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+---- Thread: Beta Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi (/showthread.php?tid=287826)
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RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2017-10-26
(2017-10-22, 19:32)henricos Wrote: What tag do you expect do read/write from/to the NFO file (I suppose publisher is better for compatibility with other addons/scrappers)
I did quite few changes in the DB in 0.9.7, mainly to equalise AEL database and the future Kodi Games database. It is possible that I forgot to update the NFO file functions to reflect this changes. What AEL expects in the NFO file is the "official" contents of the DB, defined here. Will solve this bug ASAP.
(2017-10-22, 19:32)henricos Wrote: Finally, I have some questions about the “Paths” area on settings:
1- Should I set the AEL-asset-library folder as “Launcher Asset directory” and the addon will search for the assets of each launcher based on the subfolder name??
2- What should I set for “Category Asset directory”? I’m using “AEL-asset-library\Category assets”. Is that correct?
3- What about favorites and collections?
Thanks for this great addon!
1. No. Clear paths in Paths tab in settings means AEL is using the default values which are
Code:
Category Asset directory -> $USER_DATA/addon_data/plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/asset-categories/
Launcher Asset directory -> $USER_DATA/addon_data/plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/asset-launchers/
Favourites Asset directory -> $USER_DATA/addon_data/plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/asset-favourites/
Collections Asset directory -> $USER_DATA/addon_data/plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/asset-collections/There are 2 ways to setting the artwork of Categories/Launcher:
1) Using the context menu, "Edit Assets/Artwork ...". For every piece of artwork you have 3 options
a) "Select local image" Links the artwork you select. Nothing is changed on the filesystem.
b) "Import local image (copy and rename)" Copies the artwork you select into the Category/Launcher asset directory. The asset is renamed and the new filename includes the Category/Launchers ID. This is to allow two launcher with same name, in different categories, to not produce a filename collision.
c) "Unset artwork/asset" This unsets the artwork in AEL database. Filesystem is not modified.
2) You can use XML configuration files to import Category/Launcher artwork. This is equivalent to the context menu option "Select local image". Have a look at the AEL Asset Library for a lot of examples.
2. Nothing. Default should be fine.
3. Do nothing. Defaults are OK. Note that Favourite/Collection ROMs will always use the assets of the ROMs in the Launchers. Favourite/Collection directories are used only if you use the scraper or use the option "Import local image (copy and rename)" in a Favourite/Collection ROM.
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2017-10-26
(2017-10-24, 00:32)martinkop Wrote: Standalone Launcher - Microsoft Edge
Pretty low-impact request: How to launch the browser from inside Kodi.
I have created an Apps folder in AEL. Created 2 standalone launchers for Edge: Shortcut (LNK) version from desktop and .EXE from program folder. When I select either of them I see a Kodi message like "AEL Launching Microsoft Edge..." but the browser does not open.
Log file pasted at http://paste.ubuntu.com/ user martinkop
Thanks
Martin
I cannot read the LOG with the URL you provided. Please post it again if problem persists. Remember to activate AEL DEBUG option (but not Kodi's debug option).
Have a look at this post for the correct location of MS Edge (just in case).
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2017-10-26
(2017-10-24, 12:29)HomeTheatreGuru Wrote: Hi all, post #3 on the first page showcases a few skin impressions by user Rufoo that I absolutely adore! However, there is no skin associated with it (says 'xxxx' in the title) and it is seemingly a work-in-progress view. Do we have any further information on this?
Also, I would like to use this launcher to open games purchased from the Windows store. Windows apps seem to be access-restricted and do not generate a simple .exe file so I was wondering if this is still supported by Advanced Emulator Launcher?
Lastly, and this may have been asked before, I would like to know if there is support for custom configs within the same emulator? For example, PCSX2 requires many games to be set up with different settings that are saved in their own individual folders. Can this launcher work around this requirement?
Hi, Rufoo and collaborators are still working on the skin. Rufoo had some personal problems recently that delayed the development of the skin considerably. However, I'm sure Rufoo will eventually release the new skin. I cannot tell you about the release schedule. Just be patient please.
Second question: you have to google a bit and learn how you can launch appx files from the command line (if possible). I'm sorry I cannot help your further, I don't have a Windows 10 machine to do some tests.
Last question: you can use the Alternative Arguments. Alternative Arguments are different for each ROM and they override the Launcher arguments on a ROM by ROM basis. Currently, you can only edit the ROM Alternative Arguments in the ROM context menu. If you find it more convenient, I can extend the ROM NFO files to include a <alt_arguments> tag or create a ROM XML configuration file to change/edit all ROM information not metadata. In other words, NFO files will be for metadata only (year, genre, developer, etc.) and the ROM XML for the rest (disks, alternative application, alternative arguments, finished). What do you think?
Also, if you can find some information about what PCSX2 requires (an example of how the arguments are for each ROM) then I will have a look and think about the best solution.
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - martinkop - 2017-10-27
(2017-10-26, 12:44)martinkop Wrote:(2017-10-24, 09:45)illinx Wrote:(2017-10-24, 00:32)martinkop Wrote: Standalone Launcher - Microsoft Edge
Pretty low-impact request: How to launch the browser from inside Kodi.
