[RedPenguin]

Not sure what could be going on with my Advanced Launcher plugin.

I have successfully used Advanced Launcher and XBMC Eden on 2 of my PCs running Win 7.

Now this last PC running XP Pro 32-bit when I try and create a new launcher I am show only D: or my DVD drive.

Also, when I attempted to use a launchers.xml file from my other PC which worked with no problems on my other machines, it refuses to run programs off my C: drive.

I've tried reinstalling the plugin even reinstalling XBMC, nothing seems to work.

[Angelscry]

Not sure what could be going on with my Advanced Launcher plugin.

I have successfully used Advanced Launcher and XBMC Eden on 2 of my PCs running Win 7.

Now this last PC running XP Pro 32-bit when I try and create a new launcher I am show only D: or my DVD drive.

Also, when I attempted to use a launchers.xml file from my other PC which worked with no problems on my other machines, it refuses to run programs off my C: drive.

I've tried reinstalling the plugin even reinstalling XBMC, nothing seems to work.

Here are the instruction taken from the Advanced Launcher user guide :

Add Network or Local drives

It will be possible that, for your first use of Advanced Launcher, you will be not able to see or access any of your network or local drives. To solve this you will have to do the following: Go back to the XBMC home-screen and select the "System" item (assuming you are using the "Confluence"-Skin which is default) - do not open the menu-item! -and press the down arrow to select the "File Manager" submenu. In the next screen add a source via the "Add Source" entrie. Now technically it does not matter what you add as a source. In order to use your whole hard-drive just add the whole hard drive to the sources, you won’t have any side-effects (except you will have to navigate more while creating new launchers).

[zurgdawg]

Thanks for the great feature Angelscry, really enjoying it.

Question - I have a modern system with plenty of resources (AMD E-350 APU, 8GB RAM, SSD HD, etc) yet I experience quite a bit of lag when the thumbnails populate. For example, if I click on one of my launchers and it is set to the view that shows all of the thumbnails, about 40% of the thumbs will be present immediately but others will just show an empty box and slowly load into frame taking upwards of 5 seconds to populate. If I scroll down the list, the behavior continues as some thumbs are present while others take a while to populate. If I let them all populate, leave the launcher, and then return, the same behavior continues. Any suggestions on how to improve performance here?

Thanks again.

Advanced Launcher only indicate thumbs and fanart images paths to XBMC. XBMC save this images into its cache folder, then this cached images are displayed by XBMC through the skin. Advanced Launcher do not manage any images, only paths of these images.

Your lag problem could be related to the size of a thumb and fanart images. More images are big, more they take place into memory and more it will take time to display them (even is cached). Your thumbnails and XBMC cache folder are on the same system? Not on a network harddrive? What is typically the size (into Kb or Mb) of these thumb images? PNG or JPEG format? A thing you can try is to downscale the thumb size and save them as JPEG with a higher compression level (around 75%). It will surely reduce the memory usage.

Or maybe you have a cache problem with XBMC. Cache disabled (I'm not sure it's possible) or no write access to the cache folder...)

Thanks for the direction! I'll start playing with things this weekend and let you know. I guess I had just assumed that since the images were coming from scrapers, they would be in good shape for use but your comments make complete sense.

[RedPenguin]

Not sure what could be going on with my Advanced Launcher plugin.

I have successfully used Advanced Launcher and XBMC Eden on 2 of my PCs running Win 7.

Now this last PC running XP Pro 32-bit when I try and create a new launcher I am show only D: or my DVD drive.

Also, when I attempted to use a launchers.xml file from my other PC which worked with no problems on my other machines, it refuses to run programs off my C: drive.

I've tried reinstalling the plugin even reinstalling XBMC, nothing seems to work.

Here are the instruction taken from the Advanced Launcher user guide :

Add Network or Local drives

It will be possible that, for your first use of Advanced Launcher, you will be not able to see or access any of your network or local drives. To solve this you will have to do the following: Go back to the XBMC home-screen and select the "System" item (assuming you are using the "Confluence"-Skin which is default) - do not open the menu-item! -and press the down arrow to select the "File Manager" submenu. In the next screen add a source via the "Add Source" entrie. Now technically it does not matter what you add as a source. In order to use your whole hard-drive just add the whole hard drive to the sources, you won’t have any side-effects (except you will have to navigate more while creating new launchers).

Thank you so much, that fixes most of the problem.

Even though I added the entire C: drive for some reason my launchers still do not want to work.

I have my launchers running C:\Documents and Settings\RedPenguin\My Documents\Dropbox\Public\sop.bat with arguments like 115511.

