(2019-04-22, 12:29)Linden Ryuujin Wrote: I can see you're just in a different world of ROMs in terms of numbers. I like to be in full control and choose at the art work individually - part of adding a ROM for me is downloading or making the art and getting it all in place. I think there would be a place for both library types - I can understand though that you are going to prioritise the format the works for you, which is why I thought I might have a play around with something different. However my time is very limited at the moment so I doubt anything would surface any time soon anyway.
If you have read carefully the links I put, you know I believe there are two main types of retrogamers: A) the ones that have small, curated collections of ROMs, B) the collector, who have complete No-Intro and MAME collections. When I design a new feature for the Advanced Launchers, I always try to accommodate both A and B types of retrogamers. Needles to say, this is impossible because it is impossible to keep everyone happy.
When you have a big collection it is impossible to have all the artwork. For example, most games do not have Fanart and making a Fanart for every game will take a lifetime. Also, games follow strictly the
Sturgeon's Law and honestly most games do not deserve having a Fanart
To have curated collections and at the same time have a big collection, I created the AEL Favourites and the ROM Collections, where you can select and classify the ROMs you love most. Note that the artwork in a ROM Collection follows your naming scheme,
ROM_name_[Boxfront|Fanart|etc]_ROMid.png
but I have to include a unique identifier to avoid filename collisions when two ROMs have the same name on different platforms (and this case happens very frequently, specially for famous games like Mario and Sonic).
I guess the main reason to have ROMs and artwork together is that you can get the Windows or Linux shell and immediately see the artwork you have. In AEL, keeping the artwork in separated directories you can also do the same! For example, using a Matrix view like this, you can instantly review all the assets you have in your collection:
Alternatively, AML can generate a composite image for each ROM with all the artwork for a game, and then you can view later the generated images with an external viewer. This feature is currently used in AML to generate Fanarts for the games missing it (in the case of MAME, 99.9% of games do not have Fanart) but since the technology to generate composite images is there we can use it for other things than generating Fanarts. Note that the generation of composite images is controlled with an XML file using a syntax very similar to what Kodi uses for the skins, so you can easily customize the composite images to your linking:
So, if you elaborate about why do you think it's better to have all artwork together with different suffixes (ROMname_fanart.png, ROMname_boxfront.png, etc.) maybe we can come with a compromise solution that can make you and B users happy having the artwork separated in different directories.
Finally, if you have nice custom artwork, please share it! I can add it to the
AEL Asset Library. Note that I am in the process of creating a proper
ROM Collections subdirectory in the library, for the games people love most, but I am still thinking about what's the best method to store the assets of the ROM Collections. Free time is limited for everyone!