[Terin]

Gamester posted this in the Feature forum, but there's a site called http://www.allgame.com/ that contains pretty much everything we want/need.

http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=5:26052~T1

(Believe this link is for Halo 2).

There are some scrapers that were developed in that topic, I believe -- just look for a similar topic in that forum. Someone had written a few -- would be pretty easy to modify those to hit different consoles, I imagine. There was also a suggestion for GameFaqs to be scraped (also not a bad idea).

[Terin]

As a game frontend user i would like to add some information.

almost every game has the following graphics available in one way or another:
-Scan of the retail box/photo of the cabinet
-Scan of the Manual
-Scan of the media (cart,cd,...)
-Scan of the PCB (Inside carts or arcade cabinets)

There are some more but these can often be used inside the emulator and do not need to be visable in a frontend

Besides the scans there are also screenshots available:
-Title screen
-Random action shot

Lastly there is written information:
-Creator
-Publisher
-Year
-Device Brand (like nintendo)
-Device Model (like the super nintendo entertainment system)
-Game Name
-Number of players
-Controller Type
-Description of the game
-and so forth...

-------------

I think for XBMC we should limit this to:
ART:
-FanART backdrop(for both individual games and individual systems)
-Retail box artwork/Arcade cabinet artwork(flyers?)
-Random action screenshot
TEXT:
-Name
-Creator/Publisher
-Genre
-Description of the game
-Number of players
-Type of controller
-Type of device
DATABASE:
Make the games searchable by:
-Genre
-Name
-Number of players
-Creator
-Publisher
-Type of device
-Year.

Most importantly i would like to be able to list all the games in one long list regardless of their system(type of device)

I think this is pretty good -- my only disagreement would be the "Type of Controller." I'm not sure that such a thing is always published (even though Duck Hunt should obviously be controlled using a gun). However, everything else is good -- rename the "Type of Device" to "Console" might be better -- if it's an Arcade Cabinet, just call it Arcade. (makes sense, right?)

I also agree with your view of the games. I'd really like to see something similar to how the movies are done, though, to be honest. Where it shows a brief description, possible fanart background, other key data, and the icons for the game (or I suppose title screen/box-art).

I would definitely agree with a possible action shot of the game -- that'd be REALLY sweet. One feature I love about the PSP is that it shows a little movie of the game when you hover over the icon of the game. It's awesome hovering over Maverick Hunter X (Megaman X remake) and seeing a little run-through of X running through a few different stages. Cool -- but I don't think this is feasible for XBMC in the fact that those videos are going to be hard to find, and that the video itself will probably be *significantly* larger than the ROM!

Would also be very awesome to search for a game based on alphabetical ordering (i.e. being able to move to section "T" for Terranigma).

For now, given the idea, it may be possible to use the XBMC Video Library view to show the information.

[Awen]

Ticket and flickr Pics/

This is very raw meat

Features (preliminary):
- Basic Emulator support
- Rom directories scans
- Thumbnails support

This release is only intended to check various points of xbmc internal architecture: to know flaws and strength of this little cool bastard

Basically, it's designed to support and play some mame roms. It's hooked into the Program section, so might be compatible with the Aeon skin (which embeds a potential 'games' section (untested))

Ticket is referenced under 'Windows' patches as 'external execution' looks 'windows only' for the moment ?

And thanks to you guys, i have a lot of things to read: that's pretty cool, and will definitely help me defining the feature list (@project gurus: where should be the best place to nest such, btw ? some wiki ? here ?)

@first sight, next version should be all about :
- Somewhat definitive choices: i tested a lot of things, now it's time to be conclusive (db organization, xml use, db automatic rebuilding, thumbnails generation...)
- GUI howto: i need a lot of dialogs for tools, records, etc. As everything in 'Games' is new and temporary: cant spend time into classic/skinned gui support now, so we need to find a more versatile solution (using 'plugin settings' dialog fe ?)
- External app execution: not utterly portable (@spiff, wiso...: used system.execwait()), and needed to break some stuff to make it work (as window listener was crashing my quad core)... Probably some efforts to put in there.
- Managing contributions, adding some visiblity to this project: external svn, etc.

