidigital

I just wanted to show my support for this project, for all of the work that you've done so far, and I look forward to see where it goes in the future!

Used2BeRX

@cafarellidigital Thanks man. I think this is going to be pretty sweet when it's finished.

Used2BeRX

@UDb23 hey man. Was just wondering if you had any time to work on this at all? I'm pretty busy with some other stuff at the moment, so I'm not rushing you or anything. Just don't want to lose touch with the only guy who seems to have a plan on how to do this.

UDb23

@Used2BeRX Don't worry. ;-)
As promised I started working on it. In the end I decided to go directly for making an executable program (no need for excel..).
Downloaded and installed latest Visual Studio community 2017; took me some time to get acquainted with it.
So far I made a "skeleton" main program with functions to access file system and to do string manipulation. Tomorrow I hope to find time to write the code for the "conversion" from txt to xml (should be easy at this point).

Used2BeRX

@UDb23 Sweet. Just let me know if you need any more input before making the first compile. Otherwise I should be around to take it for a spin whenever you've got it ready.

Used2BeRX

@UDb23 Since I haven't heard back from you yet I figure you're still putting it together. I was hoping you could add a field in the first 10 <marquee></marquee> I don't have any marquee images myself, but some guys I know that are making a skin are using that field and making marquee style images by cropping from title screens.

UDb23

@Used2BeRX Sure I can add this additional tag.
Program development is progressing and I'll provide you a first working version over the weekend.

Used2BeRX

@UDb23 Nice.

I'm going to ask around here and see if I can get some answers on memory issues. I actually "broke" the Pi Zero with just the hand made XML files for only the 4 Atari systems. EmulationStation was taking 2-3 minutes to load and some emulators stopped functioning altogether. I'm just wondering if loading pointers to data that doesn't exist is draining memory resources or not. And I'm also wondering if every single picture you load is draining memory at one time. Seems terribly inefficient to me. I'll be able to test our work here one system at a time, but then I have to rename the XML file so it doesn't get loaded when I go on to the next system.

Anyways, maybe down the road there can be options made in your program to expand or limit exactly what fields the program adds to the XML file depending on what I find out about how things are loaded.

UDb23

@Used2BeRX First beta of the Application to convert your .txt to .xml is ready.
You can find it here.
Just unzip the MetaX.zip and launch Setup.exe.

Use the "Browse" button in the App to select the folder that contains the txt files.
Currently only one by one conversion works: select the file and click "convert" button.

I found that the game metadata source txt files are not consistent meaning some info may or may not be included; also same info (e.g. "developer" can be in different line in one txt and in another line in a different txt).

The application tries to find the specific "tags" regardless of line order; it also identifies the "description" by selecting the lines after the line with "________".

Could you let me know the complete list of "items/tags" the App should:

look for in the source txt files
write to the .xml files (on top of items found in the .txt)

Just want to first make sure everything is converted correctly as single files, and then implement "convert all" and "create global gamelist.xml" functionality.

App requires .net libraries installed (created in VB with Visual Studio community 2017); I suppose it will ask during installation (can't test on another PC).

note: if you convert the same txt multiple times, it will append lines to already existing corresponding .xml (we could call it a "known bug" ;-) ).

Note 2: App does not do anything else as converting txt to xml so it should be totally harmless. In any case keep a backup of your original txt files.

Used2BeRX

@UDb23 Awesome man. Thanks.

I downloaded it, but haven't had time to use it. I should have some feedback for you tomorrow or Tuesday night at the latest. Thanks so much for this again.

genericuserdude

@UDb23 I somehow got banned earlier this morning with no reason. I think it was a mistake. Just wanted to post here that I'm working on trying to get to the bottom of this. If somebody has it out for me for some reason and I get banned with this ID as well, please reach out to me as I think we're on to something really good here and I don't have any way of keeping contact with you right now. I couldn't figure out a way to send a PM, so here's the hail mary.

Please contact me on this online document if the ban doesn't get lifted until we come up with something better: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18cfXi3eO7Gj1piWbzans8zS5CQ2ATaUrxeM0jmdzal8/edit?usp=sharing

UDb23

@genericuserdude ok.
Maybe you should ask @Global-Moderators why this happened.

genericuserdude

@UDb23 said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

@Global-Moderators

Okay. At least you and the other guy I have been working on another project has seen the link. Please save it in case I get banned again and they remove the posts so we can continue our work.

@Global-Moderators Could somebody please tell me what is going on with the ban?

mediamogul

@genericuserdude

Could somebody please tell me what is going on with the ban?

I just checked the ban history for @Used2BeRX and it says "no reason given" which is not usually done. Also, after a quick look over the recent post history for that account, I don't see anything that should be offensive. I guess it could have been a mistake, but it's a permanent ban and that takes a small amount of extra doing. It can still be reversed, but I'd like to see if there was any purposeful intention from any of the other moderators or admins first.

herb_fargus

@mediamogul I didn't ban him. If I did, it's because I'm on mobile and it was accidental with random button presses. I don't know if there are logs on who did what, @BuZz or @dankcushions ?

genericuserdude

@herb_fargus @mediamogul Thanks for looking into it guys. Sorry about creating a new account, but I couldn't figure out any other way to contact anybody here about the ban.

dankcushions

it wasn't me, officer! :)

mediamogul

Almost everyone is accounted for except for that suspicious new moderator, @ColonelMustard.