Unofficial BigBox Kodi Addon(Linux and Android Beta)

[martinconroy]

Cheers @neil9000 - will do that.

[slipsystem]

2 hours ago, martinconroy said:

Hi @slipsystem,

Probably a stupid question but how would I get an Android or Linux install to access the media? Here I have a media server (SMB) which all can access. Is it best to install LaunchBox on there and point the Android/Linux systems to that as the install directory?

 

2 hours ago, neil9000 said:

@martinconroy The way i would do it is to add your network share as a source in kodi, just like you would if you were adding movies. Then point this addon at the bigbox.exe on the network share. 

The best way would be to mount the network share in you fstab to create a mount point under /mnt/NetworkShare.

then add the /mnt/NetworkShare to kodi and point the addon to the bigbox exe. 

I may be wrong depending on the linux distro but smb shares are not working because the python code cannot convert the path.

 

if you where using Ubuntu or Ubuntu based Distribution this would be the procedure.

 

set up mount point using Disk Utility. I am running Xubuntu so I had to install the utility with this command

 sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility

 

this is a picture from google because my Linux machine is not on at the moment but you get the idea

 

Install Retroarch using the following command

 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libretro/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install retroarch* libretro*

 

 

Install the addon and Point it to your bigbox.exe using the google example it would be something like.

/mnt/0EC2439A6E2BFCA6/Games/LaunchBox/BigBox.exe

 

then open the addon and run Update.

this will scan the data folder and generate a database of games.

it will set the games path using the data extracted from the data folder.

 

if a platform is not working it is most likely due to the addon not knowing which emulator command to use.

you can replace these commands by editing this file.

 

/home/.kodi/addons/plugin.video.bigbox/resources/linuxcom.xml

 

there are a few example overrides in there already but I am always looking for people to post there files so I can add them to the addon.

 

the alternative way would be to copy your LaunchBox folder and Roms to the device, keeping it in the same folder structure.

 

Please let me know if you run into any problems so I can attempt to fix the bugs.

[neil9000]

He is using Libreelec though and that works out of the box with samba shares, you just need to add source and either point it at your samba share if it shows automatically , or type in your ip/system name of the samba share and add it as a source. At least that is how i do it, i have a kodi addon folder on my windows pc that is shared on the network, i then pointed my libreelec to that folder so i can instal addons over the network.

[martinconroy]

Thanks for all this info @slipsystem. It looks a little daunting, but I will see what I can do with this when I have some time. Will play with the nvidia Shield too and hopefully that will be more straight forward!

Will report back!

Assume that this wouldn't ease the smb issues?
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pysmb/1.1.19

[martinconroy]

2 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

He is using Libreelec though and that works out of the box with samba shares, you just need to add source and either point it at your samba share if it shows automatically , or type in your ip/system name of the samba share and add it as a source. At least that is how i do it, i have a kodi addon folder on my windows pc that is shared on the network, i then pointed my libreelec to that folder so i can instal addons over the network.

I added the SMB location as a source within Kodi, but the dialog to access the BigBox location didn't include the "sources" so I couldn't access using that and had to do the full navigation to the SMB path. Am I missing something easy?

[slipsystem]

6 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

He is using Libreelec though and that works out of the box with samba shares, you just need to add source and either point it at your samba share if it shows automatically , or type in your ip/system name of the samba share and add it as a source. At least that is how i do it, i have a kodi addon folder on my windows pc that is shared on the network, i then pointed my libreelec to that folder so i can instal addons over the network.

Sorry you are most certainly correct. what i was refering to is my python code does not support smb shares as i have not written a way to handle these sources. Kodi most certainly does support smb shares.

[neil9000]

Just now, slipsystem said:

Sorry you are most certainly correct. what i was refering to is my python code does not support smb shares as i have not written a way to handle these sources. Kodi most certainly does support smb shares.

Ah OK, sorry didnt mean to say you was wrong.  

@martinconroy looks like that is your issue then the addon is only going to look locally for bigbox at the moment, so yeah looks like you are going to have to deal with that terminal stuff @slipsystem posted above.

[martinconroy]

Damn

OK. If you can use that library in any way or point to sources in the future that would be a whole lot easier as I'm sure most Windows users are scared of Linux like me! I'll give it a go though

 

[neil9000]

@martinconroy, in theory its no more difficult to map a network drive in Linux than it is in Windows. Obviously the issue you are going to have is that Kodi is the GUI for Libreelec, so no proper easy GUI to play with. Im sure if you googled you could find a step by step to do so though, just ssh in and copy paste the commands from your windows pc. You may need to switch ssh on in the libreelec options, its on one of the welcome to libreelec startup screens when you first install but is off by default,( i always switch it on there and then) but is a toggle in the options.

