Games Library (Game/Emulator database and launcher) development project, help wanted!

[TheQuestor]

Originally Posted by leo2

I disagree.

The current XBMC Programs module is half-finished... it doesn't do anything (without "Launcher" plugin)
The games-library branch is one step forward to make it complete even without the "Library Mode".
It will give an ability to launch applications & games and to create useful plugins based on it.

I don't see a reason to keep it out.

There is always the "F" word. And yes it does end in K but has an or in the middle. :P

[mngrl1]

any way to get steam to work with xbmc that would be killer have the overlay and games kept up to date, know when friends come online

[sho]

Originally Posted by spiff

easy for you to say - you don't have to deal with the repercussions when bug reports and a gazillion feature requests starts popping up. i much rather have no support than half-done support. the former makes it clear this is nothing we're working on, the latter opens the cans of worms.

I would say that the capability to run executables would be a bare minimum requirement to have a programs section.
Without it the Programs section is absolutely useless for the majority of users, but yet it has to be enabled to allow users to run plugins such as the Repo installer. (Thus creating unnecessary confusion as to why this is there and what it does).
In your opinion is the current implementation not up to doing just that in a rudimentary, but usable fashion?

You could compare it to the pictures section, which is more or less just a dumb filebrowser that can display images, without that capability the pictures section would be just as useless as the programs section is today, or the videos section from before you implemented the Video Library.
Granted, that does not hinder people from asking for a pictures database, but they can at least settle for what they have today (or move on to another application).

Admittedly I have no idea how much work is involved to get the bare minimum executable launching that apparently has already been coded working with current SVN, but I implore you to reconsider that opinion for the follow up release to 9.11, even though you may not be willing to put any effort to that means.
(Then again, if someone was really interested in making that happen, it would probably be done by now )

[Discaciate]

Originally Posted by sho

I would say that the capability to run executables would be a bare minimum requirement to have a programs section.
Without it the Programs section is absolutely useless for the majority of users, but yet it has to be enabled to allow users to run plugins such as the Repo installer. (Thus creating unnecessary confusion as to why this is there and what it does).
In your opinion is the current implementation not up to doing just that in a rudimentary, but usable fashion?

You could compare it to the pictures section, which is more or less just a dumb filebrowser that can display images, without that capability the pictures section would be just as useless as the programs section is today, or the videos section from before you implemented the Video Library.
Granted, that does not hinder people from asking for a pictures database, but they can at least settle for what they have today (or move on to another application).

Admittedly I have no idea how much work is involved to get the bare minimum executable launching that apparently has already been coded working with current SVN, but I implore you to reconsider that opinion for the follow up release to 9.11, even though you may not be willing to put any effort to that means.
(Then again, if someone was really interested in making that happen, it would probably be done by now )

Fantastic defense.
I could not agree more. I would love to have the simple option to run executables directly.

[spiff]

he's reiterating things i'm well aware of. which means it has zilch influence on whether or not to add unfinished code to svn.

[sho]

I think people would like to know how unfinished it is (me myself included).

When would it be considered finished? With all bells and whistles (library and scraping) or is something actually missing for the rudimentary executable support?

Sorry about not giving up... this is for the sake of the community after all

[spiff]

when somebody is willing to maintain it.

[VictorV]

I've made quite a lot of work trying to "port" the structure of the video section into a program section, but I have no experience with c programming and I have some problems seeing the complete program flow. Now I'm struggling with some linker errors I can't figure out.

As I see it, the program section could be something as follow:

Contents:

• Files - Regular files that are invoked by the system default executable for a given file item and have no extended information
• Application - A given program executable with a minimum of extra information (web browsers etc.)
• Game - Games that could be a ROM or a executable. If no launcher is given just pass the file so the operating system can take care of it.
• ArcadeGame - Divorced from games, as MAME and similar ROMs often will use different sites for scraping and maybe some small differences in how the graphical art is presented in the GUI. Would use the same table as a game in the database

Games database:

• TITLE
• PLOT
• DESCRIPTION
• MAXPLAYERS
• VOTES
• RATING
• REGION (won't be used for arcade games)
• BOXART_URL (used some general naming since it might be "front cover" for usual games, but might be "cabinet" for arcade games)
• ALT_BOXART_URL (There's made room for alot of artworks since many (included myself) thinks that a big part of a great front-end for game collections. I also think this will interest people over at xbox-scenes emulator forum
• EXT_BOXART_URL
• ACTIONSHOT_URL (action and intro screenshots are somekind of a standard for rom collectors)
• INTROSHOT_URL
• YEAR
• THUMBURL
• IDENT
• SORTTITLE
• PERSPECTIVE (Could maybe be merged into genres?)
• GENRE
• DEVELOPER
• PUBLISHER
• THUMBURL_SPOOF
• BOXART_URL_SPOOF
• ALT_BOXART_URL_SPOOF
• EXT_BOXART_URL_SPOOF
• ACTIONSHOT_URL_SPOOF
• INTROSHOT_URL_SPOOF
• PREVIEW (A precompiled video of the game. Pretty much the same as a movie trailer)
• FANART
• PLATFORM (Windows, Dos, Super Nintendo...)

I'm not sure what the best solution for scraping would be. A scraper would probably need to know what platform to scrape information for. That could be done while setting content for a directory, with some pre-defined platforms, but unfortunately some sites will use "SNES" as a identifier, some could use "SMC", and some simply "12". How to overcome this? There's a suggestion in this thread to use different scrapers for each platform, but I can't say I like it, as I don't think someone would keep them all up to date.

Another function from the video section that probably also should be in the program section is the stacking feature. Many ROM collections will have a naming scheme similar to: Super Mario Bros[U][!].smc, Super Mario Bros[J].smc etc. and I guess many will see this stacked, though handled a bit different by the player.

I've done most of the boring aspects of this, at least for the games, and I hope to get it up and running when I have some more time to sit down and study the source code.

[spiff]

feel free to pop by irc, i'll gladly help and offer my ideas on the implementation side - we can even do it in norwegian

[BLKMGK]

I've been getting updates on this thread forever but not had time to check on it till today. I had SO hoped to see something even remotely close for MAME at least. Depressing to see that it looks stalled and that no one sees value in moving it forward yet.