I have created an Apps folder in AEL. Created 2 standalone launchers for Edge: Shortcut (LNK) version from desktop and .EXE from program folder. When I select either of them I see a Kodi message like "AEL Launching Microsoft Edge..." but the browser does not open.
Log file pasted at http://paste.ubuntu.com/ user martinkop
Thanks
Martin
If you change kodi to windowed mode, do you see the Edge window hiding behind it? This is how I launch Firefox on Linux with no problems, so it might be something screwy with how Windows' window manager works.
Wow that's bad. I went to Settings and changed the fullscreen setting. I was immediately presented with a 100% black screen. If I kill Kodi with Alt-F4 I get the desktop back. Then when I restart Kodi it sits minimized on the taskbar; when I click that I get the black screen again. I found the GUISETTINGS file but don't see an obvious change to undo.
Martin
Renamed guisettings.xml and restarted Kodi with no problem. So the details I initially omitted:
AEL version: 0.9.7 ~beta1
Kodi version: 17.4
OS: Windows 10
Back to the initial problem of not being able to launch a "standalone app" in Advanced Emulator Launcher.
Martin
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2017-10-27
(2017-10-27, 00:44)martinkop Wrote: Renamed guisettings.xml and restarted Kodi with no problem. So the details I initially omitted:
AEL version: 0.9.7 ~beta1
Kodi version: 17.4
OS: Windows 10
Back to the initial problem of not being able to launch a "standalone app" in Advanced Emulator Launcher.
Martin
AEL debug log please, so I can see what's going on in your launcher.
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - RazorFR - 2017-10-28
Hi
Having a couple of issues when updating to 0.9.7 beta1. Everything was fine with previous 9.6
Poster artworks do not appear anymore (got them mapped to flyers for all launchers)
When I try to change the mapping (manage rom/choose roms default assets/artworks) , then AEL is throwing me an error.
Log
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - martinkop - 2017-10-29
(2017-10-26, 12:44)martinkop Wrote:(2017-10-24, 09:45)illinx Wrote:(2017-10-24, 00:32)martinkop Wrote: Standalone Launcher - Microsoft Edge
Pretty low-impact request: How to launch the browser from inside Kodi.
I have created an Apps folder in AEL. Created 2 standalone launchers for Edge: Shortcut (LNK) version from desktop and .EXE from program folder. When I select either of them I see a Kodi message like "AEL Launching Microsoft Edge..." but the browser does not open.
Log file pasted at http://paste.ubuntu.com/ user martinkop
Thanks
Martin
If you change kodi to windowed mode, do you see the Edge window hiding behind it? This is how I launch Firefox on Linux with no problems, so it might be something screwy with how Windows' window manager works.
Wow that's bad. I went to Settings and changed the fullscreen setting. I was immediately presented with a 100% black screen. If I kill Kodi with Alt-F4 I get the desktop back. Then when I restart Kodi it sits minimized on the taskbar; when I click that I get the black screen again. I found the GUISETTINGS file but don't see an obvious change to undo.
Martin
I made a launcher for Chrome and it works fine. So it's an Edge issue. I found advanced settings and tried Edge in both block/non-blocking and windowed/non-windowed. It did not start in any configuration.
Thanks
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - crono141 - 2017-10-29
Wintermute,
Did the plugin URLs change when you updated to 0.9.7-beta1? This line from my autoexec script now produces an error:
xbmc.executebuiltin("ActivateWindow(1,plugin://plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/?com=SHOW_ROMS&catID=" + catID + "&launID=" + launchID + "&romID=" + romID + ")")
Error is:
_command_render_roms() Launcher ID not found in self.launchers
Any ideas?
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - crono141 - 2017-10-30
Nevermind. Operator error on my part. I did a check/update databases and the error disappeared.
I am having problems with all the other features that were added that I have interest in. Specifically the non-blocking add on. Maybe I misunderstood what exactly that feature did, but what I understood was that it would allow us to gracefully quit Kodi from a called script, instead of having to kill the process. This does not appear to work. I use kodi-send with the command "quit". Works from a terminal, doesn't work from a script called by AEL.
Also, I was under the impression that this version would allow for bulk scraping of already added rom assets from online. The feature is either missing or I can't figure out how to call it. I should reiterate that I've never been able to get the scrapers to work, because it's non-intuitive on how to invoke them. The asset scraper does not work when first adding roms, and it does not seem there is an option to scrape afterward either. I know others have been successful, but I have not seen how to work it.
I would appreciate any insights.
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2017-10-30
(2017-10-30, 02:59)crono141 Wrote: I am having problems with all the other features that were added that I have interest in. Specifically the non-blocking add on. Maybe I misunderstood what exactly that feature did, but what I understood was that it would allow us to gracefully quit Kodi from a called script, instead of having to kill the process. This does not appear to work. I use kodi-send with the command "quit". Works from a terminal, doesn't work from a script called by AEL.
