ExoDOS Import

[eXo]

2 hours ago, harryoke said:

Ive been waiting to import exodos & win3XO for ages , so this news is music to my ears @eXo 

the sheer size of the project is a logistical nightmare to share. Hopefully you find a nice host for the files

Please PM me with the deltails when you have them  

i will make a dedicated Exodos & win3xo bigbox startup for the community

 

The files will be hosted in the same places as usual. Unfortunately I have no benevolent server to throw this on.

Looking forward to seeing the start-up =)

[eXo]

For those curious, now that the rules have been clarified, the only public torrent tracker I upload to is pleasuredome.

 

It is free to join and you don't need an invite or anything. However, it is a ratio tracker. Which means you are expected to upload as much as you download. This also means it won't let you download a large torrent if you are a new member.

 

That said, there are some exceptions to this rule. Typically, every December we have a 12 days of Pleasuredome promotion where each day we mark a different torrent, or set of torrents, free to download. This makes it so it doesn't count against your ratio, which allows anyone to download - regardless of their existing stats. For those new to PD, that would be the way to go. I can tell you with certainty that all 5 volumes won't be released in time for this, however if you are able to grab 1 or 2, then you can seed those to build ratio for the future volumes.

 

Or there is archive.org, however, I do not know when V3 will post there. And last I checked, the D/L speeds were pretty horrendous there. Still, it's the easiest resource to use.

 

Typically, within a month or so of release I start to see my work show up on other trackers. 

 

Hopefully that helps those who are new to the whole eXoDOS thing.

[nikeymikey]

@eXo I’m on PD! I’ll be grabbing these new versions straight away, any idea when will they be released?? I’ll be dumping all my old eXoDos setup and starting fresh ?

[Retrofrogg]

Yeah me too, if this is the recommended course of action.

[cleverest]

On 11/29/2017 at 5:43 PM, eXo said:

For those with existing lb setups, the solution will likely be to drop the dos platform xml over your existing one.

The benefit of this is it adds eXoDOS to your setup without affecting your other platforms. The negative is it won't work with any existing DOS games you have installed. But once you have eXoDos, you won't need your other DOS games

I've been slowly adding TOTAL DOS (I think it's release 13) into my collection....at about 6200 games...so I literally don't need to worry about any of those anymore? I won't be missing anything?  (I don't install demos, variations (like a1, a2, etc...) or non-English titles, etc)

[eXo]

TDC does have some games that I don't have. Mainly Homebrew and scene release stuff. As far as commercial releases go, I would be surprised if they had any I didn't have.

 

I've been meaning to run a comparison with TDC to determine the differences.

[Darkerson]

Just wanted to say thanks to eXo and everyone else involved here. Really appreciate all of your guys hard work and dedication to what amounts to a labor of love. Thank you and I cant wait for version 3!

Edited December 1, 2017 by Darkerson

[cleverest]

Same here, thanks so much to everyone involved!

[2Play]

@eXo Wanted to say also a big tx for all your time and efforts in the past and running years. PD still has your complete v2 in 5 splits (vols). This would work for most of us in ref to v3!

Are you planning to post a new import tutotial with the v3 release? Do we keep the image packages in this topic or not needed with v3?

[spektor56]

Does anyone remember this old game where there's a 2p versus mode and one person is a human and the other is a monster (werewolf) or something.  It's a 2d view with 3d looking models and you kill eachother but you can go up and down ladders or something to get to different levels.  Cant remember the game and driving me nuts.  I think there was a rocket launcher item?

[eXo]

14 minutes ago, spektor56 said:

Does anyone remember this old game where there's a 2p versus mode and one person is a human and the other is a monster (werewolf) or something.  It's a 2d view with 3d looking models and you kill eachother but you can go up and down ladders or something to get to different levels.  Cant remember the game and driving me nuts.  I think there was a rocket launcher item?

