Reading .txt files for <desc> in gamelist.xml possible?
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I come from another project where years ago we put together high quality boxart, cart/cd art, title shots, action shots, videos and game synopsis data together for every console system up through the 16 bit era. This also included hundreds and possibly even thousands of prototypes, homebrew, hacks and translations as well. Every one of these media files are named identical to the rom file name.
Because of this, using scrapers for things we already have, much of the time in much higher quality, is redundant and would take years to perfect when we already had done that.
What I'm looking to do at the moment on my own is create a package for the Atari 5200 to give a small taste of what we have to offer if some of the coding wizards can figure out how to create scripts to scrape off of our collection directly. I'm hoping that our community and the RetroPie community could work together to really make the Pi something special, and take out a lot of the guess work when putting them together.
I will have to manually create most of this from scratch because I'm a coding idiot, that's why I chose a system with such a small library to start with.
Our synopsis files for each game are .txt files. I was wondering if I could somehow reference the .txt file for every game rather than have to copy and paste the information into the gamelist.xml file. This would keep the file gamelist.xml file from getting obscenely huge on some of the bigger systems like Gameboy Advance as well as saving a TON of time when trying to do this manually and it would probably be much easier to write a script for if it's possible.
Here is an example of one of our .txt files for the Atari 5200:
The Activision Decathlon
Platform: Atari 5200
Region: USA
Media: Cartridge
Controller: 5200 Joystick
Genre: Sports - Competitive Events
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1984
Developer: Activision
Publisher: Activision
Players: 1 to 4 Alternating
Programmer: Paul Willson
Designer: Dave Crane
The Activision Decathlon is a series of Olympic games similar to the Epyx games series. Up to four players can compete in the ten different events of a real-life decathlon, either in sequence or individually. Included are the 100-meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400-meter race, 110-meter hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, and 1500-meter race.
The flat running events involve simple joystick waggling, which must be balanced with accurately-timed button presses to clear the hurdles - hitting them or breaking stride causes a loss of momentum and thus time. For jumping and throwing events, you must build momentum by waggling and then press the button to throw or jump at what you feel is the appropriate moment.
For each event, points are earned based on how well you do (this can be based on your running time, or how far you throw the javelin or discus, etc...), and the player with the most points at the end of the decathlon wins the gold medal.
Scoring over 8,600 points got you a "Bronze" patch, over 9,000 a "Silver" patch, and over 10,000 a "Gold" patch by sending proof to Activision.
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Here's my gamelist.xml entry for Activision Decathlon:<game> <path>./Activision Decathlon.bin</path> <name>The Activision Decathlon</name> <desc>./Synopsis/Activision Decathlon.txt</desc> <image>./Artwork/Box Front/Activision Decathlon.jpg</image> <video>./Movies/Activision Decathlon.mp4</video></game> </game>
I haven't figured out how to get either an mp4 or a wmv file to play either, but I figure I should ask one question at a time :)
Thanks for any help and I hope our communities can work together in the future!
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