[howto] allgame.com lookup for myProgram-games (1 Viewer)

waeberd

Portal Pro
August 16, 2004
314
1
Fribourg (CH)
Hello folks,

in the next CVS, myPrograms will include an allgame-lookup option.
Here's a short HowTo to get you started. The first stable version of
this HowTo will be copied to our MediaPortal Wiki page.

What it is:
Emulator fans know the problem: you have a bunch of games organized
in rom files. You can include them in MP, but it's hard to get
additional informations and screenshots for the games.
The new allgame-scraper allows looking up additional information
(a bit like the music album lookup for mp3-files).

What you get:
Here's a shot of the asteroids game for the Atari VCS 2600:
asteroids.jpg


Prerequisites & Remarks:
* ROMs must contain the name of each game (GoodTools-naming convention is best suited)
* the scraper won't work with MAME-style named roms!!
* This is an early version! I've tested it, but to play safe, backup your
image directories and backup your ProgramsDatabase.db file if you
spent already too many hours on the myPrograms database.....

Example: Lookin' up game information for the Atari 2600 VCS system:
1) Set up the emulator in Directory-Cache mode and do the import to
get a file list containing all the roms
(if this is not clear: see WIKILINK here )

1a) MAKE SURE the first imagedirectory of the ATARI-application exists and
is preferably empty. The scraper overwrites existing gamepictures with
newly found pictures.

2) Select the ATARI-application, select the "FILES" tab on the right side
=> a list of all the imported atari games appears (if not, recheck 1) )

3) Click the "INTERNET SEARCH..." button on the bottom right
=> the allgame scraper window appears:

allgamescraper.jpg


4) On the "PLATFORM" dropdown, select the "Atari Video Computer System".
This is the platform allgame uses for ATARI 2600. You can skip this step,
but a correctly set platform improves the search results!

5) Check some games on the left listview and click the "1) START SEARCH"
button at the bottom.
=> the scraper starts searching games for each fileitem.

6) WAIT :)

7) Once finished, you can watch the results. Click a file item to get an ordered
list of matches on the right.
You can do several things here:
* manually select the match you'd like to assign to the game
* CLICK THE "2) SELECT BEST MATCH" button at the bottom, which will autoselect
the first match that:
a) has the platform you wish (exactly: "Atari Video Computer System")
and
b) has a relevance score of at least 70% (if you didn't tweak the min. number).
* Double-click a match-item to launch a browser window showing the allgame-details.
=> Fastest option is of course the "2) SELECT BEST MATCH"-button

8) Click the "3) DOWNLOAD & SAVE DETAILS"-button at the bottom
=> the scraper starts to download the favourite match of each checked fileitem and
fills the MediaPortal database.

9) WAIT & click the CLOSE-button.
=> you should now have tons of additional informations and screenshots!

10) ENJOY! (and report bugs in this thread! :D)

Daniel
 

trannel

Portal Member
July 25, 2005
18
0
Hello,

You wrote:

"* the scraper won't work with MAME-style named roms!!"

I have for example a rom diectory named 1944.zip
The roms inside are named: nff.01, nff.02, .....

This seems not to work when using the allgame.com scraper.

Please give an example of a correct named rom zipfile/directory.

And also please if there exist some automated way to change the names, let me know.

Thanks alot :)

/TRannel
 

generator

Portal Pro
July 17, 2006
83
0
Leeuwarden
Home Country
Netherlands Netherlands
Since I installed MediaPortal 0.2.1.0, my game database is empty.

But when I try to refill it, the allgame scraper comes up with 0 results for all my n64 games? Anyone else having this problem?
 

hoodyombis

New Member
November 7, 2006
1
0
Home Country
United States of America United States of America
I am also having trouble getting results for my roms. They are all GoodRom renamed to the proper name but I still get zero results. Even if I set the relevance meter to 0% relevance. Is there any way to manually change the scraper? Or is this feature possibly broken?
 

milanp

Portal Member
April 22, 2004
41
1
Skopje
Home Country
I tried even the 2.0 version and it is not working.
And I am sure that it worked for me in that version a long time ago.
So the code is probably outdated because something has changed on the
allgame website (it is where this plugin retrieves data from)
Now, if someone who knows how to code can fix this ..........
 

northern

Portal Member
November 11, 2006
20
0
Home Country
Sweden Sweden
I have submitted a patch for this yesterday. Don't know when/if it get's to SVN though..
 

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