Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections

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:

alt text

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:

alt text

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

alt text

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

alt text

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.

Used2BeRX

I decided I didn't like the original color of the image and that it didn't reflect the actual color of the FDS disks. I also noticed that some of the edges were rough, so I cleaned them up a bit and re-made the image for the first game restoration.

Here's the final look of the template, and what all the FDS disk images will look like in the collection.

alt text

meleu

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

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?

I think you're talking abou this:

cd /path/to/FDS/synopsis/
sed -i 's/Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System/Platform: Famicom Disk System/' *.txt

Please, make a backup before running this command! I think it's perfectly OK, this warning is just to make you not blame me if something goes wrong. :-)

UDb23

@used2berx With Carbon theme (most commonly used) @1080p the expected scrape image width is around 500 pixels (bigger images are automatically resized).
Therefore your images will look and fit nicely.

phulshof

Out of curiosity: would it make sense to simply convert the HyperSpin XML files (where matching rom sets exist), and combine those with the matching art sets from HyperSpin and EmuMovies? That would save a lot of scraping, and provide you with complete sets of high quality art.

Used2BeRX

@meleu Yes. I believe that's the command. No worries.... I'll back it up first. :)

@UDb23, thanks for the info. I only use SD since I'm rocking the Pi Zero and I don't have an HDTV, so it's good to hear from somebody who knows. I'm trying to build all of this with the highest quality and future expansion in mind.

@phulshof Nah, that won't work for me. No offense to HS and EM, but their "high quality" art is hit or miss, as is everbody else's. I've grabbed the highest quality NES artwork from multiple sources, as well as google image search and at this point I've touched up 500-600 images, I've made a few hundred myself and I've easily done some minor cropping to another 1,000 images to get rid of rough edges.

In total right now, including the FDS games, there is nearly 1,950 games in this collection, and the Box and Cart artwork in JPG format is 2.79GB. There is a box and a cart for every game in the collection.

Nobody has an NES artwork set that looks anything close to this good. ;)

phulshof

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

@phulshof Nah, that won't work for me. No offense to HS and EM, but their "high quality" art is hit or miss, as is everbody else's. I've grabbed the highest quality NES artwork from multiple sources, as well as google image search and at this point I've touched up 500-600 images, I've made a few hundred myself and I've easily done some minor cropping to another 1,000 images to get rid of rough edges.

In total right now, including the FDS games, there is nearly 1,950 games in this collection, and the Box and Cart artwork in JPG format is 2.79GB. There is a box and a cart for every game in the collection.

Nobody has an NES artwork set that looks anything close to this good. ;)

Fair enough. :) Might it be a good idea to hook up with the truRIP group then? They're currently working on creating complete sets (with planned PD distribution), and have access to high quality scans (since they own (almost) all of the games). They could provide good source material, while they could use the help in sorting out material.

Used2BeRX

@phulshof Yeah. I keep meaning to do that. Sorry I haven't gone over there yet. Would like to peek at their NES art just to see what they've got.

Going to be away from this for a few weeks now, but I'll join up after that.

Used2BeRX

@meleu Hey bud.

Going to be away from this work for a little while. Just wanted to update the script "wishlist" in case you get around to tinkering with it while I'm away.

Create the backup folder if it doesn't exist, and backup any gamelist.xml file before creating a new one if one of the append options isn't used on an exisiting gamelist.
Make option to change which artwork tag is set as <image> so you can switch between Box Front, Cart, Titles, Action and 3D Boxarts types after the gamelists are already made.
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System and Platform: Famicom Disk System entries in the synopsis.txt files located in /Media/nes/Synopsis/ folder will treat these entries as if they were NES and not FDS games and look for roms and all media in the /nes/ folders instead.
Add <marquee> tag to both regular and FULL operations, looking for the media in /Media/[System]/Marquee/ folders. (Search for both .JPG and .PNG).

I believe that was it at this point.

Thanks again man. This script is awesome.

meleu

@used2berx OK bro, will do it when I have a chance.

meleu

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

Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System and Platform: Famicom Disk System entries in the synopsis.txt files located in /Media/nes/Synopsis/ folder will treat these entries as if they were NES and not FDS games and look for roms and all media in the /nes/ folders instead.

Done! Please test it.

Add <marquee> tag to both regular and FULL operations, looking for the media in /Media/[System]/Marquee/ folders. (Search for both .JPG and .PNG).

Do you really mean that dir? I'm asking because looking at the directory structure of the Xtras files I have, I would bet in a folder like Media/[SYSTEM]/Artwork/Marquee.

EDIT: I've made the script look for marquees in Media/[SYSTEM]/Artwork/Marquee, tell me if it needs to change.

EDIT 2:
@used2berx said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

Create the backup folder if it doesn't exist, and backup any gamelist.xml file before creating a new one if one of the append options isn't used on an exisiting gamelist.

I've just added the backup feature. But currently it doesn't work as you requested, the script creates backup at the start of every execution. The backups will be placed at used2betxt-backups/ folder. The file will be gzipped and the name will be the same as the original with a trailing time stamp. Example: megadrive_gamelist_2017-08-04_100510.xml.gz.

Used2BeRX

@meleu Hey bud,

Thanks for the update. I'm literally walking out the door right now so I probably won't be able to test this stuff for another 10 days to 2 weeks. :(

You were right about the Marquee folder. Thanks for catching that mistake.

I'm sure the backup feature the way you made it is just fine. I'll let you know if I have any suggestions on it when I get back and test it out.

All that is left at this point I believe is the ability to change what artwork is displayed on the fly. I was thinking that maybe the option to turn any of the folders into a <marquee> tag at some point might be beneficial as well since those are now two separate image types supported for any skins that allow for two.

Just because the tag says <marquee>, that doesn't mean that you have to use Marquee images. You could, for instance, have /Artwork/Box Front/ set as <image> and /Artwork/Cart/ set for Marquee, and then a skin that uses both images would actually display the Box Front and the Cart image for every game while you scrolled through the list.

Just an idea for the future!

Anyways.... I'll talk to you when I get back and let you know how the script tests out. Thanks again for all of your help meleu.

Stay out of trouble. ;)