[Rufoo]

Rufoo,

I understand you're super busy trying to get wave 2 out and such.

But if you had time. any chance you could take a screenshot of your file structure? for advance launcher. As in the fanart, the logos, the boxart, the banners. i have a large collection of images (due to my hyperspin set up) but im trying to move away from hyperspin and use advanced launcher. and in time rocket launcher/ hyperlauncher(kodi) as well.

I just need a helpful push in the right direction on how to rename/organize the files.
Thanks

Sure, mate. No problem.

There's not much to it. The way that works best for my needs is I have a main folder called 'KODIBOX'. Inside that folder is subfolders named after their respective material, so, BANNERS, FANART, THUMBS, TRAILERS, and EXTRA (for Extra-Fanart). Inside each of those subfolders is another set of subfolders by system name (ie: NES, SNES, DC, PC, etc...) with the material of that type for that system.

EG: X:\KODIBOX\FANART\SNES\whatevergamename.jpg.

The only exception is EXTRA for the Extra-Fanart stuff. EXTRA contains subfolders for the system then subfolders in that for the game name. This is because what extra fanart is used is entirely up to the skin and isn't defined by Advanced Launcher. Advanced Launcher just defined the path to the extra fanart for that title.

EG: X:\KODIBOX\EXTRA\SNES\Super Mario World\sprite.gif.

Is this what you mean?

Hope this helps.

Also, Hyper Launcher support is planned for the project but this won't happen until the last release of Wave Three. Also Advanced Launcher doesn't natively support logos in the same way as something like Movies or TV Shows does. Logos would have to be added as an Extra-Fanart (and the view of the skin would have to call upon them by having a specific filename like logo.png) or could be assigned as thumbs, but the view would have to be one that displays thumbs without borders for this to be effective.

[rdyott]

but the view would have to be one that displays thumbs without borders for this to be effective

Do you have any plans to add the option to turn off borders for the thumb displays in the views?
I personally do not like having the border around my thumbs (boxart)
Was just wondering was all.

EG: X:\KODIBOX\EXTRA\SNES\Super Mario World\sprite.gif

what image would be the sprite? never had that before. that ive noticed.

Do you have any plans to have any of the skins call on extra fanart (logos?) (in addition to using boxart/fanart/trailer?
as in have a skin that has boxart thumb, fanart background, trailer window, and logo near the "plot" info
it appears it will be in wave 2.. from what the red'd out in the skin tells me. lol sry


Sorry for being so insane.. but this project has me very very excited. ive been using hyperspin in my HTPC for a while now, and been using advanced launcher to just launch into hyperspin. i use a super customized horizontal hyperspin set up, but its just such a pain in the arse to deal with. i much rather have everything naively run via kodi

[Rufoo]

but the view would have to be one that displays thumbs without borders for this to be effective

Do you have any plans to add the option to turn off borders for the thumb displays in the views?
I personally do not like having the border around my thumbs (boxart)
Was just wondering was all.

I could look into adding borderless at some stage if desired. But that'd be further down on the to-do list. Would you want it so borderless thumbs are just presented as-is, so with sharp edges and in a rigid shape or would you want it so each one has slightly rounded corners?

Do you have any plans to have any of the skins call on extra fanart (logos?) (in addition to using boxart/fanart/trailer?
as in have a skin that has boxart thumb, fanart background, trailer window, and logo near the "plot" info it appears it will be in wave 2.. from what the redded out in the skin tells me. lol sry

Yeah, most of the views employ extra-fanart one way or another. Most of the views in Wave Two use it quite creatively, especially for purposes of mixing in NTSC-J boxes with normal PAL / or NTSC US ones. Some logo options will be allowed depending on the view. I'm probably going to have to revise the flyout menu again as it will become overcrowded with options.

EG: X:\KODIBOX\EXTRA\SNES\Super Mario World\sprite.gif

what image would be the sprite? never had that before. that ive noticed.Sorry for being so insane.. but this project has me very very excited. ive been using hyperspin in my HTPC for a while now, and been using advanced launcher to just launch into hyperspin. i use a super customized horizontal hyperspin set up, but its just such a pain in the arse to deal with. i much rather have everything naively run via kodi

Haha! All good. Happy it makes others happy.