The two other PCs can run it fine and on this PC I can even run the batch file in Run or CMD, just Advanced Launcher seems to not be running it.

[Angelscry]

Not sure what could be going on with my Advanced Launcher plugin.

I have successfully used Advanced Launcher and XBMC Eden on 2 of my PCs running Win 7.

Now this last PC running XP Pro 32-bit when I try and create a new launcher I am show only D: or my DVD drive.

Also, when I attempted to use a launchers.xml file from my other PC which worked with no problems on my other machines, it refuses to run programs off my C: drive.

I've tried reinstalling the plugin even reinstalling XBMC, nothing seems to work.

Here are the instruction taken from the Advanced Launcher user guide :

Add Network or Local drives

It will be possible that, for your first use of Advanced Launcher, you will be not able to see or access any of your network or local drives. To solve this you will have to do the following: Go back to the XBMC home-screen and select the "System" item (assuming you are using the "Confluence"-Skin which is default) - do not open the menu-item! -and press the down arrow to select the "File Manager" submenu. In the next screen add a source via the "Add Source" entrie. Now technically it does not matter what you add as a source. In order to use your whole hard-drive just add the whole hard drive to the sources, you won’t have any side-effects (except you will have to navigate more while creating new launchers).

Thank you so much, that fixes most of the problem.

Even though I added the entire C: drive for some reason my launchers still do not want to work.

I have my launchers running C:\Documents and Settings\RedPenguin\My Documents\Dropbox\Public\sop.bat with arguments like 115511.

The two other PCs can run it fine and on this PC I can even run the batch file in Run or CMD, just Advanced Launcher seems to not be running it.

You previously wrote that you attempted to use a launchers.xml file from your other PC. Are you sure that the sop.bat file is located at the same place (same full path) on both PC? Could you post here the content of your launchers.xml file, and, if you want, the content of your sop.bat file. If Advanced Launcher not runnig you .bat file but did not give you any error message, that's mean you do not start it with the right manner.

[RedPenguin]

At first I tried the launchers.xml from the other PC but changed the path to the proper path on this PC. (This method worked flawlessly before as the file was originally made on one PC and this was the third PC I was trying it on).

But now to be safe I tried a 100% clean launchers.xml and it still fails:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<launchers>
<launcher>
<id>c7d85813c343ad9a556964017908dc0c</id>
<name>ID</name>
<application>C:\Documents and Settings\RedPenguin\My Documents\Dropbox\Public\sop.bat</application>
<args>115511</args>
<rompath></rompath>
<thumbpath></thumbpath>
<fanartpath></fanartpath>
<custompath></custompath>
<romext></romext>
<platform>IBM PC Compatible</platform>
<thumb></thumb>
<fanart></fanart>
<genre></genre>
<release></release>
<publisher></publisher>
<launcherplot></launcherplot>
<finished>false</finished>
<minimize>true</minimize>
<lnk>true</lnk>
<roms>
</roms>
</launcher>
</launchers>

EDIT: It almost seems the plugin isn't like directories with spaces, because as a test I put the .bat on C:\ itself and oddly it works.

Only thing I don't understand is when I use 1.7.6 of the plugin XBMC stays full screen, but for some reason on 1.8.0 it makes XBMC window mode and I have to hit \ later on.

[orewagundam79]

What's the best scraper for mame games? I noticed that gamefaqs does not have thumbs for many older games (SF2 for example)..

[Angelscry]

What's the best scraper for mame games? I noticed that gamefaqs does not have thumbs for many older games (SF2 for example)..

The only MAME based scraper is arcadeHITS.

[orewagundam79]

What's the best scraper for mame games? I noticed that gamefaqs does not have thumbs for many older games (SF2 for example)..

The only MAME based scraper is arcadeHITS.

Hello Angelcry, thanks for the quick response. I tried the arcadeHITS scraper and it works fine, but it only downloads the snapshots image, ignoring the flyer image.
Is it possible to add support for flyers (maybe use flyers for thumbs and snapshot for fanart, the gamefaqs scraper works like that..)

For example, the SF2 page shows these images: SF2

[ghostelement]

What's the best scraper for mame games? I noticed that gamefaqs does not have thumbs for many older games (SF2 for example)..

The only MAME based scraper is arcadeHITS.

Hello Angelcry, thanks for the quick response. I tried the arcadeHITS scraper and it works fine, but it only downloads the snapshots image, ignoring the flyer image.
Is it possible to add support for flyers (maybe use flyers for thumbs and snapshot for fanart, the gamefaqs scraper works like that..)

For example, the SF2 page shows these images: SF2

TheGamesDB has images for mame games, but they might be filed under NeoGeo or Arcade. You should give that a try. We have flyers for lots of old games.

