[h3llrais3r]

Anyone managed to set this up?
I've added AKL to a fresh install, installed addon and plugins, added source, but from the moment I start scraping it goes wrong.
Also tried adding default launcher to rom collection, this fails as well...
Any suggestion about which version to run on kodi 21?
I've ran both latest stable and beta and they both have issues.

[ippytick]

I have previously been using version 1.4 of AKL without issue but the update to 1.5 completely messed up my library. I decided to reset the database and start again but I have come across several issues during the setup, one of these being the difficulty to add a standalone ROMs for Firefox, Disney+, etc. I notice others have also been having trouble with this too, so, I have written a very summarised guide of how to setup the standalone ROMs. I will be using a firefox shortcut in my example but this can be replaced with any standalone program you wish to run. I don't know if it matters but I am running Kodi 20.3 on windows 10.

1. Open the AKL addon, then in the root of AKL open the context menu (“c” key) and add a new source > Standalone ROM/application > Navigate to the executable/shortcut of the program you wish to launch (e.g. C:\Users\user\Documents\Apps\firefox.lnk)
   
2. Enter name (e.g. Firefox) > Select platform (Microsoft Windows)
   
3. The source should now be added to the Sources folder of AKL. Enter the folder to check that it is there
   
4. Depending on your setup, highlight it, then open the context menu. Select Link ROM in other collections/categories > add to appropriate location
   
5. Enter name (e.g. Firefox > Using a specific application to launch > Home > Documents > Apps > firefox.lnk. Delete all arguments
   
6. Navigate to the Apps category highlight Firefox and open the context menu > Edit Rom > Add new launcher to ROM > Firefox > Yes
   

The standalone app should now run. A somewhat confusing process compared to AKL version 1.4 but there it is.

[ippytick]

Chrisism,

I have been playing around with the most recent AKL versions 1.5.1 and 1.5.2rc9 and below are a couple issues I have come across so far that I’m hoping you can have a look at. I am using Kodi 20.1 and Windows 10

Local files failing to scrape
When using version 1.5.1 scraping ROM collections from local files works without issue all metadata and artwork is found. However, in 1.5.2rc9 local file scraping does not work, a AKL error "failed to store scraped ROMS" appears.

umedudiliz (paste)

Artwork copy and replace not working

When using either 1.5.1 or 1.5.2rc9 setting artwork via “Import local Fanart (copy and rename)” fails to work and shows an AKL error message of "failure while copying file"

lejodilubi (paste)

Thanks,

[ippytick]

Chrisism,

One more issue I’m encountering is with the displaying of artwork, an issue that wasn’t present in version 1.4 of AKL. I don’t believe this is a problem with the skin I am using (Mimic), because in addition to it working fine with AKL 1.4, it also works with artwork for my movies library.

The view after entering the ROM collection shows a list of the ROMs with boxfront art displayed next to each one. This boxfront appears when I change the default artwork for Poster to boxfront (from flyer). That part is all good. However, when this is done the artwork doesn’t appear in the top right. The artwork in this location should display fanart if it exists for the ROM, or the poster (in my case boxfront) if not. But it is no longer working with AKL 1.5.1. See picture below.

https://ibb.co/rwpkXC6

However, for my movie library it is working perfectly. Fanart is displayed for Charlotte’s Web. Poster for The Charmkins, as there is no fanart for The Charmkins. See pictures below.

https://ibb.co/41fwc8b

https://ibb.co/Wtyrx0G

[chrisism]

Back again!
Have had a lot of other projects and work that needed my full attention these last couple of months (of course that what pays the bills has a priority). Now I finally have some time free again. That said, if anybody has or knows some nice freelance IT projects drop me a message. I am currently looking around for new projects to take on.

But let us got back into AKL now. First of a reminder, if you know how to code, if you have solutions, just fork and make a PR back to my codebase. I will always make time to check it out and apply if it helps/fixes the code.

I just fixed a little settings reference bug I found out through some of your posted logs. My first focus is to get the current RC version stable and release an update. I will be going through all your posts that I missed out on one by one.

[garbear]

Glad you're back @chrisism! Like you, I found the holiday break a good time to get back into kodi dev. Following this closely.

Just a reminder for all, my test builds include the repo for AKL if you want to deploy a pre-installed way to run AKL.

[chrisism]

Hello, thanks for your work.
How can i add moonlight on windows ?

Thanks @garbear. Nice to hear!