The file 'sprite.gif' is an extra-fanart allowed in certain SexyCirrus views. It's mostly for a classic gaming section like NES, SNES, ARCADE, etc... When designing series for old style games, like the Versa Series, I try to think of commonly available assets for older games and one of them are animated gifs of sprites from various titles. So on some views, if the title has an Extra-Fanart folder / path defined, and in that Extra-Fanart folder there is a an animated gif with the name sprite.gif it will show up. It serves no purpose than just visual fluff. Just so it looks pretty so when someone hovers over Super Mario World, something like a little animated gif of marios running sprite from the game appears, or if you hover over Street Fighter 2, you have ryu's win animation, or whatever. You get the idea.

[rdyott]

.... or would you want it so each one has slightly rounded corners?

YES! lol Sorry i just feel the bold 5px or whatever thickness border takes away from the boxart.

-------

Basically in short: i currently use "advanced slim x video" for my movies/tv shows. id like to have matching views when it came to my games library (within reason.. as in steam games would obviously not share that view due to the way the banners are)

Potato quality.. its on my kodi test tablet @ work:

See: fanart background
Fanart in window (aka trailer)
thumbnail boxart
plot
logo
win win win

[rdyott]

its me again...

What file format does the game trailers need to be? mine are mp4. and are named what the rom/image/game is "Battletoads (USA).mp4" for example.
Is there a setting in CE for turning ON/OFF trailers i might have missed?
Thanks

[Rufoo]

its me again...

What file format does the game trailers need to be? mine are mp4. and are named what the rom/image/game is "Battletoads (USA).mp4" for example.
Is there a setting in CE for turning ON/OFF trailers i might have missed?
Thanks

Not quite sure what you mean by this one, bud.

Trailers can have whatever name you want, it doesn't need to be the same as the rom and/or game because AL doesn't scrape trailer data that way. In fact, it doesn't scrape data for it at all. You just assign a file per title through Edit Item > Advanced Settings > Change Trailer File. Apologies if you already know all this already.

Even with a trailer assigned AL doesn't do anything with the file itself. SexyCirrus views can play trailers automatically. Just activate 'Use Trailers' from the flyout and choose if you want trailers to be in the fanart window or the background. With 'Use Trailers' activated in a SexyCirrus view, that view will always automatically play the trailer after 2 seconds of hanging on the current item. Format can only be stuff that is common mp4, mkv, wmv, etc...

[rdyott]

.......... You just assign a file per title through Edit Item > Advanced Settings > Change Trailer File. Apologies if you already know all this already.

I did not indeed know that fun fact..
As always thank you for your infinite wisdom!

[Zpectre87]

Also, Hyper Launcher support is planned for the project but this won't happen until the last release of Wave Three. Also Advanced Launcher doesn't natively support logos in the same way as something like Movies or TV Shows does. Logos would have to be added as an Extra-Fanart (and the view of the skin would have to call upon them by having a specific filename like logo.png) or could be assigned as thumbs, but the view would have to be one that displays thumbs without borders for this to be effective.

I think you should still support both because AL can be useful for certain things HyperLauncher can't do, so...

Anyway, I think I just found my skin. I'll test it ASAP. Thanks a lot for working on it!

[Rufoo]

Also, Hyper Launcher support is planned for the project but this won't happen until the last release of Wave Three. Also Advanced Launcher doesn't natively support logos in the same way as something like Movies or TV Shows does. Logos would have to be added as an Extra-Fanart (and the view of the skin would have to call upon them by having a specific filename like logo.png) or could be assigned as thumbs, but the view would have to be one that displays thumbs without borders for this to be effective.

I think you should still support both because AL can be useful for certain things HyperLauncher can't do, so...

Anyway, I think I just found my skin. I'll test it ASAP. Thanks a lot for working on it!

AL support will always be there, it's what the project was founded on.

