JoeViking245

August 29, 2023

2 hours ago, Lechuso said:

Thanks for the complement!!!. Is there a way to permanently remove additional applications that you don't use from your hard drive?

You're very welcome. Not with this plugin. This plugin will only remove them from being associated to the game(s).

August 27, 2023

@DubaiShark I tried responding to your review but was having difficulty. So I'm responding here.

Thanks for the review, compliment and feedback!

If your existing game files are in their own separate subfolders and you wish to move them, you should check the box Move Parent Folder and Files. This will create the subfolders within your Destination Folder, the same name as the one they are in. The plugin looks at each game separately and doesn't compare their folder structure to determine if the box should be checked or not.

If I misunderstood the issue, please let me know.

August 20, 2023

Update (v1.1.0)

Fixed: Bulk Remove When opening Bulk Remove from within the Arcade platform where clones are Additional Apps, the plugin would lock up LaunchBox.
You will now need to manually select your platform from the combo box when opening it.

Thanks to @Krakerman for bringing this to my attention.

August 14, 2023

5 minutes ago, l.strain said:

Thanks for the help I'll put it on the back burner for now and maybe revisit it at a later date

You're welcome. Always glad to help.

Ya, MAME's software lists can be tricky at first. The main thing is to keep each console/computer ROMs in their own folder and then import them into their own platform. For reasons mentioned above. From there, it's primarily a matter of setting up their respective Command-line Parameters to get them to run.

August 14, 2023

25 minutes ago, l.strain said:

I imported the 32x games, I associated mess with the mame emulator

To clarify, you imported the Software List (soflist) 32x (Sega 32x Cartridges) into the Platform "MESS". And you put the softlist ROMs into the same folder the Arcade ROMs are in (H:\LaunchBox\Games\MAME\).

There are several issues I see going on here.

32x doesn't have the ROM vr.zip. That's the Arcade ROM for "Virtua Racing". 32x does have the game "Virtua Racing Deluxe" and the only working ROM for it is vrdxp2.zip. (32x does have 5 other variants that are not working. But none of which are "vr.zip")
Placing all the softlist ROMs in the same folder as the Arcade ROMs isn't going to work. Take for example the game "After Burner". There's an arcade ROM for that. There's also an NES, Spectrum, MSX1, FM Towns, CPC and 32x versions of that ROM. And the filenames are all "aburner.zip".
- The section Software List folder/file locations: suggests how to store the ROMs.
You won't be able to import all the softlists into one Platform ("MESS"). Each softlist requires a different Command-line Parameter. This unique command-line parameter would show in the Associated Platforms section for the specific platform (which yours doesn't show any).
- Well, I suppose you could. You'd just need to edit each game and under Emulation, put in the required Custom Command-line Parameter for the system that game uses.
Your MAME Default Command-Line Parameter (Details section) is setup for the Apple IIGS Computer. I'm kind of surprised it even launched Virtua Racing (Arcade).

August 14, 2023

3 minutes ago, l.strain said:

Yeah I had edited the last reply I have it working but my roms are in merged format and when I load the software list games it loads the arcade variant, any advice how to sort that out?

Which computer/console did you import?

Where did you place your software list ROM folders?

Can you share screenshots of:
Your MAME emulators Details section and the Associated Platforms section.
(Edit the game you tried to launch) The Launching section.

August 14, 2023

54 minutes ago, l.strain said:

ok I thought you had to create your own software folder!? according to the instructions maybe I just misread it or do I but the shrunking file in hash folder?

Ya, the instructions are kind of long and were originally written about 4 years ago. In the section * MESS xml * (above), it mentions "This file needs to be located in the same folder as the plugin (..\LaunchBox\Plugins\ImportMameSoftwareLists\)". But it looks like you maybe renamed your plugin folder to add spaces between the words. In the end it just needs to be in the same folder as the plugin file (ImportMameSoftwareLists.dll).

One thing I did fail to mention is that this file is not required for the plugin to work. The [extra] file just gives you a little more information about the system you're importing. But only the Emulation Status in MAME. All other info comes from the files in the /hash/ folder.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you get it working or have any more questions.

August 14, 2023

49 minutes ago, l.strain said:

I noticed it's saying zinc!? How do I change from this?

When you go through the Importer steps, on the 4th page Select Emulator, from the dropdown box, select your MAME emulator. That selection will then get saved for next time you run the plugin.

