Etock Posted January 31, 2015 Author Share Posted January 31, 2015 First of all, can't heap enough praise on the progress you've made with recent revisions. I could see this replacing several of the apps I currently use, and my existing frontend. I was so pleased, I sprung for the Premium version despite not yet moving a bulk of my library to Launchbox. Had a few suggestions that would seal the deal for me: EmuMovies or local artwork directories support. EmuMovies and it's artwork hierarchy is amazing. This is a big hang up for me currently, and holding me back from importing my full library except for a few systems. Video support for gameplay videos. Page up/down support for hotkeys. Ability to map hotkeys to the left and right trigger keys on the xbox 360 controller Nice to haves: An attract mode, that acts as a screensaver and displays screenshots or videos (assuming thats supported) from random games and libraries. New library views. A text based list would be appreciated for larger libraries. I love the box art, but would prefer viewing that once making a selection. Ability to set a delay before loading artwork/game details. This would allow much faster browsing through the library providing a better experience. Again, love the improvements, keep up the good work. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Thank you Etock! I will add these to my list (though most are already there). Per EmuMovies, that's the third request I've had recently to add it. Can you explain why it's superior? Is it just the selection? I haven't really played around with it too much, but the site seems fairly minimal. What apps do you use EmuMovies with? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etock Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 EmuMovies has an extremely dedicated community which backfills all artwork, including backgrounds, boxart front/back, 3d box art, title screen, screenshots, map screen, cart images, banners, low and high quality gameplay videos, advertisements, etc. I'm currently using said artwork with Rom Collection Browser in XBMC and Hyperspin, both which have some pretty serious flaws. Native support wouldn't be necessary, as EmuMovies provides a client to download artwork for your rom collection, but it couldn't hurt. The bigger ask would be to allow defining a directory structure for each type of artwork on local storage, so that it wouldn't be necessary to fetch from scrapers unless it wasn't available. EmuMovies stores data in the following format: HQ Movies: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Video_MP4_HI_QUAL/%GAME%.mp4 Movies: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Video_MP4_HI_QUAL/%GAME%.mp4 Background: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Background/%GAME%.jpg Box Back: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/BoxBack/%GAME%.jpg Box Front: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Box/%GAME%.png Box 3D: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Box_3D/%GAME%.png Title: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Title/%GAME%.png Screenshot: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Snap/%GAME%.png Map: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Map/%GAME%.pdf Cart: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Cart/%GAME%.jpg Banner: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Banner/%GAME%.jpg Advertisement: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Advert/%GAME%.jpg Hope that helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Etock said EmuMovies has an extremely dedicated community which backfills all artwork, including backgrounds, boxart front/back, 3d box art, title screen, screenshots, map screen, cart images, banners, low and high quality gameplay videos, advertisements, etc. I'm currently using said artwork with Rom Collection Browser in XBMC and Hyperspin, both which have some pretty serious flaws. Native support wouldn't be necessary, as EmuMovies provides a client to download artwork for your rom collection, but it couldn't hurt. The bigger ask would be to allow defining a directory structure for each type of artwork on local storage, so that it wouldn't be necessary to fetch from scrapers unless it wasn't available. EmuMovies stores data in the following format: HQ Movies: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Video_MP4_HI_QUAL/%GAME%.mp4 Movies: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Video_MP4_HI_QUAL/%GAME%.mp4 Background: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Background/%GAME%.jpg Box Back: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/BoxBack/%GAME%.jpg Box Front: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Box/%GAME%.png Box 3D: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Box_3D/%GAME%.png Title: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Title/%GAME%.png Screenshot: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Snap/%GAME%.png Map: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Map/%GAME%.pdf Cart: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Cart/%GAME%.jpg Banner: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Banner/%GAME%.jpg Advertisement: %PATH%/%SYSTEM%/Advert/%GAME%.jpg Hope that helps! We talked about the ability to be able to pick and choose which parts of the data you can download from the various sources with mix and matching. This is very hard to do code wise. If we allowed the user to download text based data from Wikipedia and / or TheGamesDB and made this site exclusive to images... there would need to be concessions or rewrites of the import code. It would probably be better then what we were talking about, but it wouldn't give the user the option; at least, in order for it to be non-confusing. I've been looking over the site, and I know the app's well that its partnered with. I've never heard anything good from Hyperspin, Kodi is amazing.... but for Video only. I tried to use its game addon's before I found LaunchBox and it severely lacks. LaunchBox, objectively, is one of the best options out there. So we could partner with this site and put in the work, but is it worth it? Will they think its worth it? Will they allow it as LaunchBox gets bigger and bigger. The core audience I see for LaunchBox are users like me, who have gigantic libraries. Are they willing to service thousands of pings per day... just from LaunchBox? When I say ping, I mean 1 for every image, per game. So if