[chrisism]

Hi. I've done a fork of AL called Advanced Emulator Launcher. More or less the same UI but lots of changes on the guts.
....
[*]Plugin developed and tested in Kodibuntu: it should work in Windows/OSX/Android, but expect bugs due to lack of testing.
[/list].

Nice job! Actually, both of you.
I will give it a try on my android box. Although first I am trying out the new SexyCirrus views which look nice again.

I already wanted to check out the AL script for this problem, maybe changing the XML source for a SQLite db or MySQ. Maybe that would speed it up. But now you already done the job. Now I can just focus on the Cirrus skin itself, trying to get a more flexible home menu.
One thing is that I see a lot of people coming up with new forks for AL. Everybody has some good improvements. It would be nice if those who work on a fork come together for a new version of AL and we combine all these good ideas. Or even better, I think the whole AL approach with launchers should be in the Kodi core. It will make Kodi so much more extendable.
Wishfull thinking maybe.

[Wintermute0110]

Rufoo,

I tested yesterday your views with AEL. Seems everything works OK and by the way the new views are really impressive.

I have one comment: instead of having several options for the thumb (wide, square, poster, etc.), is it possible for the thumb as wide as possible in the allowed space and then keep the height according to the aspect ratio? When you have a console launcher, for example, SNES or MegaDrive, all thumbs (typically boxfronts) have the same aspect ratio, so you choose what looks best among the options (in the example, wide for SNES, poster for MegaDrive). However, for the Favourites launcher or MAME launchers, typically thumbs will have a different aspect ratio, and forcing all images to be square is poster does not look good (I usually use title screenshot for MAME thumb, and the aspect ration varies greatly depending if the game is horizontal or vertical).

Same philosophy can be applied to fanarts: most ROMs do not have fanarts. Only "famous" games on each system have them. For this reason, in both MAME and console ROMs I like to use in-game screenshots as fanart, and have proper fanart when available. Can be possible to have an option to keep the aspect ratio of fanarts as well?

[Wintermute0110]

Nice job! Actually, both of you.
I will give it a try on my android box. Although first I am trying out the new SexyCirrus views which look nice again.

Thanks. It would be very good to have some feedback from an Android user

I already wanted to check out the AL script for this problem, maybe changing the XML source for a SQLite db or MySQ. Maybe that would speed it up. But now you already done the job. Now I can just focus on the Cirrus skin itself, trying to get a more flexible home menu.

I use SQLite for another project and my experience is that SQLite is much slower compared with XML. MySQL is even worse. Also, Kodi plugins are not "normal" applications where you can keep variables in memory between calls. The fastest approach is to have "precompiled" the things you want to display ala NoSQL. A list of approaches from slower to faster would be:

MySQL > SQLite > XML > JSON > marshalling

Apart from the speed, each approach has advantages or disadvantages. For a Kodi plugin, I would always choose XML or JSON.

If you like the technicalities, AL has several other issues that affected performance... For example, every time launchers.xml is read from disk, some blanks are cleared, then saved to disk, and finally read from disk again! When I saw this on the code I didn't believe it. Also, in the ROM scanner after every new ROM is processed launchers.xml was saved, instead of saving it once at the end. This means that scanning a launcher of 1000 ROMs, launchers.xml is read 2000 times and written 1000 times! If you have many ROMs and an SDD disk that is a killer! I believe Angelscry did all this (reading, removing blanks, writing, reading again) in order to solve the race condition that corrupted launchers.xml from time to time, but it the end he got things worse.

One thing is that I see a lot of people coming up with new forks for AL. Everybody has some good improvements. It would be nice if those who work on a fork come together for a new version of AL and we combine all these good ideas. Or even better, I think the whole AL approach with launchers should be in the Kodi core. It will make Kodi so much more extendable.
Wishfull thinking maybe.

Please tell me about other forks! I will have a look and incorporate useful stuff into AEL!

Regarding ROM management in the core: ROMs are totally different from music and/or other media, in the sense that there are many ways or organising them. For systems, you have No-Intro, Goodtools, TOSEC, Maybe-Intro, etc. Additionally, MAME has its own way or organizing ROMs. Some of them are incompatible with each other, which makes impossible to make a data-model to accommodate all of them. I think still is not decided how ROM management will be done in Retroplayer, once it is finished.

[Rufoo]

Rufoo,

I tested yesterday your views with AEL. Seems everything works OK and by the way the new views are really impressive.