[Angelscry]

At first I tried the launchers.xml from the other PC but changed the path to the proper path on this PC. (This method worked flawlessly before as the file was originally made on one PC and this was the third PC I was trying it on).

But now to be safe I tried a 100% clean launchers.xml and it still fails

Your launcher content seems correct. Now, that not because your are not able to start your bat file with Advanced Launcher that Advanced Launcher is necessary the cause. What your bat file is supposed to do?

EDIT: It almost seems the plugin isn't like directories with spaces, because as a test I put the .bat on C:\ itself and oddly it works.

Even if I doubt that paths with white spaces is the problem, I will check this.

Only thing I don't understand is when I use 1.7.6 of the plugin XBMC stays full screen, but for some reason on 1.8.0 it makes XBMC window mode and I have to hit \ later on.

Are you using the same version of XBMC?

---

Hello Angelcry, thanks for the quick response. I tried the arcadeHITS scraper and it works fine, but it only downloads the snapshots image, ignoring the flyer image.
Is it possible to add support for flyers (maybe use flyers for thumbs and snapshot for fanart, the gamefaqs scraper works like that..)

For example, the SF2 page shows these images: SF2

Ok, I will try to add flyers as first results of the thumb scraper.

[Angelscry]

TheGamesDB has images for mame games, but they might be filed under NeoGeo or Arcade. You should give that a try. We have flyers for lots of old games.

Yes, but TheGamesDB has not really a MAME support, only NeoGeo or Arcade support.

What I mean by MAME support is that MAME games use specific unique rom name. Advanced Launcher scrapers are all based on filenames. So, for example, if you have the rom file named sf2.zip, the arcadeHITS website and the Advanced Launcher scraper will be able to found exactly the related game (Street Fighter II: The World Warrior) only with this filename. With TheGamesDB website and scraper it is not possible. A search with only sf2 as query will not return you anything.

[Angelscry]

EDIT: It almost seems the plugin isn't like directories with spaces, because as a test I put the .bat on C:\ itself and oddly it works.

Paths with spaces definitively works with Advanced Launcher (tested under Windows 7 + XBMC 11.0 + Advanced Launcher 1.8.0). I think there is something wrong with your .bat file.

[Angelscry]

Version 1.8.1 : This new version of Advanced Launcher bring some improvement on ComicVine and ArcadeHits scrapers. ComicVine scrapers (for data and covers) have been rewritten. They are now based on Google search engine, ComicVine API and ComicVine website. Search results are now better (but not perfect yet).

This new version also bring some improvements and new option settings related to the ArcadeHits thumb scrapers. Semi-automatic and manual scraping return now snapshots and flyers as image list :



For automatic scraping, you have now an additional option into Advanced Launcher Thumbs settings where you could indicate which kind of images do you prefer to be scraped (Title Snapshot or flyer image). If the flyer image do not exist a snapshot image will be returned



Here is what you will obtain if you select Snapshots for the Prefered images option :



And here is what you will obtain if you select Flyers for the Prefered images option :



Changelog :

• New ComicVine data scraper.
  
• New ComicVine cover (thumbs) scraper.
  
• Add flyers support for arcadeHITS thumbs scraper.
  

[RedPenguin]

I am running the exact same version of XBMC on both and here is my sop.bat:

NOTE: %1 is just the argument sent by Advanced Launcher like "115511" for Investigation Discovery

Code:

if exist c:\progra~1\videolan\vlc (set "vlc=c:\progra~1\videolan\vlc\vlc")
if exist c:\progra~2\videolan\vlc (set "vlc=c:\progra~2\videolan\vlc\vlc")
ssh 192.168.0.1 -l adam 'sop %1'
echo bob
sleep 10s
%vlc% -f http://192.168.0.1:7010/tv.asf
ssh 192.168.0.1 -l adam 'killall sp-sc-auth'

Basically it's first seeing which directory VLC is located (32-bit vs 64-bit system)
SSHing to my Linux PC and saying start X sopcast channel.
Start VLC after sleeping for 10 seconds
After VLC quits, kill Sopcast channel.

Basically on both of my Win 7 PCs (one is 32bit, other is 64-bit), XBMC temporarily goes small then immediately returns to full screen. VLC pops up and starts playing my channel. I then have the remote press Alt-F4 to kill VLC, and XBMC returns on screen.

For some reason this exact same bat file on my XP just ends up making XBMC go into Window mode and nothing else happens.

EDIT: nvm on the full screen/window mode thing, it appears it only goes to window mode temporarily while running VLC then VLC closes and snaps back to full screen. Didn't seem it was doing that before.