For moonlight on windows:

• Install moonlight (qt) client
  
• Install 'Nividia Gamestream plugin for AKL' (make sure the addon is scanned and recognized by AKL)
  
• In AKL, open up context menu and choose Add -> Source
  • Choose Nvidia Gamestream source and follow the wizard to connect and pair with your Gamestream server (if unclear post specific issues in this thread)
    
  • Scan the source, adding all the games available
    
• Create a new launcher, context menu, choose Add -> Launcher
  • Choose Nvidia Gamestream launcher, follow the wizard as above, choose the Moonlight exe file as the application (something like c:\program files\moonlight gamestream\moonlight.exe)
    
• Associate the launcher with the source (go to the Source, open context menu, add launcher)
  
• Open up the source, go to the game you like to start -> click and voila
  

[chrisism]

Hi everybody!
I really don't get how to launch a simple .exe Windows file with AKL, I remember it was so easy with the old AEL...
Wiki wasn't really helpful, could you please explain how to simply achieve this please?
Thx

Also for @mourogers.

I just updated the RC (1.5.2) of AKL with some open PRs and some fixes from me. Launching standalone apps should now be straightforward.

• In AKL, open up context menu, choose Add -> Source
  
• Choose standalone source
  
• Point to .exe, .lnk, .bat file and finish
  
• Go to the sources view, select the game you have added, click and voila
  

There is still support for the previous more elaborate way with the standalone launcher etc. But I tried to make it a bit simpler this way.

[chrisism]

@Lihamureke and @theanim8tor see post above. 
Do take notice that previously added standalone sources might pop up the Retroplayer fallback option. You can disable that through the settings.

[chrisism]

Anybody has been able to make this work under flatpak? changing settings using flatseal doesn't make any difference.

ok, if someone is also struggling with this I made it work, at least for AEL (I did not try with AKL). I modified main.py so that the external application is launched with 'flatpak-spawn --host'. Then in flatseal I added a dbus session talk permission with org.freedesktop.Flatpak

Can you please share this code? I do not have a flatpak version setup myself, so I cannot test it out. You can also drop a pull request to my codebase.
Let me know so I can apply these fixes in the main codebase.

[chrisism]

I'm struggling with this as well.  For my case, I just want to directly launch native Linux games - no ROMs, no emulators, no wrappers of any sort, just run a game directly.  It's remarkable how difficult it is to do that with Kodi.

I actually had this working a couple Kodi versions ago, but trying to set it up again now I'm failing.  Based on the documentation (https://github.com/chrisism/plugin.progr.../Launchers), it looks like the Default plugins is needed, so I have that plus the AKL module and library installed.  Here's my process, and where it's currently failing.

1. Add a Source.  Select Folder Scanner, Unknown platform (Linux or something would be nice, but that's not an option), select dummy asset directory (dummy as in I don't expect it to be used since I'm not scraping a ROM library), then select a directory containing the game executables.  Select 'sh' as the extension filter.  Save and done.  When browsing this source, I see the one sh file that I have setup in that directory.

2. Add a Launcher.  Select Application launcher, name Linux Launcher, and set Directly execute the file itself.  No arguments since (as far as I'm aware) none should be needed for direct execution.

3. Now, associate the launcher to with the source.  Edit the Linux Games source, select Add new launcher, Linux Launcher, Yes to set it as default.  I'm then asked whether I want to "overwrite collection metadata properties with values from the launcher"?  I don't think I do, but if I select No, nothing happens.  The launcher is not added, despite the logs showing this:
 

Code:

2024-06-29 20:31:57.209 T:19541    info <general>: [plugin.program.akl] resources.lib.repositories: SourcesRepository.update_source(): Updating source 'Linux Games'
2024-06-29 20:31:57.210 T:19541    info <general>: [plugin.program.akl] resources.lib.commands.rom_launcher_commands: Added launcher#400f1ff72955b6cf20ff463a0390f3a9 to Source 06d913a39d50a5e6d092b73104f3071c

I can repeat that ad nauseam and nothing ever changes.  If I try to launch my game, though, I get "No launcher configured for ROM".

So I try adding the launcher again, and this time answer Yes to the overwrite collection metadata properties question.  This time it fails with an error:
 

Code:

2024-06-29 20:35:15.115 T:19541    info <general>: [plugin.program.akl] resources.lib.services: {"source_id":"06d913a39d50a5e6d092b73104f3071c"}
2024-06-29 20:35:25.495 T:19541   error <general>: [plugin.program.akl] resources.lib.repositories: type: <class 'KeyError'> value: 'romcollection'
2024-06-29 20:35:25.496 T:19541 critical <general>: [plugin.program.akl] resources.lib.commands.mediator: Failure processing command "ADD_SOURCE_LAUNCHER"
                                                   Traceback (most recent call last):
                                                     File "/home/media/.kodi/addons/plugin.program.akl/resources/lib/commands/mediator.py", line 34, in sync_cmd
                                                       return a_command(args)
                                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                                     File "/home/media/.kodi/addons/plugin.program.akl/resources/lib/commands/rom_launcher_commands.py", line 281, in cmd_add_source_launchers
                                                       source.import_data_dic(launcher.get_settings()['romcollection'])
                                                                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                                   KeyError: 'romcollection'

It appears to be complaining about a romcollection although I'm editing a source.  So maybe a bug?  But honestly, I'm not sure I'm doing this correctly.

