Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections

Used2BeRX

@meleu Been keeping busy with a huge project I've undertaken, but I didn't want to lose touch man.

In the process of adding 158 translated games to the NES I realized how lousy the quality of artwork for boxes and carts were for the Japanese games that were collected years back compared to what they are now so I've been upgrading all of them. I've even upgraded all the pirates and I'm working on unlicensed and prototypes now. So far for the NES alone there are about 600 upgraded boxes and another 600 upgraded carts.

Sometimes you just can't get good artwork though and you have to go the extra mile for it. I'll use the Japan game Flappy for an example.

Our original looked like this:

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It was clean, but it was tiny. The only larger image I could find online had a pricetag on it:

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I managed to find this pretty huge one on ebay though:

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And with a little plugin magic on a program called paint.net I was able to change the perspective and end up with this upgraded images that is about 6 times the size of the original one we had:

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Now I'm just hoping I can finish all of this crazy work I've given myself before my cash runs out and I need to start working again. :)

Used2BeRX

@meleu Hey bud. How's things?

Just a few highlights of what I've been doing here. Getting the artwork prepared for your script update whenever you get around to it. Not rushing you. I have plenty to keep myself busy. :)

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I've got about 650 new and/or upgraded boxart and matching cartridge artwork for Japan, Translated, Pirate, Unlicensed and Prototype games, and a majority of them I've tweaked in one way or another. I'd say about 100-150 of them I've put significant effort into beautifying.

I can say with confidence this is the prettiest Obscure NES artwork collection in existence at this point. :)

Hope things are going well for you.

meleu

@used2berx if the kids are healthy everything is fine. :-) I'll try to take a look at that script this weekend.

Cheers!

Used2BeRX

@meleu Good to hear it man. :)

Let me know when you get a chance to work on it. I could use a break from this artwork upgrade / synopsis upgrade / translation adding project. I've been working about 12-15 hour days on it for about 2 weeks now. I haven't even actually turned on my pi for weeks.

meleu

@used2berx I had a busy weekend but I think I can take a look at it in the next couple of days. Can you remember what's the ToDo list here? :)

Changing the <image> based on the user choice between 3dbox, boxart, frontcover, cartridge, etc... Is it?

Used2BeRX

@meleu Awesome man. Looking forward to it. :)

I just went back and found the post with the to-do list. Here's what I had on there.

1. Change it so that when you use --full or another option that it doesn't alter the gamelist.xml name. (Eg: no _FULL_ added to nes_gamelist.xml.

With symbolic links I have everything set up to run perfect now after running your script so all you need to do is reboot when it's done. When the names are changed like this it adds the step of having to change names before rebooting. (Maybe it would be worthwhile to also have a copy with the _FULL_ or other identifiers as well, but the main file should also be edited).

2. Make sure that script is checking for both .JPG as well as .PNG for the extra fields on a --full command.

--full only found .PNG files that were located in the 3D Boxart folders. It did not find any of the .JPG files in the other folders such as Titles and Action.

3. Add <marquee> search and entry to standard script run without needing --full.

<marquee> is a usable tag in EmulationStation now, even though my packs don't currently contain any artwork with them. A few of my friends are making skins and have made their own marquees by cutting out the title in the title screen of every game. :)

4. The ability to do a quick switch of which type of artwork has the usable <image> tag after the --full command has been run.

By just changing which type of artwork has this tag after all of the gamelist.xml files have been made, it could literally save about 12 hours by not having to completely re-scan everything on the Pi Zero.

After we can do this stuff, I can go back in and test that all of the other artwork is working properly. I suspect that it all should be, but I do want to verify with my own eyeballs to make sure. Takes quite a while to move through 8,000-10,000 games on the romlist to verify every one has artwork, but it's worth the effort. :)

meleu

@used2berx

1. Change it so that when you use --full or another option that it doesn't alter the gamelist.xml name. (Eg: no _FULL_ added to nes_gamelist.xml.

Done. Use the option --default-gamelist for this result. See --help for more info.

2. Make sure that script is checking for both .JPG as well as .PNG for the extra fields on a --full command.

Done. But didn't test. Please test it.

3. Add <marquee> search and entry to standard script run without needing --full.

I need to know where the marquees are stored. Is it Artwork/marquee?

4. The ability to do a quick switch of which type of artwork has the usable <image> tag after the --full command has been run.

Not yet implemented. Will try to implement it tomorrow.

