Instruction Manuals

[growly]

Hey all,

I have just purchased my first Pie and have got Emulation Station up and running perfectly, and absolutely loving it.

Was just curious to see if anyone had considered the idea of scraping the instruction manual scans onto the system similar to how the boxart is shown. I am by no means a computer expert, and don't even know if this is a possibility at all, but keen to hear any thoughts on this or if anyone has tried. It would be very handy to be able to quick reference the instructions before opening a game to learn controls etc.

Cheers,

[Floob]

Probably tricky to scrape as the source format is often PDF, and the front ends tend to be designed to display images.
http://www.replacementdocs.com/news.php
http://vimm.net/

No doubt there would be a way, but I cant see it happening soon.

[JoseyWales]

I'd really like to see this. It wouldn't be hard to convert pdf to jpg or vice versa.

[detron]

though scraping would be great, is there a way to view manual scans from within retropie?

I have some manuals that I would add to the retropie microSD and it would be great to be able to read the manual on the screen

[Drakaen391]

it might be possible to add your own from sources, but having it up on the system gets tricky

[detron]

@Drakaen391 said in Instruction Manuals:

it might be possible to add your own from sources, but having it up on the system gets tricky

thanks.

what I have done for now is added a folder called "art" and placed it in the /home/retropie/ level (along side the roms and BIOS folders.). and added other files that compliment the games such as manuals, cartridge scans, other box art, etc.

it is useless from the retropie interface, but I can simply use FileZilla or other SFTP programs, log in and download the manual if needed to my tablet, or computer.

not a great solution, but it travels with the pi this way.

a web server with interactive jpg, pdf viewers would be great, but I am no web programmer.

[detron]

I should point out that inside the "art" folder, I made the same structure as inside the "roms" folder.

then as an example, I have

nes
--box art
--cartridge scans
--manuals

[meleu]

If the manuals are images, you can display it using fbi.

Edit: you can't display the manuals while playing anyway.

[detron]

@meleu said in Instruction Manuals:

If the manuals are images, you can display it using fbi.

Edit: you can't display the manuals while playing anyway.

thank you for the reply, I will check that out.

the sad reality is I feel the box art, cartridge art, and instructions manuals are just as important as the games themselves, even though I never seem to view those items. sort of a completionist view I guess

"Long live RetroPie"