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+---- Thread: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC (/showthread.php?tid=85724)
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RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - lollo78 - 2015-12-15
lol!
I don't think the issue is in the images resolution, because Kodi auto-create an optimized thumbnail of every image visualized at least one time. The next time, it use the thumbnail not the original image. For paradox you could also delete the original image and you will continue to see it.
For this reason I can say that the slowness is due to loading informations from launchers.xml (content.refresh).
There are different point of view. In my opinion a software should not create restrictions to the users, but solve problems.
So, why select only some Roms for the only purpose to leave "Advanced Launcher" reactive?
I don't know how github works, but maybe the project was deleted for inactivity...
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Wintermute0110 - 2015-12-15
I have forked Advanced Launcher on Github from here https://github.com/edwtjo/advanced-launcher. The source code there is only a dump of AL last version available, so history of the repository has been lost. I do not have the absolute truth but I am very confident Angelscry deleted his original repository on purpose, for unknown reasons. He also deleted his private web server where lot of configuration information and an AL forum was hosted.
To clarify lollo78 and other people's question about Advanced Launcher forking: AL version 2.5.8 is covered under the GNU license 2.0. To the best of my knowledge, that means ANYONE can fork the project, make changes, etc. providing that the source code of the modified version is available and Angelscry, as the original author, is properly credited both in the software and in the source code.
I personally prefer AL over RCB because AL is much simpler than RCB and it has superior performance over RCB for large collection of ROMs. Currently, I have a set of launchers with about 5000 items in total and the time to load AL is about 4/5 seconds. Every time you navigate to a new launcher menu it takes about 2/3 seconds to load. With a similar collection, RCB is much worse and also has a bug where all the games suddenly disappear and you have to quit RCB and start it again (and this happens very frequently, almost every time I use RCB). The solution I've found is to have AL to have large collection and select the ROMs I like most, and then I copy those favorite ROMs into RCB. The total number of items in RCB is about 100.
I had a look at AL's code and found the internationalization mechanism is awful: text strings are picked based on a number, and then in separate files for each language those numbers are converted into text strings. I found this approach utterly inconvenient and makes the source code very difficult to maintain. Also, AL source code currently needs some maintenance, at least removing dead scrapers. Unfortunately, I will not have the time and will to do it.
I think Advanced Launcher (and RCB to some extent) is (are) the best addons available in Kodi and that it would be a terrible shame that AL dissapears from Kodi. I thank Angelscry and the RCB developers for the fantastic work they have done until Kodi's Retroplayer is completely finished (which in my opinion will take a while).
Having said that, I plan to do the following: based on Advanced Launcher, and as a derivative work, I will create a new plugin called Advanced Emulation Launcher. The objectives of the project would be,
1) Performance: plugin must support full collections of ROMs having hundredths or thousands of entries, and load them with reasonable performance if possible. I will investigate what is the best option for Python and Kodi to load large collections... and that will take me some time.
2) The only language available in the plugin will be English. This will make the maintenance of the code much easier. Internationalization will not be a priority, and a good solution (similar to gettext()) must be found in Python so in the future plugin can be translated to other languages.
3) No online scrapers: scraping large collections of ROMs take MANY HOURS and the results are not good in many cases. I plan to only scan for locally available artwork (it is very easy to find artwork collections) and maybe in the future to give the possibility to scrap online for the not locally-available artwork. This will increase the loading of new launchers by orders of magnitude and make the code much simpler. So, both artwork and game descriptions MUST BE available locally.
4) Linux (and particularly KodiBuntu) will be the only operating system supported. At home I only have Linux in my machines and I do not have any other machines to test other operating systems.
If you have any comments or ideas about this please tell me.
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - lollo78 - 2015-12-15
Hi Wintermute0110!
It's really a good idea, but sorry, I don't agree with points 2, 3 and 4.
I think that the mission should be to preserve the original purpose: make an accessible -not only english- and versatile addon -not only for Rom collection and multiplatform-.
So, at least the fist time, all the contributors should try to improve performance and functionality; and only in second instance create other forks optimized for single platform or single language.
For the online scaper: I think that this function is very important, also if it require a lot of time (but it should be done only the first time). This is the only way to create a good personal collections.
Indeed, I'ld try to strengthen this function by adding other scrapers (like the Rufoo's Wikipedia and Progettoemma for Mame and Final Burn Roms).
But this is only my personal consideration.
You can do whatever you want. This is the beauty of the GNU world, right?