Now it's time for me to read, answer and digest the plan for next version...

Cordially.

[Nuka1195]

will check it out.

[WiSo]

Yeah I noticed a problem in the window helper but it worked in the release so I didn't look further
The window helper is only needed if you want to keep XBMC running in the background to get it back in the foreground. If you just wait in the main thread we don't need it. But let me know if you know where the bug is
Thanks and good work!
WiSo

Update: BTW you can call CWIN32Util::XBMCShellExecute directly (ifdef and use other functions for Linux/Mac) if you want. No need to call execbuiltin IMHO.

[Gamester17]

And thanks to you guys, i have a lot of things to read: that's pretty cool, and will definitely help me defining the feature list

@project gurus: where should be the best place to nest such, btw ? some wiki ? here ?

I think the wiki would probably be best, a new article similar to this (which by the way might be a good read for you too):
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=New_Video_Scanner_Ideas

[EDIT]: I have created a new placeholder article for you here => http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Games_Library_Ideas

Happy coding!

[FrostBox]

@Awen
Hi, this is a very good idea this project.
I created a plugin "All Game" this fall, maybe you will find ideas.
You can see here with a small video. http://passion-xbmc.org/le-coin-des-util...rt-fanart/
Sorry, the info for my plugin are in French.

NB: The plugin works with XBMC atlantis 8.10 and it's translated into English.

Regards
Frost

[Rand Al Thor]

Wow, that is quite nice looking. Does it actually launch games or is it mainly for game info? Sorry, my French is very poor Either way it is very cool!

Edit: A little Babelfish action shows that it only launches games on xbox. I still really like the way this works.

[Awen]

@FrostBox: Looks like i'm french enough Well, pretty exhaustive work indeed... Definitely, this is one obvious thing from my last readings: the scrapers community has to be counted on. Python integration is now on my feature list.

IMHO, game scrapers should be able to work with a batch perspective, as users may want to retrieve a complete rom set (x*1000) information at once (btw rom physical availability, isnt mandatory). And such scrapers should'nt only deal with WWW files, but probably other file types - like mame's history.dat - as well...
Are the Python enthusiastics comfortable with that ?

Speaking python integration, beyond info scraping, is there anything else scripting could be used to ? (without coding another freevo )

[Awen]

BTW, for those concerned: i'm working with xbmc über people to pimp yesterday's patch up. Which should allow the opening of a specific dev branch concerning games library. And therefore team working.

[rwparris2]

Speaking python integration, beyond info scraping, is there anything else scripting could be used to ? (without coding another freevo )

My first thought is downloading roms

[Awen]

Naughty boy

[Gamester17]

There are of course some (public domain) legal ROMS and some semi (gray-zone) legal ROMS available
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROM_image#Legal_status
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_com...s_freeware
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fa...nd_sequels
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freeware_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Expiration

All copyrights and patents have always had a finite term, though the terms for copyrights and patents differ. When terms expire, the work or invention is released into public domain. In most countries, the term for patents is 20 years. A trademark registration may be renewed and remain in force indefinitely provided the trademark is used, but could otherwise become generic.

[Awen]

Hi folks,

Do you know Scrum (Scrum : the graph picture is quite interesting) ?

The idea is to build a very detailed feature list concerning Games DB: our 'product backlog'. And after that, performing monthly 'sprints' (with volunteers as 'pigs', gamester and you, smart forum users, as scrum 'chickens' ): every months, we decide of what we want (we're able) to develop, aka 'sprint backlog' for 30 days of coding, ended with a product release.

Right now i'm writing the almighty 'Games Library Product Backlog' using wiki: i'd like it the most detailed, please consider throwing all of your ideas at it. Use this forum to synthesize and/or give references

Thank you for your time.

Awen

[Gamester17]

I would once again like to strongly suggest that non-developers still only post (list) their ideas to the threads in the existing feature suggestion forum instead:
http://forum.xbmc.org/tags.php?tag=games+library

That way the developers who will be doing the actual coding can read those forum threads to then 'cherry' pick the best ideas that they like and think that they would like to implement and add those themselves to the wiki article, (instead of the end-users themselves adding their ideas directly to the wiki).

Good idea?