Hunter Hunted 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/hunter-hunted

[spektor56]

Just now, eXo said:

Hunter Hunted 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/hunter-hunted

YES! that's it, thanks

[eXo]

So, a quick status update on V3.

I've spent the last three days making sure my import of eXoDOS Adventure into LB worked. I used a migration tool that attempts to copy my metadata and assets into LB's structure. I then ran a games db link to try and get as many games linked as possible. This was both good & bad.

The good is it is nice to have games linked to the DB, that way if I, or anyone else, find issues, the change can be made to the DB and then everyone gets that change on their next metadata update. Plus, I just like the idea of all of these games not only being preserved in my collection, but also in a public database such as this one.

The bad is... time consuming at best. First, it mismatched many titles. In some cases it matched games that have absolutely nothing in common with the existing title. In other cases it took one word of a game (Nebula) and matched it to a much longer string (Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender). Ironically, in other cases it didn't match at all because a single character was different.

In cases where it actually matched properly, I often had it blank out my metadata with null values because whoever made that gamesdb entry was lazy and decided not to fill anything out but the games name. It also blanked out assets such as game boxes and such if it didn't have them in the repository. 

 

I am aware that I could have selected the option to only update missing data. The problem with that, is I know many games have beter quality game scans on the games db, or no mobygames watermark. The only way to get the good stuff from the gamesdb is to accept the fact that it comes with bad stuff as well.

 

So now I am going through, game by game to QC things. If the game didn't match the games db, I am doing searches to make sure it doesn't exist. Many times the game does xist, but it is incorrectly listed as a windows game on the db, so it didn't match. Unfortunately, I'm so busy with these packs, I don't have the days necessary to sit down and go through the games db correcting everything. I already did it once for the US Sega Genesis artwork earlier this year (for some reason over half the games only had PAL artwork uploaded and often had no region assigned to them). For games that DID match, I am verify it matched the correct game, I'm adding in info I had in my database that got blanked out, and I am re-adding artwork that got removed. 

So what does all this mean? Well, I had hoped to release this next week. I'm not exactly sure how long it is going to take to finish going through the entire collection. There are 1,067 games in the adventure collection currently. I am hoping that after release, some benevolent person (or just an OCD person like myself), will tackle the task of adding the missing games to the GamesDB. I just hope it is someone who is as methodical as I am, and takes the time to actually fill out the known fields, add all the art work, etc... I worry that all the work I'm doing to QC this stuff will be lost the first time someone runs a metadata update. So I will be including a warning with the collection to only run that on a small subset of games at a time, or even a single game at a time. 

Other than the metadata though, everything else seems to be working great. One thing I had prior that no longer exists is a method by which the "adult" games could be filtered out. For people introducing these games to younger generations, I can see why they don't wan't pixelated tits and pervy text adventures being served up to their young ones. It would be nice if there was a way to mark adult games, and either hide them or lock them down with a password or something. I'd be interested to hear other opinions on this.

 

I guess that wasn't such a short update after all.

[spektor56]

For adult games cant you just assign an ESRB rating?

The rating guidelines are here: https://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.aspx

It may not be an "official" rating but who cares really

[eXo]

That is potentially an option. But can those games be hidden? It doesn't matter if I can mark them if they still show up.

[spektor56]

Just found this post this month so i don't think it has a system as of yet:

But that's up to LaunchBox to implement it properly.  If the data is in the database people can make their own utilities to remove those games from LB at least.

I asked for user profiles like netflix a long time ago but i don't know if any work has gone into those features.  I've been waiting for Ryzen APUs to ship so haven't touched LB in almost a year.

Edited December 1, 2017 by spektor56

[Retrofrogg]

Great news eXo. Worth doing it right with a project such as this. Wonder if you can get anyone to help. I would have back in the day when I had more time. They should have a stamp “certified by exo” on the games DB so that we know which items have the correct data  

[FistyDollars]

30 minutes ago, eXo said:

So, a quick status update on V3.

