[EMK0]

Do you guys have any idea what RetroPlayer will want the files to be structured like? for example Kodi supports single folder and sub folders for Tv Shows/Movies and each folder can contain all the extra stuff like backdrops,nfo's etc
will RetroPlayer be doing the same?

like system/game/game files
and in there we can have the game/rom, all the artwork,nfo, save states, memory cards, specific config.ini for game etc

this the ideal setup for a NAS so you can go from any Kodi machine and continue your gaming.

will RetroPlayer be adding things like save states,memory cards,configs etc into the database instead?

any ideas before i go and waste a lot of time setting up my games in the wrong way

[ge2301]

Hi garbear,

First of all, good job so far! I mean Kodi ingeneral looks really good with the new default skin compared 1 year before. As a developer of MediaPortal 2 I was going a try to Kodi, because I was interested into the RetroPlayer.
MP2 also includes a new Emulator, that is based on LibRetro as Kodi and plays games of all platforms including Windows "out of the box".

What I miss currently in the Kodi version are the scrapped artworks from a online database (thegamesdb.net) and view styles. Is both not yet implemented or did I miss something? It seems, that games are not treated as other media items. In MP2 you can add ROM's as media soruces and the game description is synchronized with online libraries (poster, descriptions, ratings, backgrounds, ...)
In my developed skins it looks like this at the moment:
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/attach...pg.176444/
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/attach...pg.176451/
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/attach...pg.176754/

Perhaps the development branch of "Emulators for MP2" can give some inspiration in case the online scrapping is missing so far.
https://github.com/brownard/MediaPortal-.../Emulators

I'm using your latest build.

btw. I might have interest to develop skins for Kodi. Currently I'm skinning a WMC clone for MP2, would be also something nice for Kodi.
But before I decide I need to test the TV part of Kodi, this was the biggest headache in the past and really not good.

[Fail$tyle420]

Do you guys have any idea what RetroPlayer will want the files to be structured like? for example Kodi supports single folder and sub folders for Tv Shows/Movies and each folder can contain all the extra stuff like backdrops,nfo's etc
will RetroPlayer be doing the same?

like system/game/game files
and in there we can have the game/rom, all the artwork,nfo, save states, memory cards, specific config.ini for game etc

this the ideal setup for a NAS so you can go from any Kodi machine and continue your gaming.

will RetroPlayer be adding things like save states,memory cards,configs etc into the database instead?

any ideas before i go and waste a lot of time setting up my games in the wrong way

+1 I need something to distract me from my skin mod!!!

[zag]

I'd imagine something like this

c:\games\snes\gamename\gamename.ext
c:\games\snes\gamename\gamename.nfo
c:\games\snes\gamename\gamename.sav

That would allow scrapers to look up under the folder or filename like movies ect.

It also allows you to store local metadata too like folder.jpg and cdart.png

Garbear has stated that the games "library" has been looked at already and some ideas and testing was done, but lets get the file browser based method merged first. One step at a time and all that

[ge2301]

Maybe there are already several ideas discussed, I didn't look through all forum.
But as a first step to use local metadata looks also fine to me. To make Kodi recognize the game type (NES, PS, Megadrive, ...) the folder structure is a possibility, but better would be that the user needs to assign groups to the library when importing sources. In the end it results in the same, every game type needs another folder.

In MP2 it's really easily solved: http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/2_MEDIA.../Emulators

Well, I posted the source code of MP2 "Emulators" plugin some posts above. Perhaps this can help somehow or give ideas.
And once again, maybe everything is already planned and it's just a matter of time, then forget my posts :-)
Would be good, if garbear can shortly share the current status. I don't know how to tag people here, can you?

[ge2301]

Because there is no reply I decided to deinstall Kodi and went back to MediaPortal 2, where the emulators plugin is already working 100%.

[EGOvoruhk]

Because there is no reply I decided to deinstall Kodi and went back to MediaPortal 2, where the emulators plugin is already working 100%.

MediaPortal is just a simple front end launching external emulators, apples to oranges

[ge2301]

Because there is no reply I decided to deinstall Kodi and went back to MediaPortal 2, where the emulators plugin is already working 100%.

MediaPortal is just a simple front end launching external emulators, apples to oranges

but It works perfectly and that counts! Fanart handling etc. I was asking for here (no reply) is internal as I coded the frontend.

[Montellese]

but It works perfectly and that counts! Fanart handling etc. I was asking for here (no reply) is internal as I coded the frontend.

The primary goal is to get the emulators working inside Kodi with Kodi's input support etc. Making it look fancy is of secondary concern right now because the best looks aren't worth anything if you then try to play a game and it doesn't work.

[ge2301]

but It works perfectly and that counts! Fanart handling etc. I was asking for here (no reply) is internal as I coded the frontend.

The primary goal is to get the emulators working inside Kodi with Kodi's input support etc. Making it look fancy is of secondary concern right now because the best looks aren't worth anything if you then try to play a game and it doesn't work.

Thanks, thats at least a statement

[garbear]

MediaPortal is just a simple front end launching external emulators, apples to oranges

but It works perfectly and that counts! Fanart handling etc. I was asking for here (no reply) is internal as I coded the frontend.

Hi ge2301,

sorry for the late reply, sometimes I miss side threads, the forum only notifies me of threads I've already replied to. ATM, kodi lacks any sort of eye candy or metadata for games, so the folder structure is completely undecided. This omission is purposeful. RetroPlayer is such an immense addition to Kodi, I'm at my programmer's limit to manage the patch, so I need to keep it as focused on gameplay as possible. My target is to merge RetroPlayer in v18. Once RetroPlayer is in core and off my hands, I'll spearhead work on the game library. By the time that drops, I'm sure Kodi will have a game library to rival the video library, so fanart, metadata, savestate thumbs, and possibly even gameplay videos.

Fanart and metadata is nice, but the key challenge is how to acquire this data. How does MediaPortal handle this? Do users have to manually add fanart and metadata, or does it use game scrapers? Do scrapers pull artwork from online databases? How does it handle misnamed ROMs?

We target embedded devices, so sometimes the user doesn't have easy access to the filesystem. Also, we're focused on controlling Kodi with a remote or game controller, so filesystem manipulation is usually out of the question. Therefore, I plan to hide the entire filesystem implementation from the user. Some sort of folder structure may exist (possibly borrowed from MediaPortal) so that users can add artwork by hand, but this will only be an afterthought, a side implementation of a general storage abstraction.

Instead, everything will be automated. Soon, Kodi will have support for Python scrapers. They will interface with our generic metadata extraction engine that is able to infer everything about games. It relies on all observable information for accurate game matching, not just using the filename but metadata and unique IDs extracted from ROM data using PyRomInfo. These components are generic python libraries, so they're not exclusive to Kodi. Do you think MediaPortal could make use of them?

[ge2301]

Hi garbear,

Before adding your games you need to add some emulators (this is true even for PC Games). The necessary cores are automatically downloaded accordingly.

MediaPortal 2 has already a game library, when connecting shares you can decide whether the contained items are of the type audio, image, series, movie or game.
But there is also an optional subtype that can be selected (PC, NES, PS2, ...) or you select "GoodMerge" and Emulators tries to detect it automatically. The subtypes are connected to the available emulators.
E.g. you can only add a game to the category NES, if you added the NES emulator before.

Metadata and Fanarts are scrapped automatically https://github.com/brownard/Emulators/tr...s/Scrapers
This is done by the subtype and game name and data some from www.thegamedb.net
Optionally you can add the ID in brackets into the ROM name (ggXXXXX) to force 100% matching.

all details are here: http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/2_MEDIA.../Emulators