Used2BeRX

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

@used2berx

1. Change it so that when you use --full or another option that it doesn't alter the gamelist.xml name. (Eg: no _FULL_ added to nes_gamelist.xml.

Done. Use the option --default-gamelist for this result. See --help for more info.

Awesome. :)

2. Make sure that script is checking for both .JPG as well as .PNG for the extra fields on a --full command.

Done. But didn't test. Please test it.

Will do. Let you know if it works now. Should be able to get back to you today on this.

3. Add <marquee> search and entry to standard script run without needing --full.

I need to know where the marquees are stored. Is it Artwork/marquee?

That will be fine. I haven't even made the folder at all on my end. I saw somebody on here talking about them in another thread and put them in the folder "Marquees", but why confuse things? The tag is <marquee>, so let's just make the folder /Marquee/.

Let's make it a capital M though, for consistency. All other folders in the Artwork folders are capitalized. :)

4. The ability to do a quick switch of which type of artwork has the usable <image> tag after the --full command has been run.

Not yet implemented. Will try to implement it tomorrow.

Excellent. I'm a REALLY excited to see how this will work out. Once you finally get the gamelist.xml files the way you want them, this will be the absolute quickest way that you could switch the type of artwork displayed in the romlist.

BTW.....

Is it too late for a 5th ask? I swear this is a tiny one. :)

I just thought of it this morning. I was wondering if you could throw in some sort of IF/ELSE statements in there that would create a /backup/ directory in whatever directory you're running the script from if it doesn't exist. Then, if a particular gamelist.xml already exists, whether you're appending to it or writing over it, it would copy the old one into the backup folder?

(It would also have to overwrite any previous files already existing in the backup folder so you're not away from the pi for a day and you're thinking it's going to do all of the gamelists, not realizing that it's paused to ask you if you want to overwrite "x" file.

Thanks again man! I'll let you know when I test it out.

meleu

@used2berx said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

if a particular gamelist.xml already exists, whether you're appending to it or writing over it, it would copy the old one into the backup folder?

It's a fair request, and really easy to implement. Will do when I have a chance.

Used2BeRX

@meleu Hehe... I don't know how to do the magic you do, but I am familiar enough with basic coding to know that this was probably just about the easiest thing I've asked you to do so far. :)

BTW... I'm running the nes_gamelist.xml with --full now. Everything looks great. It seems to be picking up all of the images!

I'm going to let it finish running so I can test it out when you get around to #4 on the list and we can see how this will work changing the image type displayed.

BTW... I also used the --default-gamelist command and immediately could tell that it worked. I'm having a brain fart though.... wasn't there another option besides no option and --full? This --default-gamelist should be able to be used no matter what option you use. I see in the help file it only mentions using it when using --full.

Thanks again for this awesomeness man.

I've run out of time with my brother's pi, but he had a few of them so I'm going to make another one with the work I've done so far. He's giving one to both his brother in law and sister in law, and all he wanted me to do was get NES and SNES running on it back in May. Whoops! I got a little carried away. :)

red2blue

how are you suppose to read a gamefaq thru the retropie

meleu

@red2blue I use less (or zless if the file is zipped). But usually I use my cell phone directly accessing the website. :)

meleu

@used2berx said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

This --default-gamelist should be able to be used no matter what option you use. I see in the help file it only mentions using it when using --full

If not using --full the file will already have the default name. I've just made what you suggested: make the --full option create gamelist files without that _FULL part in their names.

Used2BeRX

@meleu Right. I was thinking about the other option --only-new, but that doesn't add anything to the gamelist name. We're good. :)

@red2blue

how are you suppose to read a gamefaq thru the retropie

I didn't even know at this point that you could read them at all, so thanks to meleu for that.

Currently though, there isn't any good way to do it in RetroPie, as far as I know. Nobody would leave a game to pull up the faq and then go back to the game.

When these were collected we were doing it on the XBox and the developer of the emulators made an option where you could pull up the Gamefaq and if there was a zipfile of faqs with the same file name as the game you were playing you could choose which one you wanted to view. Then, as long as you don't quit the game, you could immediately resume viewing the faq from where you left it if you pulled it up again.

Used2BeRX

@meleu Tons of new stuff done for the NES in the last week. I've pretty much re-done about 70% of the synopsis files... everything that wasn't US Licensed. Those were all really done right. I also made sure all of the games have the "Players" field. That information wasn't online for most non-US/EU games. Now every Japan, hack, translation, prototype, pirate, unlicensed, etc have that information. I verified every game by hand.