The standard AEL behaviour is to block when launching an application. When you launch an application in AEL, a new thread is created to run AEL, the application is launched, and AEL thread waits until the app has finished. Note that when the app is running you can go to Kodi, browse in AEL, etc. If you try to use AEL for editing a ROM, launch another app, etc. AEL will display a warning "Another AEL instance is running ..." In other words, a new AEL thread is able to detect that a previous unfinished thread is running concurrently and prevents execution of the new thread. This is important, among other things, to avoid the database corruption that plagued old good Advanced Launcher. Note that with non-blocking launchers the database corruption is still possible in AEL although very unlikely thanks to some design improvements I did. Blocking launchers completely avoid the DB corruption.
One disadvantage of blocking launchers is that if you use Kodi RPC to shutdown Kodi then Kodi will refuse to shut down because the thread that is waiting for the launched app to be finished will never end. In a non-blocking launcher AEL doesn't wait for the launched app to finish. As soon as AEL has launched the app then the AEL thread finishes and resources are freed.
I did some tests and found that in order to shut down Kodi you must use the JSON RPC interface, not kodi-send. kodi-send is only for actions (in other words, key presses or joystick button presses). The following script has been tested by myself and it is guaranteed to work well with a non-blocking launcher. Note that if you want to use standard blocking launchers then you have to kill the Kodi process by commenting a few lines of shell code in the script. It is not as elegant but also works.
(2017-10-30, 02:59)crono141 Wrote: Also, I was under the impression that this version would allow for bulk scraping of already added rom assets from online. The feature is either missing or I can't figure out how to call it. I should reiterate that I've never been able to get the scrapers to work, because it's non-intuitive on how to invoke them. The asset scraper does not work when first adding roms, and it does not seem there is an option to scrape afterward either. I know others have been successful, but I have not seen how to work it.
Please have a look at the Scrapers Demystified post. After reading, if you have more specific questions please ask. If the problems with the scrapers persist I will need an AEL debug log to see what's going on in your setup.
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - crono141 - 2017-10-30
Thanks. If I understand correctly the only portion of that script that I need to quit Kodi is the kodi_rpc function definition, and then the line that calls it with Application.Quit?
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2017-10-30
(2017-10-30, 15:39)crono141 Wrote: Thanks. If I understand correctly the only portion of that script that I need to quit Kodi is the kodi_rpc function definition, and then the line that calls it with Application.Quit?
Exactly. If you just want to exit Kodi then you need
Code:
kodi_rpc()
{
METHOD="$1"
json_str="{\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"id\":\"1\",\"method\":\"$METHOD\"}\""
curl -H "Content-type: application/json" -d "$json_str" http://localhost:8080/jsonrpc
}
kodi_rpc "Application.Quit"Note that you need to have the curl command installed. Curl is a very standard and basic command so I think it is present even in LibreELEC.
If you do not want to use kodi_rpc_notification and kodi_rpc_params then you don't need to include the function definition code in the script. kodi_rpc_notification is nice because if something is wrong the script is able to display a notification in Kodi.
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - yevaman44 - 2017-10-31
Hi there ,
Just find a little bug in your local XML megadrive ( https://github.com/Wintermute0110/plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/blob/master/GameDBInfo/Sega%20MegaDrive.xml )
It seems that you inverted Year, ratind and description in all the game.
For exemple :
<game name="688 Attack Sub (USA, Europe)">
<description>1991</description>
<year>HSRS - GA (General Audience)</year>
<rating>688 Attack Sub</rating>
That's why after a scrap, I saw the year instead of the title !!
Good job, can't wait for the next release !
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - Wintermute0110 - 2017-10-31
(2017-10-31, 00:53)yevaman44 Wrote: Hi there ,
Just find a little bug in your local XML megadrive ( https://github.com/Wintermute0110/plugin.program.advanced.emulator.launcher/blob/master/GameDBInfo/Sega%20MegaDrive.xml )
It seems that you inverted Year, ratind and description in all the game.
For exemple :
<game name="688 Attack Sub (USA, Europe)">
<description>1991</description>
<year>HSRS - GA (General Audience)</year>
<rating>688 Attack Sub</rating>
That's why after a scrap, I saw the year instead of the title !!
Good job, can't wait for the next release !
Yes, some of the platforms are currently a little disaster because some of the GameDBInfo CVS files are messy. For 0.9.8 I try to improve the offline scraper a lot, including No-Intro/Redump DAT support. I built the Offline Scraper viewer in AEL so it's easy to spot errors in the Offline Scraper (and also it's nice to have a reference database so you can have a look at all the ROMs every platform supports in case you are looking for a particular game). I'm doing the work in this repository and once it's finished I expect AEL users to contribute to the XML databases with pull requests to improve it (I will make proper documentation so it would be easy for anyone to edit the offline scraper database for missing ROMs).
RE: Advanced Emulator Launcher - Multi-emulator frontend for Kodi - bibi - 2017-11-01
Hi,
I just tried your plugin, but it doesnt launch...
Here is the log, see at the end :
http://sprunge.us/jRUH