The error message is from not selecting the correct /hash/ folder. On the 1st screen (Where are your MAME Software List xml file located?), click Browse and then navigate to your MAME emulators' folder and select the "hash" folder.

August 13, 2023

21 minutes ago, l.strain said:

As soon as I select the correct shrunk XML it just throws an error at me?

The shrunken xml file (after created) should be placed in the plugins folder. When you start the Importer plugin in LaunchBox, on the 1st screen (if it doesn't find it automatically) it should be pointing to your hash subfolder under MAME. i.e. D:\Emulators\MAME\hash\ So you don't ever "select" the shrunken xml file.

Where was it that you were selecting the shrunken xml file?

Can you share a screenshot of the error message and also the most recent log file from \LaunchBox\Plugins\ImportMameSoftwareLists\Logs\.

July 9, 2023

54 minutes ago, billy1251971 said:

Seems to have stopped scrapping the Fanart – Background

Seems to still be scraping it here.

Troubleshooting:

Edit one of the movies you scraped with the plugin and go to the Media - Images section. Scroll through the images there to verify that there is/is-not a Fanart-Background image.
Take a look at the log file (located in \LaunchBox\Plugins\MovieScraper2023\Logs\) for that session. See if indicates anything like "No Fanart-Background (moviebackground) for this movie". If it gets it from TBDB, you will see "TMDB Downloaded Fanart-Background" and then down below under "Attempting to get images from FanArt.TV...", you should see "Fanart-Background image already exists".
If it's a single movie you're having this issue with, go to TMDB and FanArt.TV websites and confirm that they even offer a Fanart-Background image. TMDB might call it a 'backdrop' image and TanArt.TV, 'movie background'.

July 6, 2023

On 7/5/2023 at 12:45 PM, Headrush69 said:

Any thoughts?

My thoughts are, "why didn't anyone think of this before"? This is an OMG, forehead-slap, better-than-sliced-bread and probably game-changing idea!! THANKS!!

I'll see about getting my team on this right away. It should be pretty straight forward and easy to implement. The plugin is probably due for a facelift as well.

Thanks again for the excellent idea/suggestion!

July 4, 2023

New - version 6.0

Requires LaunchBox 13.3 or newer*
Slightly different look. Same old features. A lot of (behind the scenes) code improvement.
This update has been rewritten in .NET 6.0 to “keep up with the times”.

*If you’re using LaunchBox version 13.2 or older, download version 4.5 of the plugin.
(For now, at least) v4.5 will still work with LaunchBox 13.3 and newer.

June 16, 2023

42 minutes ago, djweevil666 said:

mine are already scraped with the artwork and writeups and named.

For Kodi (a completely different program that's similar in nature), but not for LB. Hence [the reboot of] this plugin.

47 minutes ago, djweevil666 said:

Do you know of a way that Launchbox can read what I currently have.

LaunchBox is not designed to search for external media files on your system nor parse NFO files. But his plugin can.

49 minutes ago, djweevil666 said:

If I use your plugin I'd have to rename not just the movies but thousands and thousands of art files to match.

No. With the way it is right now, you'd [typically] only have the rename the movie Title(s) in LaunchBox. Not the physical movie files. However, per About This File above, since you have .nfo files inside of a single folder named the same as the movie title, you wouldn't have to rename anything. (See Do the Movie Titles [in LaunchBox] need to be named a certain way before scraping? above)

Even without the .nfo file, the media (art) file-names are fine as they are. They are scraped based on the movies filename and add the appropriate suffix. (i.e. -poster.jpg in Above The Law (1988)-poster.jpg when searching for them [in the same folder and the movie file is located).

Speaking of image files, are all your -banner images .jpg? Because for that image type, the plugin specifically looks for .png ("-banner.png"). Let me know if I need to allow for extenuating circumstances.

34 minutes ago, djweevil666 said:

I have also noticed sometimes that it is required to replace spaces with an underscore. Can you explain why.

No I can't. I've seen colons : get replaced with underscores because they're not valid characters in filenames. But never spaces.

37 minutes ago, djweevil666 said:

Another thing I was thinking of is having a book and comic section. I have several series of comics.

39 minutes ago, djweevil666 said:

I had wished That Jason would have made this support into launchbox and not had his music box seperate from launchbox. An all in one for all of your pc media.

Ya, but... "LaunchBox aims to be the one-stop shop for gaming on your computer, for both modern and historical games." A plugin like this is just an added bonus.

