Images added without scraping.

[leefy]

The scraper is ok, but i’m not the only one out there who doesn’t care for the info that comes along with a long winded 1000 game scrape. I would love to see implemented a folder that contains the images and emulationstation looks for filenames to match the image to the game.Therefore if there is an image that has the exact name of that game it puts it uses that image in emulationstation. There is a lot of available content out there for box art that people would be happier to add via filezilla or whatever they use as opposed to scraping for images which in some cases are very very wrong for the more obscure systems. If then they require ratings or description this could be added via scraping.

I’ve managed a sketchy way round scraping to add images using some Hyperspin tools and a bit of batch word replacing. But this is not a good solution for the masses.

Hope that makes sense. It’s not a complaint though….Just a side thought as i bloody love and really appreciate the time and effort you’ve put in. I love it so much please find attached a complementary picture of a monkey eating an ice cream.

[attachment file=”monkey noms.jpg”]

[Floob]

Are you talking about the inbuilt ES scraper, or the sselph one?
https://github.com/sselph/scraper

[leefy]

Both…Any. It just seems to limit options that I can’t just upload my own set of images and retropie/emulationstation automatically recognize that they are the ones relevant without having to generate an xml with the paths.

So each system rom folder would already have an image folder in it and I just put the cosponsoring image into that and hey-presto! Done. If there’s no image then there’s no image shown.

I’ve tried both options for scraping and the hatchet job i’m currently doing works loads better with less time and less effort using all my own box art i just upload using FTP. If i had more programming ability i’d make a PC program to scan rom folders and output to an xml with all available links to images.

Don’s Hyperspin Tools….That has a “Create New HyperList” program which i use to scan my rom folders then run it through a few word replaces and it’s done. No description no nothing…Just the Path to file and image.

[Floob]

Sorry, I’m not sure I understand. You say you have tried sselph scraper which allows you to use your own images, but it isn’t working for you?
If you post the command you used and the error you had, maybe someone can help.
Emulation Station needs an xml file, if you don’t want one you may need to use a different front end.

[leefy]

Im saying if my rom is called “Super Mario.nes” and my image is called “Super Mario.png” is there a way for them to find each other without having to scrape?

I may need to use a different front end? Bit harsh considering I’m just asking if it’s possible and thought it was actually a decent idea. I don’t really understand what the Pi and you guys are capable of so I thought I’d put up an idea in the ideas board.

[herbfargus]

It is a valid idea. But everyone’s roms arent named the same so it would be difficult to come up with a one size fits all pack of images without a way for it to adapt to the specific file names of the user.

[leefy]

In the case of nearly all full sets of downloadable roms they use a standard naming scheme. I wouldn’t be a member of emumovies if what you said was true. In the case of mame it is always standard naming so sites like progetto snaps exist. All front ends i’ve used rely on image sets and rom sets matching and i’ve not yet ran into any major problems.

Perhaps I need to separate hyperspin and retropie a bit in my way of thinking.

[herbfargus]

Yes I would suggest you do that, unlike hyperspin, piracy isn’t something this forum condones- regardless of the fact that it is commonplace and as such we won’t accommodate our code to those practices.

[rookervik]

Not sure pirating has anything to do with the question. Question is, “how can I get images without doing a scrape.”

The only way I’ve been able to get images to link to games is the manual scraper method. To use it, you have to put the images into an “image” folder in the rom folder. It requires you to download a script. There’s more information here in this post.

Emulationstation manual scraping
byu/timbone316 inRetroPie

Looks like it’s also called sselph… perhaps sselph has more options than we see at first.

What we need is a script that does exactly what you are asking. Creates a gamelist.xml with each game and a link to that game’s image in the /roms/images folder. It’s up to the user to make sure all the names match.

[leefy]

Rookervic is very right…I never said anything about stealing anything…Hyerspin takes a very strong stance on piracy too before you start hating on them. Compliance with the law is highly important I understand this. But just to take you off your high horse for a sec there, there’s a video of yours on youtube which might incriminate yourself where You have a good sized FBA roms folder and a brick load of bios files. Legal much? Who knows. But you’re the one bringing piracy into this.

The ideas board….Have an idea….Get told off.

oops.

I just want to back up my nes collection with a decent amount of box art of my choosing not what a scraper spits out.

[Floob]

Yes, as rookervik says, use the script from sselph and tell it to use your pre-existing images. You get the options using the –help parameter. But I think you said you tried that scraper earlier?

This will generate an xml though, which I think you didnt want. Thats the only reason I suggested another front end. If you use your own images, just make sure the roms and images are named the same.

[pomme]

I rolled up my sleeves and manually edited all my gamelist.xmls where needed. Kodi has a plain ‘file name only’ scraper that could be a model for what you’re wanting here. It could just scrape the file names and populate the <image> tags with the path and the same rom name. This would have saved me hours putting in my Hyperspin wheel art for my MAME section (looks 100x better than the art you get from the build in scraper).

Luckily I wasn’t doing a full set. I’m limiting my Retro Pie build to have at max around 100 of the best games for each system instead of going balls out.

[rookervik]

Leefy, I set out to do exactly what you asked, as I would also like the same sort of thing.

So I made this batch file that will attach images you place in the /roms/<system>/images folder to your gamelist.xml

Check this post for more info, and a video. I’ve tested it on 3 systems and it works so far. Make sure not to use it on arcade systems, since they use a much more complicated gamelist method.

Non-Scraper to link Images to Games

[sselph]

Hi sorry if this has already been figured out but you can do this with my scraper but it isn’t that obvious and was broken until just now:

scraper -hash_file=/dev/null -add_not_found -image_suffix=""

If you aren’t on a linux system you can replace /dev/null with an empty file. This tells the scraper to run without a DB so it won’t find anything. Then you are telling it to add things it doesn’t find. If the scraper detects the image is already there it adds it. The default image name is rom-image.jpg so if you want to omit the -image you can change the script’s suffix to be nothing. So you get an entry like this

<game id="" source="">
  <path>./Rom Name.nes</path>
  <name>Rom Name</name>
  <desc></desc>
  <image>./images/Rom Name.jpg</image>
  <releasedate></releasedate>
  <developer></developer>
  <publisher></publisher>
  <genre></genre>
</game>

[chito]

Emumovies has a tool that will match a rom (via hash i think) to any of artwork asset that they have. this can be a screen shot, title shot, box art, cartridge, poster and even video snap for frontends use it like hyperspin or attractmode. it will even rename the assets it downloads to match the roms you have ( “Super Mario.nes” and “Super Mario.png” ) and can even check to see if you have any missing or outdated files… using this to download the artwork you want and then using sselph’s scrapper seems like the perfect solution. This is something i was going to looking since I wanted to use the 3d box art which are cleaned up compared to some of the low quality scans on thegamesdb.

PS You need an account for emumovies to use the tool however (ftp settings). i bought the life time membership years ago. good price, worth it

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