ExoDOSConverter beta

zerojay

Hi, I used v0.2 to extract eXoDOS v4.0. The first time, it somehow got stuck waiting for a response to something in a dialog box and I wasn't able to type anything in, so I had to kill it somewhere in the I's. When I restarted, I selected all the games again and it skipped down to where I left off, which is good.

Hours and hours and hours later, the extraction is finished aaaaaand my gamelist.xml consists ONLY of everything that was extracted from the restart, so only from I on down to Z.

How do I get it to generate the full gamelist without going through the entire extraction process all over again? Also, artwork does not appear to be added to the gamelist unfortunately.

EDIT: I edited your code and sent a pull request to always output the gamelist.xml regardless of how many games are already extracted.

Voljega

@wholee thanks !

To narrow the issue, do you have the same issue with every game or only with 1000 Miglias ?

Very good idea for the filter, I will add that when I come back

@zerojay thansk for your PR I will validate it on my return, I made some comment as I have to adress this error more.

I think at the core, the issue is encountered is the problem I was speaking about with the games list sometimes not properly loading or taking a long time to load.
There is no dialog box in the app, but Python does render some kind of very small blank window while first loading the list on launch

For the artwork part, it does appear fine for me, can you check that the path to it is added in the gamelist.xml and that the image was properly copied in downloaded_images folder ?

wholee

@Voljega
The issue is with every game. I even tried to clear out the cache folder and the same thing happens. It doesn't matter if I try to convert one or more games the error is the same.
Thanks for looking into this.

Voljega

@wholee strange did you install exodos before trying the conversion ?

zerojay

@Voljega said in ExoDOSConverter beta:

For the artwork part, it does appear fine for me, can you check that the path to it is added in the gamelist.xml and that the image was properly copied in downloaded_images folder ?

There are no images output into the folder. Image tags in the gamelist are all empty. Also, no files are created for emulationstation so the only way you can launch any game is to dive into the folders and find a dosbox.conf to launch.

Voljega

@zerojay strange too, maybe you didn't install the collection either ? If you dont' instll it the metadta are not decompressed ?

I am also unfamiliar with what format retropie wants for dos games ?

On other distributions you juste need to have a folder for the game named game.pc and a dosbox.bat and dosbox.cfg inside and this will recognizd as a game entry in EmulationStation ?

wholee

@Voljega
It was an issue with changing drive letters. Reboot cleared it up.
But now I also have the same issue as @zerojay , no images in downloaded_images folder and no files for EmulationStation.

And also, games appear to be sorted in "genre" folders, can that be optional?

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/PC/
http://dosonthepi.blogspot.com/2015/02/dosbox-configuration-for-individual.html
This is a good starting point to see how RetroPie is dealing with DOS games.

zerojay

There's also no need for game folders to have a .pc after the name.

wholee

@zerojay
I figured out the issue with images not being saved to downloaded_images...

The cache files that are supplied in the archive have fixed paths to the images. I've updated the paths in all cache files to match what I have and images got transferred properly.

Voljega

@wholee oh yes good catch ! And bad cache :')
And I'll have to correct the cache generation because I forget some things...

Yeah no problem for adding customisation option for genre folders and anything which can be interesting

I'll also add a setting for choosing between distributions and do a correct generation based

Voljega

I created an issue to add some configuration parameters to tweak generation : https://github.com/Voljega/ExoDOSConverter/issues/9

If you have ideas or suggestions you're welcome to comment it

Voljega

@wholee @zerojay

Hello guys, back from vacation, fixed all the bugs you & I found and made a new version :
https://github.com/Voljega/ExoDOSConverter/releases/tag/0.3-beta

Now I will work on full integration for Retropie, wholee gave me most infos here, but I guess I will need to ask some further questions on some specific points, I'll ask them here, thank you for your help in advance.