I have one comment: instead of having several options for the thumb (wide, square, poster, etc.), is it possible for the thumb as wide as possible in the allowed space and then keep the height according to the aspect ratio? When you have a console launcher, for example, SNES or MegaDrive, all thumbs (typically boxfronts) have the same aspect ratio, so you choose what looks best among the options (in the example, wide for SNES, poster for MegaDrive). However, for the Favourites launcher or MAME launchers, typically thumbs will have a different aspect ratio, and forcing all images to be square is poster does not look good (I usually use title screenshot for MAME thumb, and the aspect ration varies greatly depending if the game is horizontal or vertical).

Same philosophy can be applied to fanarts: most ROMs do not have fanarts. Only "famous" games on each system have them. For this reason, in both MAME and console ROMs I like to use in-game screenshots as fanart, and have proper fanart when available. Can be possible to have an option to keep the aspect ratio of fanarts as well?

Thanks, mate. Appreciate that. Glad it is behaving itself.

In relation to the thumbs, this has been a thorn in my side for a while. It's a complex problem to tackle because as snooty as it sounds, it almost borders on being a philosophical one about design. By allowing loose aspect on thumbs you can easily bring on sheer ugliness because, for example, the boxes solely for Super Nintendo, while all wide, are likely not exactly the same pixel dimensions, things start getting ugly, then you multiply the inconsitency further with each other system that is getting mixed in, see how the problem grows?

A little part of that does stem simply from how I have my own setup and I guess how I envision things being presented. When things have too many spastic shapes everywhere, to me, it reminds me too much that this is a PC doing a hacky job of trying to be like a console. So where to draw the line? This sort of ties in with your question about fanart image aspects...

Galleria Series views, have loose aspect for the fanart. The aspect stated is simply the governing aspect of the maximum bounds of each image. They were designed for this purpose and mostly to be used in conjunction with the Persistent Backdrop feature, to present old school as best possible using common assets. By the same token, Galleria also has a special function called Box Substitution to allow some mixing but still in a constricted fashion. Read the FAQ on the third post to understand how it works. I should warn you I just realised only the fatbox version is working, I'll up a fix tomorrow for the rest, simple error. Also in the older SexyCirrus there was a series called Versa which will return in the next wave. This is what it looked like in the previous version...



It is sort of like Galleria but not quite. Follows the Poster, Square, Wide, Slim route but the fanart is loose. It is made for the purposes of things like arcade, dos, snes, old school. A better version is forthcoming.

As for freeform fanart in other views, there are still more series coming. Namely Hitomi and Versa.

[Rufoo]

Very Thanks !!! Nice work

You're welcome.

[chrisism]

Please tell me about other forks! I will have a look and incorporate useful stuff into AEL!

Regarding ROM management in the core: ROMs are totally different from music and/or other media, in the sense that there are many ways or organising them. For systems, you have No-Intro, Goodtools, TOSEC, Maybe-Intro, etc. Additionally, MAME has its own way or organizing ROMs. Some of them are incompatible with each other, which makes impossible to make a data-model to accommodate all of them. I think still is not decided how ROM management will be done in Retroplayer, once it is finished.

Well I think I saw rufoo talking about a version himself on another thread (extended launcher??). The AL thread has several attempts in the past. Most are D.O.A.
Yours seems the most promising now and you tackled the most important problem, speed. I have seen people fixing the scrapers etc but yeah the code is such a mess. I only fixed escaping quotes in the arguments myself, didn't bother with the rest. Looking forward to try your version.

What I meant with the AL in the core is not just about the roms, but the whole concept of adding an argument based source in kodi. You can also use it for adding comics for example. So adding the concept of launchers to kodi, customizable by the user, would bring a whole new dimension to kodi and probably users will come up with more new ideas of adding certain media.

Sure the details of such a source items would be a challenge because its dynamic, but what is it you actually need to show? Basically title, description, genre, publisher, date and images.
The dat files, tosec no-intro etc are sources for scraping the metadata, so different scrapers for different sources just like with other sources now in kodi.
But we can share a whole topic on this, this thread is for sexycirus, maybe start your own?
Still thanking you for all your effort. I probably going to try it out tomorrow.


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[chrisism]

Actually what somebody had done I think was auto recognizing emulators on your system and give those as options when adding a launcher. I think rom browser already has it and it sure is more user friendly compared to entering the commands yourself.

[Rufoo]

Actually what somebody had done I think was auto recognizing emulators on your system and give those as options when adding a launcher. I think rom browser already has it and it sure is more user friendly compared to entering the commands yourself.

