Take and Scrape Your Own Screenshots

CoolCat

what would be the easiest way of have screenshots instead of art?
i like the idea of take our own screenshot, but sometimes scrapper is handy.
best wishes,

meleu

@CoolCat said in Take and Scrape Your Own Screenshots:

what would be the easiest way of have screenshots instead of art?

My opinion:

Use the runcommand-onstart.sh from method 1 (this will set the needed configs in retroarch.cfg files).
Use the runcommand-onend.sh from method 2 (this will fill the gamelist.xml with the path to the screenshot files).
Turn off "save metadata on exit" in emulationstation.
Take screenshots of your games.

i like the idea of take our own screenshot, but sometimes scrapper is handy.

Uh... I think it was a little contradictory... :-)
If you scrape your roms first of all, and then do what I described above, you'll get what I think you want.

CoolCat

Yes. You are right :)
My issue is that i dont know how to scrape screenshot :/
Best regards,

CoolCat

I know how to take a screenshot with retroarch, but that seems to not work.
Would be cool if retropie could try the other folder for screenshots and use it properlly anyway.
Regards,

meleu

@CoolCat did you read the first post of this thread? There is a link to the wiki showing how to do it.

CoolCat

@meleu Yes, i found it latter :)
Anyhow, i have to look over so many things.
ES has a thumbnail metadata that dont use.
I think hyperspin does have even videos.
Retropie is full new playground.
Wonder if someone is thinking of a lr-jzintv for example.
So im reading and testing atm, but i still need more time testing so i can say something better based.
Probabbly the better would be use the thumbnail metadata (and probabbly have a theme that support it)
For completeness a videoshot support, maybe.
But first i need to understand why it wasnt made before.
Btw, i loved this forum script :) (it just miss the reply by mail. )

meleu

@CoolCat said in Take and Scrape Your Own Screenshots:

@meleu Yes, i found it latter :)
Anyhow, i have to look over so many things.

I'll use the default argue to this :-)
"Raspberry Pi is, first of all, a tool for learning."

Although RetroPie is not limited to raspi, it's the plataform where we love to run it. :-)

I think hyperspin does have even videos.

Maybe you like to see what @Floob is doing with attract mode front-end.
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/93/attract-mode-with-retropie-alternative-to-emulationstation

Personally, I love the simplicity of emulationstation and enjoy to run it on my raspi1.

CoolCat

Ok, im doing a retropie setup on a aspire one with ubuntu for my sister :)
Well, i looked the script and the second method is the best for me i think.
I wonder how hard would be to tweak it for a little diferent behaviours.

1-change retroarch screenshots folder at system rom folder, worked fine.
Retroarch has 3 options for thumbnails but i didnt dig into it.

It worked flawless. I will try to study this script.

It would be handy if it could do it as batch on a screenshot folder.

If i have the screenshots allready it fill the gaps.

I will look the other frontend but i think we can have some improvement here in retropie using retroarch and emulstation.

Maybe would be cool if retroarch have a option of auto-screenshot after a time of playing? Im not sure what would be the easy way, but for sure this script helps a lot.

I really think that emulstation scrapper and theme maybe deserve some love and care for better experience, but this script solved the problem atm.

Thanks,

CoolCat

@meleu yes, it was something in this lines i had in mind, thanks :)

CoolCat

Hi,
Is there any reason to not hardcode it?
I mean search the screenshot folder for a image with the same name of the rom (no need for xml in this case)
And the xml could override the hardcoded, though.

Opinions?

meleu

@CoolCat to be honest I didn't understand what you're suggesting... can you detail it?

CoolCat

@meleu i didnt saw the atract mode yet, but i was thinking of adding 2 folders (maybe more if needed) at the same level of BIOS and roms ; screenshots and saves.
So, screenshots/nes/mario.png (or other formats) would be searched and displayed for roms/nes/mario.zip

Are initial thoughts but it seems to be the simplest approach at a first glance.

