malte Wrote:Hi wimpy,
I read some pages of the xbox-thread and had a look at the new site. I also downloaded a synopsis pack to see what data will be provided by the xtras project. But to be honest I still don't understand how the finished "product" will look like. Will there be an online database with kind of an API to fire queries against it (like thetvdb for example) or maybe something scrapable? Or will you have to download the complete packages? There is something said about torrents at the download page so I guess it will be the last one. And once downloaded the whole bunch I end up in 50 playable games (or whatever I have inside my rom-collection) and 15000 trailers? Or do I have to scrape it locally after downloading?
I am sorry to ask that dumb questions but I don't own an xbox and don't know the xport emulator. Also sorry for asking here and not in the original project thread but I don't want to sign up at xbox-scene without even owning an xbox;-)
regards,
malte
Warning. Wall of TEXT:
They are not dumb questions. At it's current state it's only downloadable in parts in the main thread with some old files. (I wouldn't recommend using those to judge the content of the project).
This is an example of the content (folder structure):
MEDIA\NES\ARTWORK\COVER\Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past.jpg
MEDIA\NES\ARTWORK\TITLE\Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past.png
MEDIA\NES\ARTWORK\ACTION\Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past.png
MEDIA\NES\ARTWORK\CARTRIDGE\Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past.png
MEDIA\NES\ROMS\Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past.nes
MEDIA\SMS\+++
MEDIA\GENESIS\+++
Just an example. This means all roms are renamed to "normal reading" names, linked to artwork and other stuff. Which means it will be rather easy to create links from the roms to the artwork to create a frontend/script to display a selected roms artwork and other xtras.
The roms are added with CRC in the synopsis file to make it easy to parse the file for the additional information like publisher, release year, synopsis, genre etc. (this file can also be used as the basis for an mySQL database).
There will be three torrents. One with the all the graphics(boxart, screenies etc) together with the games, One for HQ boxart/WMV videos, One for the emulators for XBOX themselves.
This release in march is foremost aimed at people owning an old XBOX since it's setup to work after a quick FTP over to the box with skinned emulators etc to make it seem like a single fluent emulator experience.
However the pack itself will be available for others to use. The release in march won't see APIs etc for queries/scraping, but I'm going to try and run the synopsis files etc into mySQL to make it search/scrapeable through an "php API" on the page. For whatever reason I'm not 100% sure yet, but I know that's a step in the right direction.
Question about scraping (locally or not) there is no setup for XBMC (except for the Xport emulators on XBOX1) when it comes to emulators. That's what we're hoping will change in the months to come.
The release in march will actually be the _first_ release and updates to other systems will come in the months to come.
Like i said in an earlier post we're not re-inventing the wheel, we're just collection alot of the stuff out there (and adding alot of own stuff) to create a huge emulator related content pack that can be used as either a filebase or through a scraper solution.. but like I said for now it's more about releasing the contents and then look forward after that..
I'm sorry if I've repeated myself alot of times.. I'm quite tired right now
If you'd like more info or 'clearer' info you could join the EFnet channel instead of the forum
Cheers.