I'm working on the Famicom Disk System now. Once that's done, I'm going to start adding the 180 or so translations, and then look into adding just some really good hacks and homebrew.

If anybody knows where to find a REALLY good Famicom Disk Image, I would appreciate it. It doesn't matter what game it is for as long as it's clean. I was able to find good images for pretty much every FDS game, but it's just the label on the Disk. I need to have a large and clean image of the disk for a template to put these labels on.

Much appreciated. :)

Used2BeRX

@meleu So... my problem now with FDS synopsis is that the Platform: field for all of them says Nintendo Entertainment System instead of Famicom Disk System.

I remember I had to do that because otherwise the script would separate these games into an entirely different folder (I believe it was fds, but I don't have the pi available at the moment and I don't use that folder).

At first, I thought this wouldn't be a problem and I could just cut all the info from the gamelist_fds.xml, but the problem is that it doesn't fill in any of the media fields or even the roms because it is looking for them in the fds folder.

Is there a way we could have the NES look for the FDS games instead of separating them? Now that I'm doing all of this work re-doing all of the synopsis files I really don't like having the wrong information for the console type on all of the FDS games just to get the script to work right.

meleu

@used2berx said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

@meleu So... my problem now with FDS synopsis is that the Platform: field for all of them says Nintendo Entertainment System instead of Famicom Disk System.

I remember I had to do that because otherwise the script would separate these games into an entirely different folder (I believe it was fds ...)

Yes, it is fds, as this system is named in RetroPie.

You shouldn't rename Platform on your synopsis, man, but asked me to make Famicom Disk System synopsis content to be added to the same gamelist as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

@used2berx said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

Is there a way we could have the NES look for the FDS games instead of separating them?

This would be a workaround in your system, not in the script.

Do you want me to make the script spit metadata from synopsis where Platform: Famicom Disk System AND Nintendo Entertainment System be the same? I can change 1 or 3 lines of code for that...

Used2BeRX

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

@used2berx said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

@meleu So... my problem now with FDS synopsis is that the Platform: field for all of them says Nintendo Entertainment System instead of Famicom Disk System.

I remember I had to do that because otherwise the script would separate these games into an entirely different folder (I believe it was fds ...)

Yes, it is fds, as this system is named in RetroPie.

You shouldn't rename Platform on your synopsis, man, but asked me to make Famicom Disk System synopsis content to be added to the same gamelist as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Yeah. I know. It was a stupid thing to do. Didn't you say there was a command that you could run that could easily change that line in all of the FDS synopsis files in Linux? I mean, changing Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System back to Platform: Famicom Disk System?

There are only about 100 entries, but it still took quite a while to change every one by hand. I seem to remember you saying something that there is a single command I could run that would change all of them in a few seconds. :)

@used2berx said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

Is there a way we could have the NES look for the FDS games instead of separating them?

This would be a workaround in your system, not in the script.

Do you want me to make the script spit metadata from synopsis where Platform: Famicom Disk System AND Nintendo Entertainment System be the same? I can change 1 or 3 lines of code for that...

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but what I would like to see is any synopsis with either Platform: Famicom Disk System OR Platform: Nintendo Entertainment Systemthat is found in the Media/nes/Synopsis/ folder would only look in the /nes/ directories for the roms and media instead of /fds/.

Now that I think about it, that would probably be the best way to go. Somebody else might actually like splitting the two systems up and if they had synopsis files for the Famicom Disk System in Media/fds/Synopsis/ then it would still make a separate gamelist for the FDS.

Did I explain that good enough? I hope.... :)

Used2BeRX

@meleu BTW man... I sent you a message at the other place. Firefox keeps messing up my gmail account so I can't send any mail unless I uninstall and re-install it and I don't have time for that right now.

Used2BeRX

So I found this image:

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It was 1000x1080 pixels, but didn't need all that blank space around the border so I minimized that wasted space while also keeping the removed background transparent.

Here's an example of the "labels" that I manged to snag. Not all of them include part of the cart like this... it was a really mixed bag:

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Here's what the transparent label looks like when the background junk is removed:

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And finally... we have our finished image. An actual FDS Disk image with the proper label for the game. :)

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Can't even tell, can ya? ;)

959x1154 pixels pretty much ensures that this should still look good on a 4k TV down the road. Currently, according to one of my friends, a Pi 3 on a 1080 TV doesn't even handle images that are larger than 700 pixels on the large dimension, and these are essentially a square, so they'll probably even need to be shrunk down smaller than that to prevent lag on the Pi 3.