Regards,

meleu

@CoolCat man, sorry, English is not my native language and maybe I'm not getting something you are trying to say...

With the methods discussed in this thread and detailed in the wiki you can set ANY valid directory to put your screenshots. It only have to exist, be readable/writable for the pi user, and be configured in retroarch.cfg. It doesn't matter if it's at the same level of BIOS and roms, or any other place.

Just to make the things clearer for me, please try to answer these questions:
Did you use any of the methods described in the wiki?
Did you understand the methods described in the wiki? If no, what part you didn't understand?
Are you having some problem with them?
Do you have some feature request for them?

CoolCat

@meleu hi.
Yes, im using the second method and worked great for me.
I was talking of have a standard layout for easier maintenece.
The script allready presume some stuff, as far as i saw.
For me the script solve the "Issue", im tring just to put things together for dont lost my screenshot setup, and have it running nice.

Sorry, my fault. I changed the subject even if it is topic related. Your english is ok :)

Best wishes,

meleu

@CoolCat said in Take and Scrape Your Own Screenshots:

@meleu hi.
Yes, im using the second method and worked great for me.

Phew~
:-)

I was talking of have a standard layout for easier maintenece.

It's up to the user define it at retroarch.cfg and choose something that makes sense to him/her (this is the RetroPie way-of-life :-D ).
I like only one /home/pi/screenshot directory for every system, our mate @herb_fargus likes to put the screenshots i /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/SYSTEM/images directory. You seem to prefer /home/pi/RetroPie/screenshots/SYSTEM...

The script allready presume some stuff, as far as i saw.

Indeed, the method 1 forces some directories, but we assume that the user has the knowledge to edit the script to change it to his/her taste (if hasn't, we are here to help).

The method 2 takes the directory from retroarch.cfg.

Now I would like to talk about something you said previously:

It would be handy if it could do it as batch on a screenshot folder.
If i have the screenshots allready it fill the gaps.

If you wanna scrape all the screenshots you already have you can use my runcommand-onend.sh script (from method 2). You just have to give it the proper arguments (the 1st and the 3rd ones) and make sure that your screenshots have the same name as the rom (except the extension). Something like this:

# IT'S JUST AN IDEA. I DID NOT TEST IT. CHECK BEFORE EXECUTE!
for system in "$(ls -d1 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/*)"; do
    for rom in "$(ls -1 "$system")"; do
        /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onend.sh "$system" blablabla "$rom"
    done
done

Cheers!

herb_fargus

@meleu my reasoning for keeping the images in the rom folder is it makes it more portable so if you only want to transfer snes Roms to a new build they are already scraped without need to scrape again or dump everything but it's just my preference for my builds, they can be placed wherever as you said.

CoolCat

@herb_fargus yes, i said to have a screenshots and saves folder was for better maitanance and follow the retropie structure of dirs.

As pointed out if you have all screenshot in one folder could have conflict of same titles and diferents ports.

Otoh, have the save files and screenshots on the rom folder just bloats the folder.

I hope retropie got a little more polished in this field having this done by default at install (course you could change that after setup, though).

I will try the atract mode, it seems to have tweak emulstation (that miss some stuff) and i dont know if it used metadata as filters (tag).

Another nice feature is use crc for identify roms. (Probabbly best suited for cartridges)

http://www.arosworld.org/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=144

Anyhow i love the retropie way of doing stuff, just miss a feature here or there but it glues things very nice, at least for me it feels ther right way of game center :)

Best wishes.

CoolCat

@CoolCat ps: here it has a video just out of curiosity :)

meleu

I've noticed that the Take and Scrape Your Own Screenshots wiki wasn't listed in the wiki's front page nor the sidebar. Then I've just added. ;-)

meleu

I noticed that this trick doesn't work for "ports". The reason is the same as the runcommand launching images doesn't work for ports.