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+---- Thread: Games Library (Game & Emulator database + launcher) development project, help wanted! (/showthread.php?tid=40715)
- sho - 2009-11-07
I think people would like to know how unfinished it is (me myself included).
When would it be considered finished? With all bells and whistles (library and scraping) or is something actually missing for the rudimentary executable support?
Sorry about not giving up... this is for the sake of the community after all
- spiff - 2009-11-07
when somebody is willing to maintain it.
- VictorV - 2009-11-08
I've made quite a lot of work trying to "port" the structure of the video section into a program section, but I have no experience with c programming and I have some problems seeing the complete program flow. Now I'm struggling with some linker errors I can't figure out.
As I see it, the program section could be something as follow:
Contents:
- Files - Regular files that are invoked by the system default executable for a given file item and have no extended information
- Application - A given program executable with a minimum of extra information (web browsers etc.)
- Game - Games that could be a ROM or a executable. If no launcher is given just pass the file so the operating system can take care of it.
- ArcadeGame - Divorced from games, as MAME and similar ROMs often will use different sites for scraping and maybe some small differences in how the graphical art is presented in the GUI. Would use the same table as a game in the database
Games database:
- TITLE
- PLOT
- DESCRIPTION
- MAXPLAYERS
- VOTES
- RATING
- REGION (won't be used for arcade games)
- BOXART_URL (used some general naming since it might be "front cover" for usual games, but might be "cabinet" for arcade games)
- ALT_BOXART_URL (There's made room for alot of artworks since many (included myself) thinks that a big part of a great front-end for game collections. I also think this will interest people over at xbox-scenes emulator forum
- EXT_BOXART_URL
- ACTIONSHOT_URL (action and intro screenshots are somekind of a standard for rom collectors)
- INTROSHOT_URL
- YEAR
- THUMBURL
- IDENT
- SORTTITLE
- PERSPECTIVE (Could maybe be merged into genres?)
- GENRE
- DEVELOPER
- PUBLISHER
- THUMBURL_SPOOF
- BOXART_URL_SPOOF
- ALT_BOXART_URL_SPOOF
- EXT_BOXART_URL_SPOOF
- ACTIONSHOT_URL_SPOOF
- INTROSHOT_URL_SPOOF
- PREVIEW (A precompiled video of the game. Pretty much the same as a movie trailer)
- FANART
- PLATFORM (Windows, Dos, Super Nintendo...)
I'm not sure what the best solution for scraping would be. A scraper would probably need to know what platform to scrape information for. That could be done while setting content for a directory, with some pre-defined platforms, but unfortunately some sites will use "SNES" as a identifier, some could use "SMC", and some simply "12". How to overcome this? There's a suggestion in this thread to use different scrapers for each platform, but I can't say I like it, as I don't think someone would keep them all up to date.
Another function from the video section that probably also should be in the program section is the stacking feature. Many ROM collections will have a naming scheme similar to: Super Mario Bros[u][!].smc, Super Mario Bros[J].smc etc. and I guess many will see this stacked, though handled a bit different by the player.
I've done most of the boring aspects of this, at least for the games, and I hope to get it up and running when I have some more time to sit down and study the source code.
- spiff - 2009-11-08
feel free to pop by irc, i'll gladly help and offer my ideas on the implementation side - we can even do it in norwegian
- BLKMGK - 2009-11-08
I've been getting updates on this thread forever but not had time to check on it till today. I had SO hoped to see something even remotely close for MAME at least. Depressing to see that it looks stalled and that no one sees value in moving it forward yet.
- leo2 - 2009-11-08
spiff Wrote:when somebody is willing to maintain it.I currently maintain "Launcher" plugin, but I would love to get rid of it and maintain a native xbmc code. (by maintain - I mean - fix bugs)
I'm sure that library support will be added sometime later, but it should be released to all users first for impression & ideas (and maybe other ppl would help implementing it or by adding scrapers)
- seedzero - 2009-11-08
leo2 Wrote:I currently maintain "Launcher" plugin, but I would love to get rid of it and maintain a native xbmc code. (by maintain - I mean - fix bugs)
I'm sure that library support will be added sometime later, but it should be released to all users first for impression & ideas (and maybe other ppl would help implementing it or by adding scrapers)
I would definitely help out with writing scrapers if this was added.
- lloydsmart - 2009-11-12
Anything going on here? I do hope this hasn't been dropped as it would be a fantastic feature for XBMC to have.
- Arcanthur - 2009-11-13
I do sincerely hope that this comes to fruition is at least SOME form. It seems a logical step in expanding upon the already great feature set of XBMC.. The ability to run programs / games would surely open up even more avenues for developers.
If I had the coding knowledge I would definitely help out, but I am but a mere designer :p
- fablog - 2009-11-18
I hope the app launcher will be implemented in the app section, like the other said, without this section is useless.
- tmpdir - 2009-11-19
hope is fine, clear requirements would be better.
what is ready, unstable and needs to be done before this branch gets merged?
After reading this thread and the only(?) wiki page about this I still have no idea what road is expected to be followed. Not really something to start programming without making some u turns.
- sho - 2009-11-20
What we can give us is that the original Xbox had a program db that worked much like a basic media library. Assuming that getting that functionality at minimum is required, we know what to aim for.
Let us just hope that spiff has not completely abandoned this thread so he can set me straight.
- BLKMGK - 2009-11-20
IMHO, start with something like the old XBOX library but try to incorporate something like MAME games. These aren't CPU intensive, they're cross platform, and most everyone has a soft spot for them. Lots of sites out there have info about them and there's data files aplenty to help create some sort of .NFO file for the ROMs.
- greatant1337 - 2009-11-20
There's plenty of ideas and "plans" on how and what to implement throughout this thread. As well as these links:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=28953
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Games_Library_Ideas
Here's the current Games Library branch if anyone thinks they know what they're doing and wants to have a go. (and the original branch)
There's atleast one scraper written for AllGame: http://trac.xbmc.org/browser/branches/gamelibrary/system/scrapers/programs (not sure why it didn't make it to gamelibrary2)
I know we still need the backend to even start to display a MyProgramsNav.xml which seems to involve files like this. There is a MyProgramsNav.xml done ready to be taken advantage of.
I hope this piques someones interest, fills everybody in (a little bit) and prevents redundant ideas and reinvention of the wheel.
- rickx - 2009-11-20
I'm not exactly an svn guru. If I check out the games-branch, what version (revision) will it be? Is it possible to merge it with the current rev.? If so, could somebody drop the code for doing it? (Apart from probably having to solve some issues/conflicts manually...)