Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections

meleu

@Used2BeRX Please, mark true or false for the following sentences, assuming you're saying them:

I understand that, despite being a more user-friendly environment, making the conversion from txt to xml on Windows is more painful.
I understand that Linux has powerfull tools to process text files, and my coders friends will be happy to help me if I am able to run their programs and provide feedback.
I'm not used to Linux but, as we are generating files to be used on Linux, I want to learn at least the basics (e.g.: how to execute simple commands from the prompt).
I prefer to spend some hours learning the basics of Linux than months generating xml files manually.
I want to share the results with the RetroPie community.
I don't want to use the results for commercial purpposes.

Thanks.

dankcushions

do it all in python and stop worrying about linux vs windows ;)

Used2BeRX

@meleu

False (I think. I don't know if I understand the question)
True
True
True
True
True

meleu

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

do it all in python and stop worrying about linux vs windows ;)

What about C:\windows\path\style vs /UNIX/style/one?

dankcushions

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

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

do it all in python and stop worrying about linux vs windows ;)

What about C:\windows\path\style vs /UNIX/style/one?

the python OS/sys/io libraries deal with that i think... although i never bothered with my one python script :)

Used2BeRX

@meleu Thought you may have missed my edit. I'd like to try your script out as-is now, but I can't get it to do anything... any ideas?

Help works now with the new download (went from 65kb to only 3kb???)

Don't know what to do from there though. I put the XML files in /home/pi/RetroPie/Media/NES/XMLTest/

Then I ran ./fullpath-gamelist.sh /home/pi/RetroPie/Media/NES/XMLTest/ gamelist.xml

: file not found.

meleu

@Used2BeRX said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

Then I ran ./fullpath-gamelist.sh /home/pi/RetroPie/Media/NES/XMLTest/ gamelist.xml

: file not found.

Looks like there's a unecessary space after the last / and before gamelist.xml

Used2BeRX

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

Ah... I thought that was a separated part of the command. I'll try it and edit this post with my results. Thanks

EDIT: No. Same result.

Is the script expecting there to be a gamelist.xml file that already exists?

If it does, does it matter if it's just an empty file called gamelist.xml?

meleu

@Used2BeRX

Is the script expecting there to be a gamelist.xml file that already exists?

Sure. It's supposed to be used with the xml files generated by the @UDb23 's program.

If it does, does it matter if it's just an empty file called gamelist.xml?

The script does nothing with empty files.

UDb23

@Used2BeRX said in Making premade gamelist.xml with xtra media collections:

Is the script expecting there to be a gamelist.xml file that already exists?
If it does, does it matter if it's just an empty file called gamelist.xml?

Surely yes.
Just take one of the files converted to xml and it should be ok

UDb23

@UDb23 renaming it to gamelist.xml.

meleu

@UDb23 actually there's no need to make it named as gamelist.xml ;-)

UDb23

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

Please, I'm not disrespecting your work on that program at all.

Don't worry; I understand what you mean. As said, regardless of final results, it was and is a good opportunity for refresh my VB knowledge under Windows.
I really like the Raspberry with all the opportunities it offers thru Linux... it reminds me when I started with the Vic20 so many years ago... no GUI... just commands and programming line by line... I loved it !!

That's why I think that making everything on one environment should be less confusing.

And it does of course make sense if @Used2BeRX is ok with your proposal.
I will not get offended if you'd like to manage the whole conversion + folder process with a single script. ;-)
Take care by the way... as said I have a significant amount of metadata (in a different format) for Vic20 that I may end up asking you to convert on top of @Used2BeRX txt files.

UDb23

@meleu If command is used with the right filename.. of course not. lol.

Used2BeRX

@meleu Is your script only converting one file at a time now then? I thought I was just pointing it to the folder and it was converting all of them to the gamelist.xml . If we're just testing single files then, I was mistaken.

EDIT:

I just tried ./fullpath-gamelist.sh /home/pi/RetroPie/Media/NES/XMLTest/MEGA MAN I.XML and got "MEGA": file not found.

UDb23's program doesn't create a gamelist.xml It just converts the {gamename}.TXT to {gamename}.XML

meleu

@Used2BeRX @UDb23 hey guys, forget my script for a while.

I understood that the MetaX output was a complete gamelist.xml but it's not the case. Looks like it creates an individual game entry in a gamelist.xml format.

Right now I'm downloading the @Used2BeRX files and trying to understand their structure, etc.

Go play some games! :D

meleu

@Used2BeRX

I just tried ./fullpath-gamelist.sh /home/pi/RetroPie/Media/NES/XMLTest/MEGA MAN I.XML and got "MEGA": file not found.

When a file has spaces in the name, use quotes. Example:

./fullpath-gamelist.sh "/home/pi/RetroPie/Media/NES/XMLTest/MEGA MAN I.XML"

Also, I think you'll be amazed when you discover that you just to type part of the filename and then press TAB. The shell tries to complete the name for you... ;-)

Used2BeRX

@meleu Sure thing. I've been working on another project of mine already in the mean time.

Keep in mind a few things about the file structure of what you're downloading.

It's different than the Pi filestructure in a few ways.
Our system had a Media folder, then the Systems were inside of that. Pi file structure made me have to change that to be /{system_name}/Media/
Roms in our structure were a folder inside of the media folder. Pi file structure made that completely different.

Please reference the folder structure I had above to see the changes made for Pi.

Used2BeRX

@UDb23 Hey UDb23. I was wondering if you could still make the program put all of the individual files into a global gamelist.xml for each file. That way I would only have to copy 1 single file to the Pi for the conversion (that was what meleu originally thought we were doing too).

Also, I think we should talk about how to make the folder synopsis.txt files for conversion as well. It would be nice to have the entire gamelist.xml file made and then just have the media/roms altered on the pi after the fact.

What do you think?

UDb23

@Used2BeRX when @meleu said:

Go play some games! :D

I'm pretty sure he meant he's looking to make also the txt to xml conversion on the Pi.

Nevertheless I can finalize MetaX with the bugfixes we spoke about and also generate the global gamelist.xml file (on top of single files).

Concerning folder synopsis.txt; I can add this too to MetaX.
I would suggest a structure basically the same as the game txt files:

path=
image=
name=
releasedate=
developer=
publisher=

and description should be at the end of the file and have this line before:
=======

Folder txt files should be named Fold_yyyy.txt, where yyyy should recall the folder name (it's not relevant to the program as the real folder name is in the path inside the txt).