@chrisism - if you're around, any pointers for what I'm doing wrong?

Check the previous messages for a more straightforward way of adding a single executable. Your way is for the case that you have a directory full of .sh files (or for example .lnk files on windows). The current RC version does have some fixes that might help out with this, including the one shown in the error log.
If you still encounter issues please share more logs (paste.kodi.tv).

[chrisism]

Many thanks for continuing and expanding the development of the fantastic AEL add-ons.

However, I have a problem with the local scraping of my ROMs.

Starting point:

• Rapsberry Pi 3B with LibreElec 12
  
• Advanced Kodi Launcher 1.5.1
  
• Advanced Kodi Launcher: Default Plugins 1.2.0
  
• some Sega Mega Drive roms in /storage/ROMs/MegaDrive
  • the ROMs in this Folder are *.gen files and additionaly there are *.nfo files previously created on another system with AEL
    
• Game Assets previously created on another system with AEL in /storage/AKL/Game-Assets/MegaDrive
  

To be able to play the ROMs via AKL I have done the following so far:

• Adding a source for the MegaDrive ROMs
  
• Creating Retroplayer as a launcher
  
• I have set the settings for scraping to Local Only, as the assets and NFO files are already available.
  

If I then scan the source for ROMs, the games are found.
However, I get an error when I try to scrape the games.

I proceeded as follows:

• "Sources" -> "Sega Mega Drive" -> Context Menu -> "Edit Source" -> "Manage ROMs..." -> "Scrape ROMs" -> "Local files" -> "Scrape"
  

I also tried:

• "Sources" -> "Sega Mega Drive" -> Context Menu -> "Edit Source" -> "Import ROMs (files/metadata) -> "From NFO files"
  

Here you can find the debug log about the procedure.

What am I doing wrong here and how can I scrape my ROMs?

This should work. Unfortunately the logs are not available anymore. Do you have new ones?

[chrisism]

Hi!

Wanted to report a bug - actually two bugs!

1) I've got an existing collection of Genesis Roms & Artwork scraped using AEL, which I'm bringing over to my new Kodi box. When I add a new Gensis source & provide the ROM path and Assets path then tell it to scan for ROMS, it doesn't find any of my existing artwork. If I go into individual titles it looks like it should be using the correct paths. If I go and maually set some artwork (e.g. fanart) then it shows up

2) As a result of the above, I've tried doing a scrape and specifying local sources only. I get exceptons in my logs - I've attached a log file for your reference - https://paste.kodi.tv/idikuqosok.kodi

FWIW: I'm using Debian Trixie with the Kodi from the official Debian Repos. 

NB: Same behaviour occurs for my SNES roms too

Update the script.module.akl to the latest version. That should fix this particular issue. Both AKL and script.akl.defaults have a dependency on that module.

[chrisism]

UPDATE: Release 1.5.2

Version 1.5.2 of AKL has been released and is now available on the stable repository.

Changelog:
- Fixes for standalone sources. Now easier to simply add a new standalone application through 'add source'.
- Applied several fixes concerning scraping and scanning.
- Now you can set asset directories directly on ROMs themselves (mainly needed for standalone sources)

For release 1.6 I will be focussing on merging the default scanner/launcher addon into the main addon. This will give you a more straightforward, plug-and-play solution when starting with AKL.

[chrisism]

Chrisism,

One more issue I’m encountering is with the displaying of artwork, an issue that wasn’t present in version 1.4 of AKL. I don’t believe this is a problem with the skin I am using (Mimic), because in addition to it working fine with AKL 1.4, it also works with artwork for my movies library.

The view after entering the ROM collection shows a list of the ROMs with boxfront art displayed next to each one. This boxfront appears when I change the default artwork for Poster to boxfront (from flyer). That part is all good. However, when this is done the artwork doesn’t appear in the top right. The artwork in this location should display fanart if it exists for the ROM, or the poster (in my case boxfront) if not. But it is no longer working with AKL 1.5.1. See picture below.

https://ibb.co/rwpkXC6

However, for my movie library it is working perfectly. Fanart is displayed for Charlotte’s Web. Poster for The Charmkins, as there is no fanart for The Charmkins. See pictures below.

https://ibb.co/41fwc8b

https://ibb.co/Wtyrx0G

Hi downloaded the latest Mimic-LR skin from the kodi repo to give it a try. I normally use Artic Zephyr reloaded. But as far as I can see it works. What you can try is executing the 'Rebuild views' command from the context menu in the particular view. That will rebuild all the cached data to create that particular list and might fill in some missing artwork references. 
Check the 'Edit assets/artwork' option for the particular game to verify if the actual artwork is there.

I just updated the Artic Zephyr reloaded customized version in my beta repository, making version 3.0.4-RC available. This is a customized version of the skin Artic Zephyr Reloaded with special support for AKL and assets.