Hyper Launcher support is just to sweeten the deal.

[Turnspit]

Cheers

Running your mod with the latest kodi and cirrus versions - while brighten background works, brighten thumbs does nothing...

[Zpectre87]

There's not much to it. The way that works best for my needs is I have a main folder called 'KODIBOX'. Inside that folder is subfolders named after their respective material, so, BANNERS, FANART, THUMBS, TRAILERS, and EXTRA (for Extra-Fanart). Inside each of those subfolders is another set of subfolders by system name (ie: NES, SNES, DC, PC, etc...) with the material of that type for that system.

Are these folder names mandatory?

Also, I've got several local images from HyperSpin setup, which name do they need to be? AL imports images from TGDB as gamename_thumb.ext. Is jpg mandatory?

[Rufoo]

Cheers

Running your mod with the latest kodi and cirrus versions - while brighten background works, brighten thumbs does nothing...

Enjoy, mate. Brighten Thumbs does work from where I am, the trouble is, due to the dimming in the menu it looks like nothing happens. They are actually brighter but I suppose the perceptual difference isn't really noticable, I'll adjust them all to full brightness for the next update.

Are these folder names mandatory?

No, the folders can be setup / named in whatever fashion you like. This was just an example of how I have my folder structure is all. Your folder layout and naming conventions have no bearing on the functionality of AL.

Also, I've got several local images from HyperSpin setup, which name do they need to be? AL imports images from TGDB as gamename_thumb.ext. Is jpg mandatory?

JPG is not the only supported format, PNG also is, and PNG takes priority over JPG in ALs internal logic, you just don't encounter PNG files all that regularly on TheGamesDB. When you import a thumb from a scraper, it does add _thumb after the filename but before the extension.

If I recall correctly, and I could be wrong, but I think if you have AL set to scrape locally for images (from a folder). The thumbs need be named gamename_thumb.xxx (xxx being image format) if it is a stanalone launcher, but just gamename.xxx if it is a files launcher.

[Zpectre87]

No, the folders can be setup / named in whatever fashion you like. This was just an example of how I have my folder structure is all. Your folder layout and naming conventions have no bearing on the functionality of AL.

JPG is not the only supported format, PNG also is, and PNG takes priority over JPG in ALs internal logic, you just don't encounter PNG files all that regularly on TheGamesDB. When you import a thumb from a scraper, it does add _thumb after the filename but before the extension.

If I recall correctly, and I could be wrong, but I think if you have AL set to scrape locally for images (from a folder). The thumbs need be named gamename_thumb.xxx (xxx being image format) if it is a stanalone launcher, but just gamename.xxx if it is a files launcher.

Thanks mate, sadly I'm having some trouble importing all my local images. AL is scanning the folders, but after scraping them, no pictures are shown.

The log shows that it's searching for "extrathumb" and "extrafanart" folders, which don't exist in my setup.

EDIT: A settings reset did the trick. Now everything shows. I believe it was an AL setting in the Cirrus Extended submenu which I activated by accident.

[Rufoo]

Thanks mate, sadly I'm having some trouble importing all my local images. AL is scanning the folders, but after scraping them, no pictures are shown.

Few things to try, in order of elimination.

1. After scraping for images. Kill your Kodi session and reopen. This is often something that needs to be done everytime a new launcher is created using local assets. This is a skin agnostic issue.
2. If it is a standalone launcher, make sure all thumbs follow the gamename_thumb convention.
3. If it is a files launcher, make sure all the thumbs just follow the gamename convention.

Always do step 1. Try and report.

The log shows that it's searching for "extrathumb" and "extrafanart" folders, which don't exist in my setup.

I believe that always shows up in the log. From what I understand, I think they are undocumented / incomplete features of AL. The 'extrafanart' it mentions there I think differs from the Extra-Fanart you can specify in Edit Item > Advanced Settings. Might look into it more.

[Zpectre87]

Thanks! I'll do that next time I add a console.

Which kinds of metadata can AL handle? I'm using snaps as fanart for now.