a game has a front, back and CD art, that's 3 pings right there. Assume that most games have all of that, x4000. Then all the extra's. It could be a really good alternative considering GamesDB is all user input, sometimes with crappy images or non-existent entries or Wikipedia with misleading images sometimes, or lack of images past the cover art. All things we'll be considering. We want to make LaunchBox the premiere suite. Edit: How we handle the data if we decide to go with this site is another conversation as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etock Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 So very important detail I left out. EmuMovies requires a subscription, either yearly, or lifetime. It isn't much, but it couldn't be used 100% of the time, why I and likely others had suggested a local artwork cache. I personally believe EM is worth its weight in gold in this area, but thats just my own humble opinion. I do know they have partnered with other frontends, but no idea how that works. It doesn't solve having to use gamesdb, wikipedia, giantbomb, etc. for the text based data however. I think the local artwork cache also works well, in the situation where folks use many different types of frontends. For a very large collection, all of the artwork equals a ton of storage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Ah, I see. I'm toying with the idea of storing metadata and images with the actual games, instead of (or optionally as well as) in the XML file and Images folder. If I could do it in a somewhat standardized way, all the better. So this is an interesting endeavor. Where would I download that app? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etock Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 http://emumovies.com/forums/index.php/files/file/321-emumovies-dsu/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Etock said http://emumovies.com/forums/index.php/files/file/321-emumovies-dsu/ There are alternatives however. There are plenty of sites which offer official and custom art for free. We've also talked about videos and music. We can stream-in the videos from archive sites that archive commercials, youtube directly and overclockedremix for remixed music. So yea, it would have to come from multiple places, but the most important thing is its free... I want to clarify too what I mean when I talk about mix and matching, for Jason and anyone else who reads this. Choosing multiple websites for one game to pull data from, is hard. Coding wise it is a nightmare, and how do you convey UI to a user without confusing someone. I am technically apt, but even trying to piece something together in my head confuses me. If we do try to get data from multiple sites we have to make concessions like I mentioned earlier. Right now we allow you to choose what type of images you download, and from which site. We would still allow the user to choose which info they downloaded, but not the site anymore. If only to make things easier. We would have to pick a site with a comprehensive enough database of images, which is very tricky. I found 2-3 that work well together, not alone. They are the only alternatives, and when suddenly you have to get a sub fee to use this service, regardless of how much time it saves, I don't think its worth it anymore. LaunchBox alone already does a majority of this programs 'time savers' and its completely free. We just need a source that is equally as open. If that means multiple sites........ it gets tricky and difficult. All of this still leaves game information. Text data. together Wikipedia and TheGamesDB are not enough. We know of more Databases, but again... the more sites we have to add, the harder this gets. I talked about removing the option to choose which site data gets downloaded from, and while a solution, not a good one. I am however, also not completely in favor of a LocalDB. Jason could service the site, I could help curate it and update it, but we're two people. We could also do imports of other sites, essentially take the data other sites offer, for free (because legally it needs to be marked this way), and import it.... but we're talking about tens of thousands of games. We also would need money for bandwidth to service all of that. Simply put, there is no easy answer to how we should proceed with data acquisition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 The best artwork website I have ever found: http://www.thecoverproject.net/index.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Etock said http://emumovies.com/forums/index.php/files/file/321-emumovies-dsu/ Excellent, thank you Etock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Brad's right, multiple sources does get ridiculously complicated. That said, that's why I'm considering local metadata (next to the games), and also why I'm so interested in EmuMovies, since it lets me download it. Not sure where we'll go, but I want to see this in action, at least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etock Posted June 1, 2015 Author Share Posted June 1, 2015 Sorry to be a pest, but was wondering ... Is local image scraping still planned? I've seen videos mentioned in regards to BigBox, and that sounds awesome. I'd love to ditch searching for a new frontend to RetroArch but this is a major hang up for me. Thanks again for your hard work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 1, 2015 Share Posted June 1, 2015 Etock said Sorry to be a pest, but was wondering ... Is local image scraping still planned? I've seen videos mentioned in regards to BigBox, and that sounds awesome. I'd love to ditch searching for a new frontend to RetroArch but this is a major hang up for me. Thanks again for your hard work. As far as I know it should still be, but I would assume its low on the list. You can already change the images and the scrapers get a majority of the games for most platforms. PC Engine still seems lacking. The priority in this regard is our own Database, but BBM is still being worked on heavily and that is taking up most of his time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 Hi Etock, yes, that is still planned, but the priority is admittedly fairly low. It was clear to me that the home theater view was the #1 request by the community, and it had been requested for ages, so that is my current focus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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