Xananax

Thanks! I'll try anyway

Thanks SentaiBrad, but maybe I was unclear; I am not referring to individual data packages, images and so on, but the metadata blob that LB asks to redownload everytime I add a game, and fails to download every time. The box says: "An updated metadata package is available from the Launchbox Games Database, would you like to download it before searching?" When I'm updating the metadata of a single game, I have the option to say no; but if I'm importing many games, my metadata import will stall for 5mn during which LB is trying to update its definition, every time. I'm looking to update that blob so LB stops complaining and asking.

LB's downloader is not resilient enough for my extremely-very-incredibly-worse-than-dialup-connection. I understand my situation is particular, so I'm not asking to make the downloader better; I assume it's good enough for 99.9% of users. Instead, I'd like to be able to download the metadata package externally and just dump it wherever LB will find it. So I guess my question is: what's the url for the metadata package, and can I download it with any resilient downloader such as Free Download Manager? And once downloaded, where do I put the file?

Thanks for considering the option! If your question is addressed to me personally, I'm most comfy with Javascript or Python, or C#. But I'll use whatever is needed, Lua, Perl, Ruby, or custom, as long as there is at least a list of functions and a debug console. Since you're not making a gaming engine or something addressed to the masses (I mean, as far as the scripting part is concerned), I propose that the choice shouldn't stem from ease of use, but rather ease of implementation. If someone is going to make a script for Launchbox, chances are they already know how to code and will accommodate any choice you make. Plus, I think even if someone with 0 experience wanted to program something for Launchbox, the idea that, say, Lua is easy, but C# is hard is wrong, imho. Newbies can actually learn anything. I mean, that's how I personally learned how to code; I wanted to customize some software, and just went with examples and copy-pasted stuff for a while, and before I noticed, I was making large-scale websites and compiling my own software. Unless you go for Brainfuck or LOLCode, it'll be ok IMHO. For reference: XMBC/Kodi uses Python, but also allows you to write a scraper in XML MediaMonkey uses VBScript MediaPortal uses VisualBasic Winamp uses C Amarok uses Javascript ...So it really doesn't seem like there's any sort of consensus. So I would say, whatever already-made library has the most bindings to what you're using already, and is the easiest to just stick in there with minimal effort, just use that. The only consideration would be avoiding to use a language that needs a specific IDE. I'm often bothered by those languages as I use Linux and they mostly don't have support on there. As long as it can be hacked with a simple text editor, and compiled from the command line (or don't need to be compiled), go for it. TL;DR: implement the scripting language that is easiest to implement and has the most bindings with the actual language you use for Launchbox.

I would suggest making scrapers external scripts, so they can be customized, switched, and so on, at will. The reason for that is that I love Launchbox, and since BigBox is on rails, I've been thinking of ditching Kodi and use Launchbox exclusively to browse and watch my movies and series. I know it's not at all the direction and so I wouldn't request features targeted towards it; Launchbox is great at what it does, it would be a dilution of purpose. It's not really needed anyway; I can already consider movies roms and vlc an emulator, make some use of custom fields for series, and I'm good to go (haven't tried yet, but that's what I'm thinking; maybe that suggestion would help too). What I do miss, though, is the ability to query imdb/thtvdb. Allowing me to write my own script for that would open a wealth of new customization options. I do realize that both decoupling scrapers and embedding a scripting language is probably not easy, and I realize as well that this is probably not a very useful/popular feature, so I don't hope for much. I'm just throwing that out there. Thanks for the great work!

I think creating a batch file with this might work: FOR /F "tokens=1* delims=," %%G IN (C:\mytex~1.csv) DO (type nul>"%%G.txt") Save the above as "something.bat", replace "C:\mytex~1.csv" by your actual file name, place "something.bat" in an empty directory and run it. Something else I read might work is: FOR /F "tokens=1* delims=," %%G IN (C:\mytex~1.csv) DO FSUTIL file createnew %%G.txt 10 If you're running this in interactive mode (a.k.a, directly on the command line, without saving it as a batch file), replace "%%" with a single "%" (so "%%G" becomes "%G"). But...I'm a Linux guy and have never used window's cmd scripting language. Try this in a safe directory first! Sources: stackoverflow, Stackoverflow 2, SS64, and the manual for "for" on SS64. Hope it helps!

If you're going to set up a system of mirrors, I have a Linode VPS that is not used much. I'd be willing to dedicate some bandwidth on the side to help the project. An easy way to do it would be to use couchDB, for example. I've used it in prod as a CDN/media server and it works really well, and replication is a child's play.

But where would that meta-data be stored? If you set up a server, won't that add to your costs? And as the user base grows, price will grow too, only the payment model of LB is not recurring, but your expenses will be. I'm not sure it is a good idea.

Mine is steamcommunity.com/id/xananax

Currently, LB shows the covers for each game. This is very neat, but when browsing, every system shows different cover sizes, and even within the same system, sometimes images have slightly different proportions, which kind of throws the neatness off. A solution would be to use different covers than those provided by gamedb, or create my own, however, if I was to do that, I would lose the organized meta-data. I want my "box front image" to be a "box front image", not some random image I found on the net, a fanart, or something I cobbled on Gimp. I like the ability to look at the original cover art and to flip the box. If I would remove the cover to replace it with my own, I would have to tag the cover as "fanart", which is a bother. I would still like to have a more standardized way to scroll through my games. I think using banners is a perfect solution; Banners are more or less standardized; when they aren't, it isn't too much work to make them fit (usually it's a matter of cropping them). They are easy to do on your own; If the game is obscure, it's not too much work to take a part of the cover and crop it, or even just write the title in a nice font on a colored background, in the worst case scenario. It is also fairly simple to auto-generate them in a way that doesn't look too bad (feature request for the next version of LB?). It also looks good (I personally like the banners on Steam), and resizes more easily (even at small sizes, banners usually stay legible, which cannot be always said of covers). Thus, though not terribly important, I think it would be useful if the options (or a front-end switch near the search box) allowed to choose between "games covers" or "game banners".

Fantastic, thanks a million

Since I can't attach the xml here (forbidden file extension), I've made it available on github. I'll try the new collection at the soonest and tell you if it still creates the same error.

You mean future custom filters, right? The current custom filters do not have additional options for "added date", only the regular past day/week/month/year.

@bd00 yes, now that I think about it, playlists would be awesome. I am using all sorts of custom filters now (number of stars + platform, etc), but playlists would be very handy for the usage you describe. @jason: I think it makes perfect sense to have those as a premium features as both playlists and custom fields are really not core functionality and should be reserved for the tinkerers. Then again, I am speaking from the standpoint of someone who has already purchased the full version, so I might not be the right audience to decide

I share my library with people, and it's very useful to be able to see what I've added recently (I add 10-20 games per week) in order to know what new stuff I have that they might not. For the moment, I manually put "new" in "status", until I deem I have given the game to enough people who would like it. The "recently added" makes sense, but allows only to filter in regards to the current date. I'd like to be able to filter games added between x date and y date.