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#61
malte - Some level of sleeping between requests would be most helpful. I haven't performed any load testing, so I can't say how much load the server can take. We can also look at offering a semi-static xml file with all the games for each platform for a one time mass download. I can schedule a job to refresh the files on a nightly basis.

I also wanted to let you know that there might be an xml structure change because of the multi-language request. The problem that I am facing is that each release is a separate game record. What that means is if someone adds a second or third language to a European release of game, it would not (automatically) be added to the US release of that game. The same goes for text updates. I'm kicking around the idea of consolidating multiple regional releases of the same game into one parent record and then breaking out regional differences in child records. This would only apply to the same game on a single platform released across different regions. The data would look something like this:

Top Level: Game Title (multi-language), Short Description (multi-language), Long Description (multi-language), Platform, Publisher, Genre, Players, Image, Fanart

Regional Level: Game Title, Region, Rating, Release Date, Original Price, Box Art

As for the XML, there would be an additional <Releases></Releases> node that would contain the regional level information listed above. Some of the elements from the current <Game></Game> node would move down into there.

This has been the only way I can figure out to share multi-lang data between games. I might have to go this route depending on how the CRC value question is answered. What do you all think?

Flomaster - Finally! I've been chasing the bug for a while. I think I know what the issue is but it might take me a bit to fix it. You should only get bug while sorting or moving through search result pages.
http://thevideogamedb.com - Site Creator and Admin
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#62
Quote:We can also look at offering a semi-static xml file with all the games for each platform for a one time mass download. I can schedule a job to refresh the files on a nightly basis.

Would be good to have both options. On small systems like xbox it may be too much to download a 10MB file and keep it in memory.

Quote:I also wanted to let you know that there might be an xml structure change because of the multi-language request.

No problem. I can configure the parser, so I hope that I can reflect your changes on the fly.
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#63
jas8340 Wrote:Here's another question about CRC values: do the crc values on your site only pertain to the regional release of that game? I know that some games have multiple values because of different versions.

The problem that I'm running into is that each regional release of a game is a separate entity. So right now all the crc values that I am importing are associated with a specific regional release. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't associating the crc value for the European release to the US release.

The crc values are collected from various Rom collection sets (TOSEC, NO-INTRO etc). For alot of the systems we have a REGION field that tells what region the game in our database comes from. So a game with 2 versions will entail two entries in our system, each with its own crc value.

So same as you've setup, we have each game region/version as a seperate entity.
www.emuxtras.net | EFnet #EmuXtras
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#64
Thanks for adding the Players field Smile
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#65
Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll still working on all the changes.
http://thevideogamedb.com - Site Creator and Admin
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#66
I have done some tests against your API now and it works all well. Maybe we could try it without a sleep at the beginning? I need around 1 second for parsing your description and storing the content to database. I hope this will be enough time for your server. All in all it took 63 seconds to get 32 games (including download of one image per game). But we could do further load tests if you like.

Are you planning to add more images (or even videos) in the future?
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#67
malte, I think that's fine to start out with. We can adjust later if need be. And yes, I'm planning on adding more images first and then videos later.
http://thevideogamedb.com - Site Creator and Admin
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#68
Are you looking for only original box art for the games or alternative covers as well? (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=82214)
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#69
Thumbs Up 
Hey guys, here are some game case templates someone might want to use. I did not make these, but I got permission to post them here for general use. Have fun!

http://download832.mediafire.com/k4hk8re...+Cases.rar

Image
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#70
I think I found a bug in your API: Every time when I ask for a crc value that you don't have in your DB, I get the info of the game 3-D TetrisSmile
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#71
Alright, I'll take a look into that. I'm *almost* finished with all the changes. All of the UI work is done and I'm trying to wrap up changes to the API.

I would have been done sooner if it wasn't for Minecraft.
http://thevideogamedb.com - Site Creator and Admin
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#72
the success of this balances on a greater integration of emulators into xbmc. if they could be as easy to install, scan, scrape and play as tv shows and movies, this will be perfect
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#73
Updates:

Game releases are now grouped under a "common" game record and displayed on the same page. This is to allow for a centralized location for adding/editing the name, short description, and long description in different languages for multiple releases of the same game. As stated before, the data is now divided like so:

Top Level: Game Name (multi-language), Short Description (multi-language), Long Description (multi-language), Platform, Publisher, Genre, Players, Box Art, Fanart

Regional Level: Game Name, Region, Rating, Release Date, Original Price, Box Art

When searching for a game by name on either the website or via the API, the search text will be compared against the game name at the regional level, NOT the game name in different languages. So if a game has multiple releases of with the same name, you will get back a hit for each release. Each release will be identified by a platform and a region.

Website:
- Added multi-language support to viewing, adding, and updating games.
- The View Game page will now list all of the game's associated releases.
- Should now get a more graceful error message page instead of the generic (ugly) error page.
- Game releases will now display the original price in the region's home currency and a regional flag.

API:
- Added Language Search request.
- Modified Game Detail request to include multiple languages for the name, short description, and long description.
- Modified Game Search request to search for a game by release (multiple releases with the same name will be included in the results).

Bugfixes:
- Fixed an issue where if a rating was not present, Internet Explorer displayed the missing image red X.
- Fixed an issue where an invalid CRC value would return the first game in the database.
http://thevideogamedb.com - Site Creator and Admin
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#74
I have changed my parser to handle the new response structure. It works all well.

One thing that came to my mind:
Code:
<Languages>
    <Language Abbr="en">
        <Name>After Burner</Name>
        <ShortDesc />
        <LongDesc />
    </Language>
</Languages>

The new structure of Languages/Language/Name and Description is a bit illogical in my eyes as it seems that Name and Desc are properties of Language. If I would see this structure without data I would guess it must be Name="English" and not Name="After burner".

From my logic I would expect it to be the other way:
Code:
<Name lang="default">After Burner</Name>
<Name lang="en">After Burner</Name>
<ShortDesc lang="en" />
<LongDesc lang="en" />
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#75
starcitysecrets Wrote:the success of this balances on a greater integration of emulators into xbmc. if they could be as easy to install, scan, scrape and play as tv shows and movies, this will be perfect

A rather big step towards this is doable with RomCollectionBrowser once the scraper is finalized if i'm not mistaken.
www.emuxtras.net | EFnet #EmuXtras
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