[martinconroy]

Cheers for the reassurance @neil9000 - I have SSH access so should be OK

 

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, martinconroy said:

Cheers for the reassurance @neil9000 - I have SSH access so should be OK

 

Lol, to be fair this is coming from someone who doesn't understand Linux either. I have just messed with it a bit as i have a quite old Intel NUC that didn't come with any OS, so i have installed all sorts of OS'S on it just messing about with it.

[slipsystem]

Hey Guys,

 

Sorry I havent updated this Project in a while, I have been trying my hand at the new plugin system.

 

I am going to start doing some work on Friday night so if anyone has any suggestions ,features they want to add or bug fixes please let me know.

On 5/14/2017 at 0:24 AM, fawkesyeah said:

Yes! Your package fixed it. I hadn't realized a few games were in no platform. Thank you for your help on that!

A different question for you: I've tried flipping through a few different views in Kodi, and I'm seeing them all use either the game box or the background. Is there any way I can make a view(s) use the Steam Banner image instead? I have all of my games with proper Steam Banners and I prefer using those if I can.

 

I will be adding the steam banners under Kodis banner path. any theme that supports banner views should use this setting.

 

On 5/15/2017 at 7:47 AM, The_Keeper86 said:

Would it be possible to only show games that have art? At least in the random games widget. A lot of Mame games show sometimes with no art. If not no worries. I hope this requests makes sense? 

 

I will be adding an option under setting to only display games with artwork. 

 

[The_Keeper86]

Sweet thank you!

[martinconroy]

Hi @slipsystem,

Thanks for your continued work on this!

It would be great if possible to make it easier to edit the Android apps used within the addon rather than editing the file. Just started using on my Shield and it works wonderfully. Some platforms work perfectly and some I need to tweak

I'm creating my own list based on these cores and the recommended ones from Brad /  lordmonkus, but if you could simply select "Platform", "App", "Core" via the UI that would be ideal .

Shout if I can help.

Martin

Edited May 19, 2017 by martinconroy

[martinconroy]

    <Emulator>227c8d86-77b0-471b-b787-265d06c3f92e</Emulator>
    <Platform>Atari 2600</Platform>
    <CommandLine>-L "cores\stella_libretro.dll" -c "config\stella_libretro.cfg"</CommandLine>
    <Default>true</Default>

Actually @slipsystem - could you parse the RA parameters from the CommandLine tags in Emulators.xml where RA is used? Should be fairly easy to identify?

 

[martinconroy]

Back again @slipsystem with another idea! Just thought - would be great to be able to hide certain platforms. Some cannot be (easily) emulated on some systems so would be good to be able to hide those

[slipsystem]

2 hours ago, martinconroy said:

    <Emulator>227c8d86-77b0-471b-b787-265d06c3f92e</Emulator>
    <Platform>Atari 2600</Platform>
    <CommandLine>-L "cores\stella_libretro.dll" -c "config\stella_libretro.cfg"</CommandLine>
    <Default>true</Default>

Actually @slipsystem - could you parse the RA parameters from the CommandLine tags in Emulators.xml where RA is used? Should be fairly easy to identify?

 

yes this is possible. believe it or not it is already doing this. if it identifies that you are ising retroarch it will pass the parameters found in the emulator file. these commands need to be converted though because they are not in the same place across platforms also linux and android use .so and not .dll. i will be looking into the conversion again though.

[martinconroy]

Cool - thanks @slipsystem. Anything you want testing let me know.

Please will you post here when there's a new version so I'll get a notification?

[Thatman84]

Sorry i didnt read the whoke thread. 

What does the Android part do?

[slipsystem]

11 hours ago, Thatman84 said:

Sorry i didnt read the whoke thread. 

What does the Android part do?

On android devices it converts the command used to run the game. 

retroarch.exe -L "cores/stella_libretro.dll" "%ROM_PATH%"

becomes

/system/bin/am start --user 0 -a android.intent.action.MAIN -c android.intent.category.LAUNCHER -e ROM "%ROM_PATH%" -e LIBRETRO /data/data/com.retroarch/cores/stella_libretro_android.so -e CONFIGFILE /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.retroarch/files/retroarch.cfg -e IME com.android.inputmethod.latin/.LatinIME -n com.retroarch/.browser.retroactivity.RetroActivityFuture