Attract-Mode Support Forum

Attract-Mode Support => Scripting => Topic started by: rsn8887 on November 30, 2015, 01:55:30 PM

Title: Help needed for my layouts: Scraping and displaying additional game info?
Post by: rsn8887 on November 30, 2015, 01:55:30 PM: I love Attract Mode, I am completely hooked. Squirrel is simple enough that I could understand the basics in 2 days.

But I have a few questions regarding additional game info. I would like to give the user of my layout the option to show game history, synopsis etc.

Can I automatically scrape for additional information (beyond catver.ini and nplayers.ini)?

Where does the scraper save its information? Is it being put in the generated romlist file? What about any images it finds online, will they overwrite my own?

Is there any way to have Attract Mode automatically parse "history.dat" for Mame and make the game synopsis display in my layout?
Title: Re: Help needed for my layouts: Scraping and displaying additional game info?
Post by: raygun on December 03, 2015, 11:20:30 PM: Hey there,

The built in scraper saves all the game info in the generated romlist file. If it finds images online, it puts them in the /scraper directory in your attract mode config directory, so there should be no risk of it overwriting your own images.

Check out the history.dat plugin to see one approach for displaying game synopsis from the frontend.

cheers
Title: Re: Help needed for my layouts: Scraping and displaying additional game info?
Post by: rsn8887 on December 05, 2015, 06:29:39 AM: It worked! The scraper found a lot of metadata for my nes and snes roms and the history.dat plugin also works for my mane roms! Sweet!
Title: Re: Help needed for my layouts: Scraping and displaying additional game info?
Post by: xbs on December 09, 2015, 05:46:39 AM: I'm also trying to display game synopsis from the layout but I can't seem to find the proper way to do it.

Can anyone point me to the right direction?

thanks
Title: Re: Help needed for my layouts: Scraping and displaying additional game info?
Post by: rsn8887 on December 16, 2015, 10:08:32 AM: Quote from: xbs on December 09, 2015, 05:46:39 AM
I'm also trying to display game synopsis from the layout but I can't seem to find the proper way to do it.

Can anyone point me to the right direction?

thanks

For Mame, you have to get the history.dat file and put it somewhere. Then in AM enable the history.dat plugin. In the options for the plugin, select the location of the history.dat file, and a key to use (default is "H"). Then if you press H in AM, the synopsis will come up.
Title: Re: Help needed for my layouts: Scraping and displaying additional game info?
Post by: xbs on December 16, 2015, 10:22:34 AM: What i really wanted was to get data from history.dat and display it on the layout without pressing a button.