fatguy666 Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 (edited) God knows why I started this but I'm in the process of adding (or trying to) all the games I have that aren't on the DB. It's not going to be anywhere near as complete as some of the undertakings I've seen on here (like C64 Dreams!)but it should see about 1000 games added that aren't there. I think I've added 100 so far (done A to C and numbered games) and that's taken nearly 2 weeks. I'm only adding metadata, front cover, gameplay, title, and any clear logo's that the scraper has already picked up. Most of the covers weren't great so have been looking for better quality versions, cropping and touch them up if they need it (see below). Depending how long this takes me I'm thinking about going back and adding the missing metadata for the games that are already on the DB. I just wanted to post about this cause the only other person that knows I'm doing it is my wife and she thinks it's insane! Before After (watermark "removed" and colours adjusted) Edited August 27, 2019 by fatguy666 . 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rincewind Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 Awesome work , so glad that the spectrum is getting an uplift and thanks for all your hard work it's really appreciated. Please keep us updated with the progress 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spycat Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 It's nice to see the UK/European 8-Bit machines getting a bit of attention. I'm a BBC Micro man myself, although I also have a soft spot for the others, especially the Spectrum, Dragon, Enterprise and MTX. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted August 31, 2019 Author Share Posted August 31, 2019 Hey, just thought I'd add another example of the type of stuff I'm doing. For this game "De-Fusion" I could only find one copy of the cover art and as you can see it's got some damage. I upscaled it using waifu2x (which gets rid of some of the jpg noise too) and cleaned up the damage the best I could. All in all I'm pretty happy with it although I'll probably never even play the game! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rincewind Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 That's really well done I cant even see any Clone Tool marks 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Styphelus Posted September 6, 2019 Share Posted September 6, 2019 I have about 650 clear logos that match the covers. It was an old project I was working on for Hyperspin. I might have some covers I started cleaning up as well. Will have to look through my old stuff. Let me know if you are interested. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wally Posted September 6, 2019 Share Posted September 6, 2019 I will be indeed interested 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted September 8, 2019 Author Share Posted September 8, 2019 On 9/6/2019 at 2:58 PM, Styphelus said: I have about 650 clear logos that match the covers. It was an old project I was working on for Hyperspin. I might have some covers I started cleaning up as well. Will have to look through my old stuff. Let me know if you are interested. Hey, if you have that stuff I'd love to see it. I'm ok with cleaning up images but any clear logo I tried looked rubbish and was binned. I actually started back at college the other week so don't have as much free time as I did when I decided to start this, I'll keep plugging away though as I'm enjoying myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Styphelus Posted September 9, 2019 Share Posted September 9, 2019 Ok cool. I'll upload them somewhere tonight. We should create a place like the Hyperspin vault where we can all share the work being done. The ZX Spectrum actually shares a lot of covers with other systems like the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Apple II and even the BBC Micro. We could be filling up the wholes for the systems as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Styphelus Posted September 9, 2019 Share Posted September 9, 2019 Here you go. The file is attached. There are 764 clear logos and they all match the box covers. Luckeyboy67 posted a bunch of them today here: I have no idea if they match the covers or not. Haven't had a chance to look at it. ZX_Spetrum_Clear_Logos.7z 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted September 10, 2019 Author Share Posted September 10, 2019 Thanks Styphelus. On a different note, I have spent any spare time I've had over the last 3 or 4 days reconstructing the box for Prince of the Yolkfolk for some reason. The version on the DB isn't great and I couldn't find a better one than on https://zxart.ee but it had weird colour banding. Someone with actual skills in Photoshop might have been able to fix it but I decided to try to remake it altogether, using a poster I found online that didn't have any logos or anything. Only issue it had was marks where it had been folded which I've done my best to get rid of. So, here's a copy of the one off zxart and the one I made for a comparison. Thanks to seaview for making the brand spanking new clear logo - it bothered me that it was over the king's face in the original so I was able to make it a bit smaller and put it higher to avoid that. Also shifted the image across a bit so that jester's face is now visible. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Styphelus Posted September 18, 2019 Share Posted September 18, 2019 The ZX Spectrum, because of its huge library, has a lot of games with the same exact name. They are separated on the Games DB, however, Launchbox does not detect them as separate games. For examples the game 180. There are 2 different games called 180 by 2 different developers. Launchbox only gives the option of picking 1 180 game but downloads the artwork for both of them. This is also an issue when downloading videos from emumovies as it will only download the video associated with 1 of those games. What is the solution in this case? