Alternative locations and names for artwork

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fcatrin
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Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby fcatrin » Wed Apr 12, 2017 4:54 pm

Brent suggested to put the artwork in a different location than rom files. The artwork scanning code has improved since our initial versions and the location and filenames for artwork is more flexible now.

What would you propose for alternative names and locations? I've seen some people using this format when files are stored in the same folder:

game.rom
game.jpg (the cover)

What do you think?
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Brent
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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby Brent » Thu Apr 13, 2017 5:51 am

I have zero problems with the naming convention, .cover, .shot1 etc. Nor even having a structure that mimics my rom folder names, just the ability to have a folder with the rom files and another folder with images. Mame for an example has enough files in it as zips alone, to add all the images can increase it 3fold.

Obviously if the naming so were to change owing to the new theming hehe that's a different story. I have a fair collection of back covers, spines, carts,videos, not to mention the marquees and so on lol.

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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby steviebwoy » Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:40 am

Sounds good to me. It would be great to be able to access online databases for cover images though, so that the software can scrape the images. I've got loads and loads of games that don't have covers and they look slightly depressing!
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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby fcatrin » Thu Apr 13, 2017 2:27 pm

steviebwoy wrote:Sounds good to me. It would be great to be able to access online databases for cover images though, so that the software can scrape the images. I've got loads and loads of games that don't have covers and they look slightly depressing!


It does now. We have about 12000 covers but not all systems are covered in full and there are a lot of games that have no covers (mame) because they never existed.
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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby steviebwoy » Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:14 pm

fcatrin wrote:
steviebwoy wrote:Sounds good to me. It would be great to be able to access online databases for cover images though, so that the software can scrape the images. I've got loads and loads of games that don't have covers and they look slightly depressing!


It does now. We have about 12000 covers but not all systems are covered in full and there are a lot of games that have no covers (mame) because they never existed.

Hm, is there a particular naming convention I should be using? Lots of my games don't have covers where I would expect..
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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby fcatrin » Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:28 pm

steviebwoy wrote:Hm, is there a particular naming convention I should be using? Lots of my games don't have covers where I would expect..


Yes, RetroX will strip all non alphabetic chars and remove anything between "[ ]" and "( )" to make a match.

So these names for example:

Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong [v1]
Donkey Kong [!] (USA)

Will be all matched as donkeykong

The problem that I've seen and not fixed is when the games use names like these:

Aladdin
Disney's Aladdin
Aladdin, The

Those will be seen as aladdin, disneysaladin and aladinthe. All like three different games.
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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby martyman » Tue Apr 18, 2017 3:20 pm

I am probably alone here (and I have mentioned this to Franco before) but I personally would prefer an in-game screenshot instead of a cover preview, mainly due to the ratio and shape of the box, plus I can tell what type of game I am about to load up. As it is now, it just looks a bit mish mash but that's the designer in me coming out an being picking, the zoomed in of some of the covers works for some games but others it really doesn't and as mentioned a lot of MAME ones never even had covers to begin with.

Don't get me wrong though I love when you click on a title you get the cover/flyer in portrait mode to the left, but if there was an option to just swap the main preview boxes to the 1st in-game screenshot that would be cool :D
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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby fcatrin » Tue Apr 18, 2017 3:36 pm

In the TV mode, you see the screenshot as the main art for each game, and the covers for browsing. Have you tried that mode?

device-2016-06-25-133255.png
device-2016-06-25-133255.png (917.69 KiB) Viewed 12915 times
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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby martyman » Wed Apr 19, 2017 8:41 am

Yep man that's the mode I am using at the moment, ha as I said its just me being picky because the horizontal preview box is showing a portrait based image. Ignore me... I'll never be happy!!! :D ;)
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Re: Alternative locations and names for artwork

Postby fcatrin » Wed Apr 19, 2017 2:15 pm

Well, you will be able to create themes in the next big version, so you will be able to tweak it as you want
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