And off course on fixing new bugs I added with this release :D

Voljega

@wholee @zerojay

got around doing a preliminary version with improvement for retropie tonight, here's the link : https://www72.zippyshare.com/v/lNbQggE3/file.html

if you could tell me what's good, wrong and what to improve, that would be good :)

for now :

dosbox.cfg now contains the commands, with mount c command on top
a batch file launch.sh is generated and contains the line to correctly launch the emulator like /opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox -conf /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/CaptainP.pc/dosbox.cfg

what's missing / to improve :

don't know what entity should be registered in gamelist.xml ? ./CaptainP.pc folder, ./CaptainP.pc/dosbox.cfg file or ./CaptainP.pc/launch.shfile ??
on other distribution, we specify c: root folder and the use of dosbox.bat on the command line, not sure if the dosbox executable is patched or not to do that, but i'd like it better that way if that was possible, as I prefer to keep dosbox.cfg parameters and dosbox.bat dos/dosbox command lines separated, I find it cleaner and more portable that way... Do you think it's possible ?

mitu

@Voljega RetroPie's launch script supports .conf files understood by dosbox -conf <file.conf>, so you can just create a .conf file, with a simple [autoexec] section that mounts c and starts the game, and register it in the gamelist.xml. You don't need an additional .sh file for that.

Voljega

@mitu thank you mitu so these informations are obsolete : http://dosonthepi.blogspot.com/2015/02/dosbox-configuration-for-individual.html ?

regarding the gamelist these means that if I have a game in the pc roms folder like /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/CaptainP.pc/dosbox.conf and register in the gamelist the conf file :

<game>
      <path>./CaptainP.pc/dosbox.conf</path>
      <name>Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future</name>
      <image>./downloaded_images/Captain Power-01.jpg</image> 
</game>

it will be displayed inside a folder I guess...
So it maybe better to have a structure like these inside /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/

the game data folder CaptainP.pc (.pc beeing not mandatory I know)
CaptainP.conf(same level than the CaptainP.pc folder so outside of it) with the mount c inside the [autoexec] part modified accordingl ?

mitu

@Voljega said in ExoDOSConverter beta:

@mitu thank you mitu so these informations are obsolete : http://dosonthepi.blogspot.com/2015/02/dosbox-configuration-for-individual.html ?

No, this method is still supported - if you add the .sh as game entry, RetroPie would still launch it.

<game>
      <path>./CaptainP.pc/dosbox.conf</path>
      <name>Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future</name>
      <image>./downloaded_images/Captain Power-01.jpg</image> 
</game>

it will be displayed inside a folder I guess...

Yes, I think so. You're not constrained to have the game folder inside the ROMs folder. You can just put all game data in roms/exodos/<game.pc> and then register/symlink the .conf file in the gamelist (the .conf would still be in the pc roms folder).

<game>
      <path>CaptainP.conf</path>
      <name>Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future</name>
      <image>./downloaded_images/Captain Power-01.jpg</image> 
</game>

The .cfg file could be just

[autoexec]
mount c /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/exodos/
c:
cd CaptainP.pc
REM extra cd mount commands or setup
game.exe
exit

That's just an idea, I don't know how the .cfg file looks right now, but if the paths are correct it should work as it is.

Voljega

@mitu yes I see it like that too, but it's also better to have the mount c line be
mount c /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/CaptainP.pc

so you don't need the cd CaptainP.pc and paths are then all relatives from the C: set to the game directory itself /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/CaptainP.pc

I assume you mixed up cfgand confn the previous message right ? there is no cfg file in that case ?

Also I guess if I were to keep the .sh file both .conf and .sh files would be detected by ES and it would require manual interventions to hide one of the two ?

mitu

@Voljega said in ExoDOSConverter beta:

I assume you mixed up cfgand confn the previous message right ? there is no cfg file in that case ?

You can symlink the .cfg you generate in the game folder to the .conf file in the roms/pc. The extension change is just for ES to pick up the game (it doesn't have .cfg as supported game entry).

Voljega

@mitu ok thanks, but it's more easy and clean to move the file I guess :)

Voljega

New version with full retropie and opendingux simplemenu/esoteric compatibility :
https://github.com/Voljega/ExoDOSConverter/releases/tag/0.4-beta