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted September 18, 2019 Author Share Posted September 18, 2019 3 hours ago, Styphelus said: The ZX Spectrum, because of its huge library, has a lot of games with the same exact name. They are separated on the Games DB, however, Launchbox does not detect them as separate games. For examples the game 180. There are 2 different games called 180 by 2 different developers. Launchbox only gives the option of picking 1 180 game but downloads the artwork for both of them. This is also an issue when downloading videos from emumovies as it will only download the video associated with 1 of those games. What is the solution in this case? I've had to download these again as I realised that I was never gonna play darts games but I get what you're saying in regards to the DB. It's only finding the one game made by CSS in 1984. To find the other one you can search for the alternative name "pub darts" and it will find it. The issue then is, the images for both games are fine on the DB. However, when you add the second game it overwrites the images from the first game as they have the same name! The way I found around this is, take the first game and search for it so that it's linked to the DB. Before you search for the images, change the title to "180 (CSS)". With the second game you'd be changing it to "180 (MAD)". The images on the DB for both of these games are fine but I think there might be an issue with the ones on emumovies so I would avoid downloading them. Unfortunately, I have no idea about the videos as that's not something I bother with. On a related note, there is a THIRD game called 180 (according to the ROMS I have) but thankfully that was actually called "One Hundred and Eighty!" so there's no confusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted September 25, 2019 Author Share Posted September 25, 2019 Just a quick update for anyone that cares, I'm still working on this. A to E has been done, over 150 games added so far I think. Progress is slower than I like as I started my second year at college and I've been busy. Here's the cover for the last of the E's, cleaned up with paint.net to the best of my ability. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wally Posted September 25, 2019 Share Posted September 25, 2019 Appreciated 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted October 26, 2019 Author Share Posted October 26, 2019 Small update. I'm still working away at this but more slowly than I would have liked. One of the reasons for that is I have decided to shift my roms from the traditional tzx files to the disk conversions over at Virtual TR-DOS There were a few reasons for this, one being that some of the roms I had didn't actually work and another being games with different content on each side of the tape can be stored on one disk image. Also, a lot of these conversions have a trainer at the start for infinite lives and such. Finally, there are a lot less "crappy" games that have conversions. So I've basically got my original list of games that were not on the DB and am cross referencing it with the Virtual TR-DOS list. If there isn't a match then it won't be added to the DB. Should save me some time and cut down on the rubbish, which I'm sure I've already added lots of before this change. Once I've finished with the DB I'll be working on sorting the disk images. This again will take some time. For example, there are 14 "conversions" for the game Exolon. Not all of these have a trainer, so I've been loading every one (or at least the first "good" one) to see which one I should keep. I won't be able to share the actual files but hope to have a batch file or something sort of solution for anyone that might want to go down this route. Cheers. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted November 23, 2019 Author Share Posted November 23, 2019 Another wee update. Currently on the letter S. Have managed to make a few clear logos that don't look completely rubbish, mostly thanks to the "AA's Assistant" plugin for paint.net Thought I'd share my attempt at creating a better version of the cover for Sir Lancelot, a game that was already on the DB but the only cover available for the Spectrum anywhere was a measly 190 x 298. I managed to find a version for the Amstrad that was about 2 & a half times the size and much better quality. Then I went about hunting down the correct fonts that were used and a decent Melbourne House logo so I could recreate the top part of the picture. I'm attaching the original Spectrum version, the Amstrad version, and the version I put together. If you open my version and the Amstrad one and flip back and forth you can see where I had to rotate part of the picture then did my best to clone stamp out the gaps! Due to this, I've added it to the DB as "Fanart - Box - Front". The fonts I eventually tracked down were American Typewriter Condensed Bold on the left and Typewriter on the right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted January 2, 2020 Author Share Posted January 2, 2020 First off, happy new year! So I've finally finished adding all of the games that I was going to. I've been at this for 4 months now and really underestimated how long it would be. Not sure how many games I've actually added, could be anywhere around 200? I've had over 12,000 approved submissions made! I'm going to go back through my list now and double check the games that were already on the DB. I've touched some up while I was adding games, but there's still some stuff that could be improved. Here's an example of a clear logo that I've just made for the game Phantis (Game Over II) compared to the one that was on the DB. Hopefully I shouldn't take as long doing this. As much fun as it's been, I picked up 10 games in the winter sale there and really want to get back in to actually playing games! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rincewind Posted January 3, 2020 Share Posted January 3, 2020 Awesome work , yeah there's a lot of speccy games to get through so thanks for you hard work on this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatguy666 Posted January 3, 2020 Author Share Posted January 3, 2020 17 hours ago, Rincewind said: Awesome work , yeah there's a lot of speccy games to get through so thanks for you hard work on this. Thanks! The list that I have has about 2400 games on it. I've barely made it through the first 20 and despite already being on the DB I've made a bunch of changes! This may take longer than I thought... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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