Bypassing the terrible Emulation Station scraper manually?

SpudsMcToole

So everyone knows how galactically terrible the built-in scraper is in every possible way, and the @sselph one absolutely terrifies me so that's out too. However, I'm happy with manually editing stuff, so I have two quick questions that someone might hopefully be able to help with.

Has anyone made downloadable files with a GAMELIST.XML and a bunch of screenshots that could be conveniently imported in full or selectively? And if so, where might those be located? I've had a look but it's not immediately obvious what search terms to use.
In my MAME2003 install, I have the normal main gamelist but I also have a "Favourites" folder. I can find the standard GAMELIST.XML in home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/arcade, but I can't find one containing all the metadata I've already manually scraped for the Favourites folder, over several painful hours of endless crashing and rebooting.

(I checked and the standard one definitely only contains the metadata for the main ROM list, not the stuff in Favourites.)

Any idea where my "favourites" gamelist might be hiding, folks?

sselph

Only one I remember is this one from RecalBox but I don't know the status of it.
https://github.com/recalbox/recalbox-gamelists

If my scraper terrifies you, you could try UXS it is Windows based.
https://github.com/Universal-Rom-Tools/Universal-XML-Scraper

I have also sent out a version of EmulationStation with my scraper built-in for testing but that will probably take a little while for you to see in the main code.

SpudsMcToole

@sselph That Recalbox link is perfect, thanks very much. Now I just need to work out where the GAMELIST.XML for my Favourites folder is located and I'm golden :)

paradadf

@SpudsMcToole don't be terrified by sselph scraper! Here is an easier way to use it:
https://forum.recalbox.com/topic/2594/batch-scrape-your-roms-on-your-pc-fastscraper
I recently created a bash script of it as well, so it can be used on macOS and Linux.
You can easily edit the parameters to your preference with any text editor.

SpudsMcToole

@SpudsMcToole Answering My Own Question Dept: the metadata for the games in the Favourites folder is in fact located within the general GAMELIST.XML file in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/arcade - the Favourites games just get extra entries with the Favourites filepath.

Unfortunately, if I edit the GAMESLIST.XML file there, it just seems to get overwritten with the old version whenever I use the emulator, so I'm no better off. Man, nothing is simple...

sselph

@SpudsMcToole The way EmulationStation works is it reads the xml in to memory when it starts then when it exists it writes everything back out. What this means for you is that if you edit the xml while ES is running, when you reboot it will be clobbered. The easiest thing to do is quit EmulationStation before you do anything.

SpudsMcToole

@sselph Yep, I figured that out from reading paradadf's link, and worked out that the easiest way to do it without scary command-line shenanigans was just to put the box into Kodi mode. All sorted now, my Favourites folder looks gorgeous. Thanks both :)

residentjim

the Emulation Station scraper should called craper even in 4.4 version hung all the time useless crap