what about adding a cheevos flag in gamelist.xml ?

PokeEngineer

Yeah, I would.

hansolo77

Absolutely count me in!!! I would test the bejesus out of that. :) But I'm not sure I really like the idea of having to go through a custom sort to get to my cheevo games. The way I have it now, my cheevo games are copied in the system folder in a subfolder. ES displays that folder as a ROM, so I select it and it opens up a list of games I've got in that folder. I know instantly that every game in there has cheevos. If I understand you current plans, it's to add an extra field in the metadata, which can be selected as a sort option. "Sort by Publisher, Genre, Players, Date Released, Cheevos". That would just make the gamelist present itself with games containing cheevos at the top, and the others at the bottom. BUT maybe I don't want to necessarily play a cheevo game. I'd hate to have the sort be to cheevos then have to go back in and change the sort to alphabetical. What I'd like to see is a metadata field (boolean meaning true or false right?) that allows me to create a collection like "Favorites" or "Last Played" so I can instantly select it from the main system menu without being limited to a sort, or even having to enter a system.

As for the scraping, this is a great idea. Up till now, I've had to manually go through my rom folders with a copy of the website up in a separate window looking at what's been added recently (once a week I check) and copy roms from one folder to the subfolder. It's long and tedious but gets the job done. If a method to scrape from the website lists automatically, and just add that "true" to the metadata can be made.. HELL YEA. :)

And yes, I would use this daily (when I'm not hacking around adding new features!). When I learned about RetroAchievements, that's pretty much guaranteed the 99% of the games I will play. I love trying to play for them. It is exposing me to a lot of games I wouldn't have even tried before. It's just more fun. And if we can make the RetroPie project include support in ES for this on the front lines, I can almost promise you more and more people will looking to use it. It's like before we had videos, people were happy with the way it was. Then video screens became a possibility, and now EVERYBODY is hopping on board. It really is the next best thing.

And @meleu is right. The RA team is developing cheevos on a daily basis. You literally can go there everyday and find a list of new cheevos and games that support them. Hell, I bet you could create a script as part of the ES boot up (if you have internet established) to check and see if any new games are supported and have it update your lists then and there. Although it would probably be better if it was an optional feature.

Keep me updated. I'd love to test out whatever you guys come up with!

grenade44

This is a great idea. What would be cool if the flag changed colour to say if you have completed the game as well. But I know that would be hard to code.

pjft

So, just to make sure we're clear on what we're asking here:

Assuming ES will have a way to know if a game supports achievements, do you see yourself using that by manually setting a filter for games with achievements every time you want to play them, or would you manually create a list/collection of such games, for easy access?

That is the question.

@grenade44 As for the term "flag", it's not a visual flag. There will be no visual representation for whether a game supports achievements or not, at least not now.

Thanks all.

R1n0X

@pjft I think that we could use a filter in the option "SORT GAMES" in menu

meleu

@r1n0x @grenade44 @hansolo77 and all cheevos users. I'm trying to be very clear now of what I am asking for ( @pjft please confirm).

I want to "enter" in a system (that view where you see the games of a system), press select (it will open the "OPTIONS" screen), choose the "FILTER GAMELIST" option (it will open the "FILTER GAMELIST BY" screen) and there will be a filter named "ACHIEVEMENTS".

Look the screenshots below:

press select when you are in system's game list

in the menu below there will be an ACHIEVEMENTS option

hansolo77

Well, seems like I'm getting outvoted. Everybody is more or less going with the filter option. I'd still really like to have a custom menu on the systems screen. Might just have to use a collection like originally planned.

meleu

@hansolo77 maybe my "cheevos scraper" can be useful for your use case too. I'll post here when it's usable.

hansolo77

No doubt it'll be useful. Up till now it's all had to be done manually, but if a quick and easy automated way to at least identify the games in your list that ARE compatible can be done, that's the way to go.

meleu

Just an update:
I'm making some progress with my "cheevos scraper", but I'm afraid it would overload the RetroAchievements server (wich we, cheevos users, know isn't that powerful). I'm in contact with the RetroAchievements.org guys to find the less stressfull way to retrieve the needed info from the site.

hansolo77

Boy do I know that all to well. I hate doing everything necessary for a cheevo, just to have it not pop because the server is down. I wish there was a good way to help get them to relocate to an upgraded server.

meleu

@hansolo77 said in what about adding a cheevos flag in gamelist.xml ?:

I wish there was a good way to help get them to relocate to an upgraded server.

Being a patron looks like a good way to help ;-)
https://www.patreon.com/retroachievements

pjft

@meleu let's start a separate thread for the implementation. I'm sure we'll find a reasonable and scalable way to do so.

Shall we? :)

meleu

@pjft great! I would like to discuss a little more with the RetroAchievements guys about the "cheevos scraper" and its impact on server's performance before releasing my tool to the community.

But we can go ahead with the implementation in ES! Sure! Let's go!!

pjft

@meleu I was actually referring to the scraper implementation :) I'd like to see if there's a way to make it scalable with minimum overhead on the server.

I was just offering to create a separate thread to bounce ideas there on the implementation end in regards to the server calls, just that.

Would you want to create a separate thread for that?

meleu

@pjft Well, I think it's more about RetroAchievements.org and their available php requests. Maybe it's better to discuss on their forums, on the thread I linked above.

On that thread I detailed the method I'm using to know if a game has cheevos. My concern about overloading the server is because the available transaction where I can see if a game has cheevos processes/returns a lot of data from where I need only a small snippet. Maybe Scott (that site's maintainer/admin) could create a php request to return only the info I need.

pjft

@meleu Got it, I'll follow up there.

There are two stress points in your design: one is the one you identified, which is the data that needs to be transferred per request; but the other is the number of requests overall.

I added my comments there.

Thanks!

sselph

@meleu Let me know if there is something I can do to help. It would be best to open a github issue so I don't miss it.

meleu

@sselph hey mate. I'll do it when I have something more concrete. The current status of this feature is "waiting RetroAchievements admin say what should be the nicer way to retrieve this info without stressing his server."

I'll open an issue on your scraper's repo if we get some progress.

Cheers!

meleu

@pjft @hansolo77 A heads up answering here the question from the other thread...

@hansolo77 said in Please Test: Creating Custom Collections:

did the post @meleu started about adding gamelist.xml support for achievements get deleted? I can't find it.

The post is this very same here.

And about the "cheevos scraper", I'm working on it right now.

We discussed in a RetroAchievements forum topic and IMHO if I release my "cheevos scraper" to the community it would stress the RA server. To avoid it, I created the repo hascheevoswith files separated by console. Each file has all registered game IDs in RetroAchievements database for the respective console and a true or false saying if the game has cheevos.

I'll try to update those files once a week, but I cannot guarantee.