All of those things were part of a plan for Expanded Launcher. T'was me who talked about it, have it so when the appropriate .am or .su is tagged it brings up another menu with the common emulators, populates the arguments based upon chosen emulator. Same with scrapers, me again. Scrapers were relatively easy to mess around with. Introducing new features was a nightmare navigating a functional but extremely fragile codebase. Life dictated I could really only commit to one project so that was SexyCirrus.

[Wintermute0110]

...

Sure the details of such a source items would be a challenge because its dynamic, but what is it you actually need to show? Basically title, description, genre, publisher, date and images.
The dat files, tosec no-intro etc are sources for scraping the metadata, so different scrapers for different sources just like with other sources now in kodi.
But we can share a whole topic on this, this thread is for sexycirus, maybe start your own?
Still thanking you for all your effort. I probably going to try it out tomorrow.

You are welcomed.

Indeed such a discussion warrants its own thread. I think there has been some talking about the matter in the Retroplayer subforum. Just a small comment: you forget an important field that has a lot of implications for scrapping: the "system". System can be SNES, MegaDrive, etc. Just making an "official" list causes controversy. Also, for arcade games should we choose MAME or Arcade? MAME covers 99.9% of Arcade, but there is also Final Burn, Raine, etc...

Yes, I apologise to Rufoo for flooding the SexyCirrus thread with offtopics. My idea was to post AEL first here, a "discrete" place full of experienced users who do not need documentation (cos they already know how to use AL/RCB) to give a try. Once AEL is more or less polished (perfect software does not exist) I will create a new thread in the Program Plugins subforum for the masses. Also, some screenshots showcasing Advanced Emulator Launcher with SexyCirrus definitely will make a difference!

[Rufoo]

Yes, I apologise to Rufoo for flooding the SexyCirrus thread with offtopics. My idea was to post AEL first here, a "discrete" place full of experienced users who do not need documentation (cos they already know how to use AL/RCB) to give a try. Once AEL is more or less polished (perfect software does not exist) I will create a new thread in the Program Plugins subforum for the masses. Also, some screenshots showcasing Advanced Emulator Launcher with SexyCirrus definitely will make a difference!

Haha! No offense taken, mate. If anything, I'm flattered you chose SexyCirrus as the place to first share it. Users will no doubt be thankful.

And yes, I need to put some glamour shots up. Might do that in the next day.

[Wintermute0110]

Yes, I apologise to Rufoo for flooding the SexyCirrus thread with offtopics. My idea was to post AEL first here, a "discrete" place full of experienced users who do not need documentation (cos they already know how to use AL/RCB) to give a try. Once AEL is more or less polished (perfect software does not exist) I will create a new thread in the Program Plugins subforum for the masses. Also, some screenshots showcasing Advanced Emulator Launcher with SexyCirrus definitely will make a difference!

Haha! No offense taken, mate. If anything, I'm flattered you chose SexyCirrus as the place to first share it. Users will no doubt be thankful.

And yes, I need to put some glamour shots up. Might do that in the next day.

Thanks Rufoo

By the way, forgot to say before... I need help. I'm good coder but bad artist... I need the following:

1) Thumb and 720p fanart for the plugin.

2) Thumb and 720p fanart for the {Favourites} special launcher.

3) I am thinking on making some virtual categories called {Browse by Year}, {Browse by Genre} and {Browse by Studio}. {Browse by System} does no make sense because Launchers already separate by system. I got the idea reading this thread, was mentioned by somebody. Because there is no global searches in AEL (only individual Launchers can be searched) I would like to have this to compensate. I am thinking about how to implement them in a fast way... maybe with a hashed database stored in XML. I would need thumbs/fanarts for those as well.

If a reader has some Gimp/Inkscape/whatever skills and is kind enough to help that would be appreciated!

[Rufoo]

Lots of glamour shots added to the first and second post of the thread!

Have a looksie and see what the project is all about!

[Leocmp]

Rufoo, thanks for amzing work !!! one question, Extra Fanart is working in Wave One Plus ?

[Leocmp]

I managed to make it work , thank you !!! I had to configure the directories correctly and rename the file to fanart2

[Rufoo]

I managed to make it work , thank you !!! I had to configure the directories correctly and rename the file to fanart2

Awesome, mate. Enjoy! A new build is going up this evening which fixes all secondary fanart / trailer / multi-image stuff tonight. It isn't working on all views in the current build but I fixed 'em last night when I was doing glamour shots.