But, please, consider also the other face of this world: the "waste of resources". Think about 30 individual forks of the same project. What could be done if 30 heads works togheter on the same one?
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Rufoo - 2015-12-15
(2015-12-15, 12:20)lollo78 Wrote: lol!
I don't think the issue is in the images resolution, because Kodi auto-create an optimized thumbnail of every image visualized at least one time. The next time, it use the thumbnail not the original image. For paradox you could also delete the original image and you will continue to see it.
For this reason I can say that the slowness is due to loading informations from launchers.xml (content.refresh).
There are different point of view. In my opinion a software should not create restrictions to the users, but solve problems.
So, why select only some Roms for the only purpose to leave "Advanced Launcher" reactive?
I don't know how github works, but maybe the project was deleted for inactivity...
I sent Angelscry a message and he graciously seems to have no problems with me building a variant of it (naturally, full credits for the base work will go to him). So, as said before, I may work on this as a leisurely pursuit and if things work out I will release it in conjunction with my next batch of SexyCirrus views.
SexyCirrus Expanded is my primary concern for now, this is something on the side and there is no dedicated timeline for release but here's what I intend to add (or already have in some instances).
- Add Wikipedia as a scraper.
- Removal of defunct Allgame scraper.
- Addition of <rating> flag with scraping from TheGamesDB or manual entry.
- Support for Developer flags (alongside studio).
- Maybe add a players flag to be scraped from TheGamesDB.
- The ability to scrape technical data for systems from Wikipedia (CPU, Media Type, etc...)
Open to suggestions for other ideas. The plugin will he universal like the original and all skins should be able to use the Wikipedia scraper as well as assign these new flags, reading / displaying them will be another story as that is skin dependent but, as a shameless plug, you can be sure my SexyCirrus views will do so from the get go.
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - lollo78 - 2015-12-15
nice! let me know the new github link
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Bedwyr - 2015-12-16
Good news. I offer you my encouragement and congratulations on being a courageous sucker I mean developer.
I think one of the main issues I have with AL at the moment is how it manages program and window exchange when launching exe's. It often takes awhile to clear out the launch popup and I've often noticed that proper window focus (I'm in Windows btw) isn't returned to Kodi for a gamepad to become active again. However if I prematurely hit "cancel" on the popup, I'll regain control over Kodi. So I'd vote for that for investigation if you're up for it.
Re: RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Wintermute0110 - 2015-12-16
(2015-12-15, 15:18)lollo78 Wrote: Hi Wintermute0110!
It's really a good idea, but sorry, I don't agree with points 2, 3 and 4.
I think that the mission should be to preserve the original purpose: make an accessible -not only english- and versatile addon -not only for Rom collection and multiplatform-.
So, at least the fist time, all the contributors should try to improve performance and functionality; and only in second instance create other forks optimized for single platform or single language.
For the online scaper: I think that this function is very important, also if it require a lot of time (but it should be done only the first time). This is the only way to create a good personal collections.
Indeed, I'ld try to strengthen this function by adding other scrapers (like the Rufoo's Wikipedia and Progettoemma for Mame and Final Burn Roms).
But this is only my personal consideration.
You can do whatever you want. This is the beauty of the GNU world, right?
But, please, consider also the other face of this world: the "waste of resources". Think about 30 individual forks of the same project. What could be done if 30 heads works togheter on the same one?
Thanks for your comments.
I will make Advanced Emulator Launcher an specialised plugin for the emulator enthusiast. I will keep compatibility with AL in every aspect as much as possible. Also, it is very good news that Rufoo will share his modifications to AL and do some maintenance removing dead scrapers (dead scrapers increase the time to scan ROMs A LOT due to timeouts, I think) and incorporating new ones.
I check and gettext is available for Python, so translations can be done easily and the source will be easy to maintain. I will reconsider about English being the only language.
Regarding offline scrapers, I have in mind the idea to being able to use NoIntro dats, MAME XML arcade information and MAME software lists to get game information. The information is there, there is no need to scrape it online and waste a lot of time and bandwidth.
Also, having too different projects is nor a waste of time and resources. Purpose of AL and AEL are quite different, and both projects can benefit from code cherrypicking from each other, or eventually merge.
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Rufoo - 2015-12-16
Wintermute0110, if / when I finalise my variant, you can cannibalise what parts you want from it and leave the rest.
I have no interest in maintaining it, just fixing some things, adding some new stuff, clean up a bit here and there. That's it. Adding scrapers is one of my priorities and adding new tags so that my viewtypes can better benefit from them. Heavy tinkering to do with how the launcher parses XML files or overhauling large parts of the core of it is not something I will be interested in but if that is your field of interest, then my work may benefit yours by focusing on areas you aren't so interested in. Food for thought.