June 16, 2023

12 hours ago, djweevil666 said:

I've got what is probably a really stupid question. Does anyone know of a plugin that can read kodi art files. I've been backing my media for ten years now and have all the artwork and movies. I would like it to read the nfo file and then I coud in launchbox theme builder just place the assets ie from cover clear logo where ever.

You don't need the physical media (art files) present to use the Community Theme Creator app. Though I suppose it would be nice when using its built-in preview capabilities.

As an option, this plugin will search for existing media you may have for each movie when scraping and prioritize those over downloading media.

It looks in the same folder the movie file is located and will import and allocate corresponding images. I personally have never used any of those multimedia center programs and have no idea where and how image files are stored. But I "heard from a guy" the media is located in the same folder as the movie file and uses the following naming convention. This is how they will get import into LB.

Saved in LB as:     local media
---------------     ---------------------------
Box-Front           movie_file_name-Poster.jpg
Banner              movie_file_name-landscape.jpg
Clear Logo          movie_file_name-clearlogo.png
Disc                movie_file_name-discart.png
Fanart-Background   movie_file_name-fanart.png
Arcade - Marquee    movie_file_name-banner.png

June 16, 2023

2 hours ago, Talphadogg said:

the original two scrapped correctly but I did have the same issue on my last film.

You and your obscure movies. lol Fixed in [new] version 1.2.0.

- fixed: Error thrown if TMDB Background image is missing

2 hours ago, Talphadogg said:

is there like a naming scheme I need to follow?

Quote

Do the Movie Titles [in LaunchBox] need to be named a certain way before scraping?

Yes. The Titles should be the name of the movie without any extras.

The Avengers will work.

The Avengers 2012 will not work.*

The.Avengers.2012.1080p.BluRay.x264.DTS-FGT will not work.*

*No. If you have a valid Information (NFO) file in the same folder as the movie, the plugin will parse the file to get the proper Title and movie ID#.

The Avengers 2012 will work.

The.Avengers.2012.1080p.BluRay.x264.DTS-FGT will also work.

This naming convention is only for, when using this plugin. The bare bones "game" Title you had (have) is fine for this plugin. Using the proper naming conventions that @neil9000 mentioned is what you want/need and would get when using a dedicated multimedia center program (such as Kodi and Plex). And if using one of those, they would generate an NFO file in which the plugin would parse to get a 'bare bones' title.

That all said, I've added to my notes for the next update to account for Titles that have a proper Title such as The Avenger (2012). (Currently this won't work unless there's an associated .nfo file alongside the video file.)

Q: Why doesn't the plugin work with 'properly' assigned movie Titles?

A: When using TMDB's API to search-by-title, it doesn't recognize/associate the suffixed (year) and will throw an error (zero results). It won't even give a "close match".

June 14, 2023

1 hour ago, Talphadogg said:

I've just added 2 other movies to test and one scraped correctly but the other one throws the same error message.

Thanks! With the help of your log files, I was able to reproduce and fix the error.

Please download the updated version (v1.1.0) and, with LaunchBox not running, replace your existing MovieScraper.dll with the one in the zip file. Unblock the file (if you didn't use 7-Zip), then start LaunchBox. If you didn't delete your APIfile.xml file, you won't need to rerun Setup.

Let me know if there are any other issues.

June 11, 2023

2 hours ago, Talphadogg said:

I've set up my api keys but I get thrown this error when I initiate a scrape?

When you entered your keys, did you click test and they showed OK?

Try scraping for just one movie (vs doing a bulk scrape). Same issue? Or is that what you did? If you did do just one, try a different movie and see if the same error comes up.

In the plugins folder, there's a subfolder called \Logs\. Sometimes the most recent log file (when the error occurred) may shed some light. Can you share that file? (drag and drop the file rather than copy and paste)

May 20, 2023

1 hour ago, Merovingio said:

@JoeViking245, With the latest LB update the icons are not displayed.

Double check that you have badges set to Show Badges and that you have Enabled Retroachievements.

May 9, 2023

2 hours ago, T489 said:

keep my "local" highscore in the game.

To enable saving local high scores in stand-alone MAME, an alternate method (and possibly less susceptible to human error) than mentioned above is to set it up directly in MAME. In LaunchBox, right on an Arcade game and select Open MAME.

Once opened, double-click on General Settings. On the General Settings menu, double-click on Plugins. If MAME 0.229 has the older menu items, once MAME is opened, Plugins will be a menu option below Configure Options.

On the Plugins menu, select Hiscore support and press the left or right arrow key to turn it on (or off).

