*UPDATED 18-9-2011* Yet another new version :-) (5 Viewers)

[drealit]

Re: AW: (Supported Release) *UPDATED 30-6-2011* Yet another new version

Hi,
Will be this plugin updated for 1.2.0 RC1?

regards
-Bio

Your answer is not more than 5 posts above yours.

Great to hear the news guys. I haven't been using MyEmulators for the past year or so because it turned into such a headache when I first tried it (I have a large collection). I'm very intrigued and excited to see where you go with the project!

 

[catcher39]

Re: (Supported Release) *UPDATED 30-6-2011* Yet another new version

Any chance you can implement the maws website when searching for mame game information, this is the website MAWS - searchable information about resources in MAME™ .141 when you search for a perticular game it shows load of info about it including year it was made, name of manufacturer, genre, discription and a in game screen shot, some even have small bits of trivia.

 

[craige1]

Re: (Supported Release) *UPDATED 30-6-2011* Yet another new version

Automation is of highest priority for me personally, and I would say easy of use is Brownards. So double win there .
I also work on the my anime 2 plugin, but it's just me. Leo is focusing on JMM (aka My Anime 3). Coming from that plugin tho, and being a frustrated user of the current my emulators import process, I have taken a couple things from that project and brought it here to help make the import process as painless as possible. Two feature ideas taken directly from my anime is the hashing process and the community server. Combined they make the import process as automated as possible, without making the computer "guess" like the current method.

Simply. The plugin will hash each rom. It then sends the hash, and filename to the community server. The server responds with the most used info for that rom. The plugin then uses the info. For the user, it means they simply point the plugin at the folder(s) with the roms, and presses "go". Thats it. The use of the server is optional.

In more detail. The hash method means that the plugin knows exactly what rom it is, and not guess at it using the filename. This provides basically %100 accuracy.

The community server allows for two major advantages.
- Only one person has to "scrape" for the info, or if there is a mistake, 2 people to correct it. Everyone else gets the info automatically without effort.
- All info is human provided.

The way it works is, when the plugin sends the hash and filename(filename for a fall-back) to the server, the server looks for the info for that rom in its DB. It does this by looking for the most used info, for each piece of info, for that game, EG, if one person says the title of a rom is "title a", but two other people say the title for that game is "title b", then the server will say the title for that game is title b, since title b is more used then title a. If title b is wrong, when 2 other people correct the title to "title a", the server will say its "title a". This happens for each piece of info for a game; cover art, genre, etc. It makes the info in the server community driven. After the server has responded, if there is no info or missing info, the plugin will scrape websites for the data itself. After a user has accepted the info, the info gets sent to the server. The server will store that info, or increase the count usage for that info. This sending of data also occurs when manually correcting the records.

The server is essentially done. It receives and sends game info, and correctly sends the most used info for a game for each individual field. The server is open source and included with the source code. It comes with a nice installer I've made, and the plugin connection options to the server are changeable using the config ui. So if I die suddenly or if someone decided they wanted to have their own server to share with only a couple friends; another server can be easily setup.

Later we could use the server for features like "automatically use best emulator config for this game". We already have multiple emulator support for a single console system through the use of emulator profiles, that also allows for individual games to choose which emulator profile it should use. You could also make different profiles that ran the same emulator but with different plugins, for games that like one plugin for an emulator over another.

The config UI has been completely redone. The database system has been completely redone. It looks like we got rid of the "closing emulator will not save state" problem. Fixed that silly image problem with the "v' and "x" buttons, by changing how thumbnails are handled. Remade the installer, with proper upgrade support so it can be used with the mp extension installer. There's other stuff but I'm cant remember all of them off the top of my head .

We're looking at getting game trailer/video(videos that play when hovering over a game to show about the game) support in before it release.

Theres not to much else we want to do with the first release, otherwise we could end up with scope creep. There will be more releases in the future.

 

[catcher39]

Re: (Supported Release) *UPDATED 30-6-2011* Yet another new version

The Hash & Filename way of searching for the game information would be great and like you said 100% exact. The only reason i asked the question was down to the fact that when you're individually search for a game to update in the database the drop down box at the top has every console and 8 bit machine you could pretty much think of but there is no Mame/Arcade option to pick so when you search it comes up with something completely different. Their is one more resource to help with identifying the mame roms and that is the history.dat file that comes with mame itself which is basically a text file that lists every game mame supports, it tells you the name of the rom, the actual name of the arcade game, the year it was released, who it was released by and loads more info. Maybe you or someone else could write a small app that will import the history.dat file and convert it into something the database in MyEmulators could use the only problem is the file doesnt contain the hash of each rom, it was just an idea that i thought might help, if i could program i would help if you needed it but the last time i did any sort of 'C' programming was quiet a while ago, infact windows 95 was still a baby and i was using Borland Turbo C through dos, lol. i think i can just about remember how to print hello world up on the screen and thats about it.

 

[Brownard]

I've now implemented a scraper for MAWS which will be in the next release

 

[catcher39]

Re: (Supported Release) *UPDATED 30-6-2011* Yet another new version

Nice, thanks for implementing this, it will make updating and grabbing info for the mame roms so much easier no longer will i have to look at the rom list and think, now what game was 'tnzs' again. (its The New Zeland Story btw). Cheers Mate

 

[Brownard]

Re: (Supported Release) *UPDATED 30-6-2011* Yet another new version

First post has been updated with a version for 1.2RC1

 

[bhengeveld]

Re: (Supported Release) *UPDATED 30-6-2011* Yet another new version

First off all, thanks for the work on the plugin.

I used to use the plugin mainly for my collection of comics in cbr and cbz format, which worked great. I have them organised on my HD as follows: Comics\*Name*\*number*.cbr

In previous versions it would show them as such (grouped by name of the comic), but now all the comics are displayed as one long list of all the individual comics. With about 3000 of them that isn't working ideally. Is there a way to group them?

 

[Brownard]

There is currently no way to group them - although logical groups is a feature we may add in the future.

You need a dedicated plugin to do what you want really - may be worth asking if anyone's willing to develop one

 

[catcher39]

Re: (Supported Release) *UPDATED 30-6-2011* Yet another new version

Hi i added my emulators their was about 12+all the roms for them as well as my PC Games i have installed which was about 30 and everything was fine the games showed up the emulators worked after i has sorted out their settings no problem, but the next day when i went back to use the plugin it wouldnt load up and neither would the config program, i tracked the problem down to the database, for some reason the entries had become corrupted and the file had grown to over 65megs in size, the only way i could get it to work was to delete the db3 file and start again. I was using version 4.0.1.13 but not the RC version, i'm assuming they are both the same versions with just the headers changed to make it compatible with the mp-rc.