Some Suggestions (1 Viewer)

Kiyo

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February 11, 2015
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Hey Brownard,

I think the My Emulators plugin is great. In fact, the only reason I have MediaPortal installed is to use this plugin (I use XBMC/Kodi for other media). I've tried other game frontends and I personally prefer this to even Hyperspin since it is less of a hassle to set up. Even GameEx, Emulationstation look bland compared to this imo heh.

Just some suggestions of what could make it even better:

1. Scraping of MAME games: I think the plugin currently can't scrape for info on the game based on it's MAME filename. If the system can detect that it's a MAME rom, and then map it to its proper name before scraping, that would be ideal.

2. Goodmerge support is awesome and is something I found lacking in other frontends. The only thing is loading a game for the first time will simply load the first rom in the goodmerged zip until you change it manually. This will cause the game to possibly load a bad dump, hack or Thai translation of the rom when you load a game for the first time. It would be great if we could configure which Good Codes the plugin should default to e.g. Default to "(U)[!]" , if that particular code is not found in the zip then "(E)", else "(J)" etc.. until you manually change it in Mediaportal of course. Also, browsing the list of goodmerged games in Mediaportal interface can be problematic as the list is really narrow. It would help if the list was placed in the center instead of being squeezed to the right.

3. Games with multiple discs: There is a Discs tab in settings where you can add multiple discs for a single game and then you select which disc to load by default via the checkbox. I think it will be even better to be able to select the disc you wish to load from the MediaPortal interface just like how the GoodMerge interface works. If the game scraper could handle auto-importing of multiple discs of the same game, that would be cool too (maybe based on folder structure or disc naming convention).

4. Importing games: Going to the import tab will cause all games to start being scraped immediately when maybe you only want it to scrape for one game. Every time you add a new game to your collection and click the import tab to scrape for its info, you have to wait for the backlog of hundreds of games to be scraped which the plugin previously did not import successfully (those awaiting approval games). It might be better to allow the user to first select the system to be scraped via a dropdown list e.g. go to import tab, select either "Playstation" or "All Systems" if so desired and then click a button "Import" to start the scraping process for only the selected system.

I know it's a pet project of yours rather than a full-time job so take your time and perhaps you may consider these suggestions when/if you ever feel like updating this plugin :)
 

Brownard

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  • Team MediaPortal
  • March 21, 2007
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    Hi,

    Number 2 is already possible but the option is a little buried. Under the 'Profiles' tab -> Goodmerge tags, here you can input a list of tags in order of priority, separated by ';' - remember to also include brackets around each tag.

    1 and 3 (minus the auto detection of multiple discs) are already implemented in my latest source so will be available in the next version.

    I'll think about the best way to implement something along the lines of number 4
     

    Kiyo

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    February 11, 2015
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    Aah.. I must've missed that setting. That's great, thanks!

    I've been cleaning up my games recently and I guess one small thing that can be helpful is if we could drag-drop game artwork directly from the browser or Windows Explorer. As of now, drag-drop only seems to work from the Thumb downloader window. Any missing fanart I'll have to search for an image on Google, save it to the proper location and then rename it manually. Minor thing though but could help speed up things.

    Well, looking forward to the new version whenever that may be, especially for MAME filename support :p
     

    Kiyo

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    February 11, 2015
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    Wow, so the feature was there all along. I didn't even know the context menu exists.

    Noted regarding the drag-drop issue, although I'm on Windows 7 and drag-drop from browser/Windows Explorer doesn't work for me either. I tried running IE as Administrator and drag-drop worked so I guess that can be used as a workaround.
     

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