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - lollo78 - 2015-12-16
(2015-12-16, 04:16)Wintermute0110 Wrote: I check and gettext is available for Python, so translations can be done easily and the source will be easy to maintain. I will reconsider about English being the only language.
Nice!
(2015-12-16, 04:16)Wintermute0110 Wrote: Regarding offline scrapers, I have in mind the idea to being able to use NoIntro dats, MAME XML arcade information and MAME software lists to get game information. The information is there, there is no need to scrape it online and waste a lot of time and bandwidth.
Use NoIntro romsets and dats is a good choice, but this not solve the issue about thumbs and fanarts.
For example, the thumbs package for noIntro romsets available online are not complete and in most case they are only games screeshots.
I love to store my romsets collection using the original covers (and I think that also other people do this), so online scaping for me is necessary
Re: RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Wintermute0110 - 2015-12-16
(2015-12-16, 11:30)lollo78 Wrote:(2015-12-16, 04:16)Wintermute0110 Wrote: I check and gettext is available for Python, so translations can be done easily and the source will be easy to maintain. I will reconsider about English being the only language.
Nice!
(2015-12-16, 04:16)Wintermute0110 Wrote: Regarding offline scrapers, I have in mind the idea to being able to use NoIntro dats, MAME XML arcade information and MAME software lists to get game information. The information is there, there is no need to scrape it online and waste a lot of time and bandwidth.
Use NoIntro romsets and dats is a good choice, but this not solve the issue about thumbs and fanarts.
For example, the thumbs package for noIntro romsets available online are not complete and in most case they are only games screeshots.
I love to store my romsets collection using the original covers (and I think that also other people do this), so online scaping for me is necessary
For MAME arcade artwork is available online in Progretto Emma. That can be downloaded in one batch very quickly. Also in Progretto Emma there is boxart y screenshots for a big number of console systems. There are other places like Emumovies.
Regarding fanart... unfortunately fanart is only available for popular games. Most games do not have fanart no matter where you look for.
My priority is to increase performance when adding launchers, when loading collections (browsing) and when updating them (for example, new version of MAME and NoIntro is out). In my opinion that requires offline artwork and game information. Otherwise, last time I added a set for MAME took as long as 20 hours!
Once the above have been achieved, then I will consider manual editing of artwork: for example, online scraping of missing artwork or manual editing of entries. But this will not be the initial priority of AEL.
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - lollo78 - 2015-12-16
Could you tell me from where I can download in one batch the boxarts from Progettoemma? I know the site, but I never see this downloadable package.
I just translated AL in italian. If you want to include it in your fork you can take it from:
https://github.com/lollo78/plugin.program.advanced.launcher/tree/master/resources/language
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - NewYears1978 - 2015-12-17
Sorry if this is in the 400 pages of threads, but where the heck can this be downloaded? The github is gone and it's not anywhere to be found (that I can see)
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Rufoo - 2015-12-17
There is a fully functional link to it in this very page. Clearly, you didn't look hard at all.
If you get a 404 error, take a look at the address and make sure you don't have a full stop at the end.
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Wintermute0110 - 2015-12-18
(2015-12-16, 18:59)lollo78 Wrote: Could you tell me from where I can download in one batch the boxarts from Progettoemma? I know the site, but I never see this downloadable package.
I just translated AL in italian. If you want to include it in your fork you can take it from:
https://github.com/lollo78/plugin.program.advanced.launcher/tree/master/resources/language
You can download the snaps from here: http://www.progettosnaps.net/snapshots/.
Also, in Pleasuredome they compile a torrent that has all the available artwork for arcade and software lists: http://www.pleasuredome.org.uk/
RE: [CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Zpectre87 - 2015-12-19
(2015-12-15, 23:25)Rufoo Wrote: I sent Angelscry a message and he graciously seems to have no problems with me building a variant of it (naturally, full credits for the base work will go to him). So, as said before, I may work on this as a leisurely pursuit and if things work out I will release it in conjunction with my next batch of SexyCirrus views.
Cool! I think he deleted the Github page because he didn't want anything to do with AL anymore. If you forked it on Github, it would still be a fork with his work listed as master and people would keep pestering him with support questions unrelated to bugs which he claimed was the main reason he declared AL unsupported.
If you take over and become project manager, "you" will be responsible for support from now on. So it makes sense for you to lead the project with the blessing from Angelscry.