I've spent the last three days making sure my import of eXoDOS Adventure into LB worked. I used a migration tool that attempts to copy my metadata and assets into LB's structure. I then ran a games db link to try and get as many games linked as possible. This was both good & bad.

The good is it is nice to have games linked to the DB, that way if I, or anyone else, find issues, the change can be made to the DB and then everyone gets that change on their next metadata update. Plus, I just like the idea of all of these games not only being preserved in my collection, but also in a public database such as this one.

The bad is... time consuming at best. First, it mismatched many titles. In some cases it matched games that have absolutely nothing in common with the existing title. In other cases it took one word of a game (Nebula) and matched it to a much longer string (Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender). Ironically, in other cases it didn't match at all because a single character was different.

In cases where it actually matched properly, I often had it blank out my metadata with null values because whoever made that gamesdb entry was lazy and decided not to fill anything out but the games name. It also blanked out assets such as game boxes and such if it didn't have them in the repository. 

 

I am aware that I could have selected the option to only update missing data. The problem with that, is I know many games have beter quality game scans on the games db, or no mobygames watermark. The only way to get the good stuff from the gamesdb is to accept the fact that it comes with bad stuff as well.

 

So now I am going through, game by game to QC things. If the game didn't match the games db, I am doing searches to make sure it doesn't exist. Many times the game does xist, but it is incorrectly listed as a windows game on the db, so it didn't match. Unfortunately, I'm so busy with these packs, I don't have the days necessary to sit down and go through the games db correcting everything. I already did it once for the US Sega Genesis artwork earlier this year (for some reason over half the games only had PAL artwork uploaded and often had no region assigned to them). For games that DID match, I am verify it matched the correct game, I'm adding in info I had in my database that got blanked out, and I am re-adding artwork that got removed. 

So what does all this mean? Well, I had hoped to release this next week. I'm not exactly sure how long it is going to take to finish going through the entire collection. There are 1,067 games in the adventure collection currently. I am hoping that after release, some benevolent person (or just an OCD person like myself), will tackle the task of adding the missing games to the GamesDB. I just hope it is someone who is as methodical as I am, and takes the time to actually fill out the known fields, add all the art work, etc... I worry that all the work I'm doing to QC this stuff will be lost the first time someone runs a metadata update. So I will be including a warning with the collection to only run that on a small subset of games at a time, or even a single game at a time. 

Other than the metadata though, everything else seems to be working great. One thing I had prior that no longer exists is a method by which the "adult" games could be filtered out. For people introducing these games to younger generations, I can see why they don't wan't pixelated tits and pervy text adventures being served up to their young ones. It would be nice if there was a way to mark adult games, and either hide them or lock them down with a password or something. I'd be interested to hear other opinions on this.

 

I guess that wasn't such a short update after all.

@eXo I've been working on this off and on (as you can relate, it's a very time consuming process.) I've added every game from the collection right up to the letter H, it's why if you go to the database it's a bit "front of the alphabet heavy." I was going at a pretty good pace for a while but life kind of gets in the way. I've since been back on board , going as fast as I can. So the good news is that it's already being done, it's just going to take me a little more time.

Also, I'm going off of the games in the 2.0 collection, so if there are any major changes, they'd need to be added as well.

Please let me know if the entries at the front of the alphabet are up to snuff, I've worked pretty hard on them (including submitting the clear logos from Hyperspin when appropriate.) Also, I've made sure that all the artwork isn't watermarked.

[harryoke]

Quick update on Exodos/win3XO Bigbox Startup video, designed logo .... went for the trusted evil skull & fire .... hope u like

[cleverest]

29 minutes ago, harryoke said:

Quick update on Exodos/win3XO Bigbox Startup video, designed logo .... went for the trusted evil skull & fire .... hope u like

 

Awesome! You should also create an angelic theme'd one for users on the light side though...