Press Escape once to close the Plugins menu. [If showing the 'older' menu(s), double-click Configure Options] then double-click Save Settings. Press Escape to close the General Settings menu and again to close MAME.

3 hours ago, T489 said:

Do I need the premium version to install plug ins?

No.

3 hours ago, T489 said:

As a side note, I don't see where I can sign up for an account, is this also only available in the premium addition?

A premium license is not required for setting up accounts. For the Forums, you obviously already have one. To connect to the LaunchBox Games Database, in LaunchBox click Tools, Cloud, Connect to the LaunchBox Games Database. This will be a separate account than the forums and a "Register for an Account" link will appear. To Request a Feature (top of this page under Help & Support), You will need to create a (free) BitBucket account. Hopefully one of those 3 was 'an account' you were referring to.

May 5, 2023

13 minutes ago, squallsoft said:

is there a way to overlay elements? in other words, have the clear logo display on top of the gameplay video?

No. This plugin doesn't have the option to display videos. So there's nowhere to even overlay an image on.

April 23, 2023

50 minutes ago, dsync89 said:

One strange issue though, when browsing a game on BigBox the second screen will show up the image just fine, but it goes away as soon as I started the game. This didn't happen when launching game in Launchbox though.

Does the image return after exiting the game? If it's a Steam game, the image won't display at all during gameplay in either LB or BB. Otherwise, I may have missed applying the option keep images visible during gameplay to the BigBox side-of-things when the feature was added. I will have my team look into it.

There are no plans to add support for more than 3 monitors.

March 23, 2023

16 hours ago, Flyojumper said:

Great Addon, thank you. Is there any way we could get a "Select All" or "Remove All" button? It's a tiny addition that could save a ton of time in some cases.

I won't give you a button, but I will give you a "Check All" checkbox. Check it to select (check) all. Un-check it to un-select all.

v1.2.0
New Feature - Added check-box to check/un-check all items

February 27, 2023

@thefritz11

On 2/22/2023 at 11:40 AM, JoeViking245 said:

Make sure the platform that you added in Step 2 is in the Root.

Try moving it into the Root only.

On 2/24/2023 at 11:36 AM, JoeViking245 said:

And finally, (probably one of the more important things) what view are you using? This only modifies (sets up) the Platform Wheel Views.

Are you using one of the Wheel Views?

February 24, 2023

13 minutes ago, thefritz11 said:

And 50% clicking the steam platform opens the game selection screen and I have to click through.

Does your Steam platform have just 1 game (or app) in it?
Do you have more than 1 "Steam"? Like a Platform and a Category?
Under 'Parents', is there more than 1 checkbox checked?
And of course, it was setup?
- You can know for sure (and even "cheat" and bypass the setup process) by looking in the ..\LaunchBox\Plugins\LaunchPlatform\ folder for a text file named after the Platform. i.e. "Steam.txt" (it was a cheesy way to do this. But eh, it works [most of the time.?.?.]).
- [The cheat] If it's not there, simply create a new text file named EXACTLY the same as the Platform you want to use.

Also, make sure the Theme you're using was setup and is the default theme for ALL platforms. Speaking of "Platforms", test it in the Platforms view and confirm that it works (or doesn't work also) there. Then we can work on Platform Categories.

And finally, (probably one of the more important things) what view are you using? This only modifies (sets up) the Platform Wheel Views. Not sure if that was ever mentioned or relevant.

February 23, 2023

1 hour ago, Merovingio said:

@JoeViking245, now that a new scanning system has been implemented in LB for AR, I wonder if this plugin can be improved to also detect the hash of attached games and not just the main game.

This plugin doesn't do file hash checks / comparisons. It only uses platform names (or game scrape-as platform name) and game titles to determine if the game has RetroAchievements available.

Doing a hash check on each games ROM file to verify you have an 'approved' ROM for attaining RetroAchievements goes beyond the intent of this plugin. The intent is to show a badge for games that have RetroAchievements available. Making sure you have and are using approved ROM set files to attain achievements is between you and RetroAchievements.

The plugin could be made to check "attached games" (by which, I think you're meaning Additional Apps such as clones) but I'm not sure how we'd make of that. (again, checking by platform name and game title only)

Example, say a game has 3 Additional Apps (games). The main game plus 2 of its 3 attached games have achievements available. The badge would be shown for that game. But there's no way to indicate which 2 of the 3 Additional Apps have achievements also.

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