Game Descriptions missing

[Hanappi]

Hi,

after changed attract-mode to latest version, the game descriptions are missing.
The layouts leave that field empty, or it says "There is no information available for ***"
I tryed different layouts, and off course in the theme-options the description is turned on.
In the Romlists drawer there are all the cfg files with the descriptions. Please how can i get attract- mode to read that descriptions for the games, or is there any other way, to get descriptions for the Rom´s?

Thank you for help in advance

[Hanappi]

Ok, in the meantime i found out the following:

1. In older versions of AM the Overviews(what i called Game Descriptions") where in subdirectories of the romlists drawer as cfg files. Now the Overview have to be in scraper/[emulator]/overview as txt files. Easiest way i found to get this done, is download the data from https://github.com/billyc999/RetroFe-Game-info and extract the txt files to the corresponding folders. So now most of the ROMs have their overview text.

2. Another way to see game informations is, to use the history.dat plugin. I downloaded the actual historie.dat from here: https://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=download
But i got only infos for my Arcade section, not the consoles or computers. How can i get historie.dat information for all of my roms?

As for case 1 i could solve myself now, i hope someone can help me on case 2.

[keilmillerjr]

The directory change makes no sense to me as not everyone uses the "scraper"... 

[joyrider3774]

skyscraper can generate these overview files as well although you might spend a lot of time doing it. I only found out recently about these overview files and have adapted a layout to make use of them. Skyscraper can scrape multiple sources to get the descriptions (used to create the overview files) as well as metadata like screenshots / video's wheels etc from databases like the thegamedb or screenscraper.fr. Once you've assembled it all it can generate a(n attractmode) romlist along with the overview files. I'm currently redoing everything on picade.

Skyscraper is aimed for linux although the author sometimes posts binaries for windows as well but he does not support them. you could always install a linux inside a virtual machine just to get the overview files scraped

another solution is to get the overview files from david marti which i believe are used in the hyperpie project. They already are in the new format for multiple systems https://github.com/dmmarti/overview

[Hanappi]

Thank you joyrider, this is useful.

I still hope for a way to get historie.dat working for all kinds of roms. it generates idx files for every game, but only the arcade section showing up infos. I think its because the historie.dat file i downloaded has just mame related data, but i cant find any other version of history.dat. On their database, they have data for every system like consoles or computers, but i didnt find a way to get an historie.dat file for every system.
I will start a new thread belong to history.dat if there will dont come an solve in this thread while the next days.

[keilmillerjr]

History.dat is for mame ROMs, which include arcade and software. I will look into software. I'm almost ready to release my overview plugin that parses history.dat and generates native overview files. Also includes a viewer like the included history.dat plugin. The benefit to using overview files is the ease of integrating with layouts.

[Hanappi]

Hmm, but with the link joyrider postet (https://github.com/dmmarti/overview) i have already nice Overview data.
And the kind of information is different, so it would be the best thing to combine regular Overview Text with historie.dat.

For example, i use a layout with permanent Overviewtext, thats perfect for a quick impression. When i want more info, i press the configured Key (e.g. "H") and the historie.dat shows up. Beside of curiosity, this is useful to see Facts like the Year of Release, i use this to complete missing metadata. (By the way this is so user-friendly with AM. I defined a button for editing on my xbox-controller, and i can immediatly input the data, like Year and even the Overviewtext. Thanks to the fine people, who work on this project. 8D )
If this would work this way on all systems instead of just mame, i would be perfect satisfied.

If your plugin will add historie.dat to existing Overview, i would prefer it this way, instead of overwriting existing data.

Anyway, my main problem now is, that i have no historie.dat for all the consoles and computers. And the data for all this systems is already on their database, but i didnt find a way to use this data for my own collection. I dont even know, how to input some stuff by hand. (I dont have such intensions, but e.g. with Overview that´s a piece of cake )

[Hanappi]

I got this reply from the history.dat support:

MAME has all the softlists (for consoles and computers) too, it's why I said the history.dat has all the information for the amiga, gameboy , etc... Not only the Arcade.

I think you should ask the frontend developper why it's program is not supporting the consoles and computers information. Everything is on the History.dat file

here is how History.dat should be reads:

info for games: $info=rom1,rom2,
info for machines: $info=bios1,bios2,
info for softlist: $softlist_name=rom1,rom2,
Some games can have two or more $xxx= tags.


For example, for the Nintendo 64 games, in the History.dat, the information can be found below the tag :

$n64=smb64,
$n64=fzerox,
etc.....

I have no knowlege of coding, but for me this seems to get done with a little tweaking in AM or the historie.dat plugin. Then (nearly) every system should have the Informations from historie.dat.

[keilmillerjr]

It is easy enough. My plugin already supports it. I just wanted to verify. Did a hardware upgrade today. Hoping to push commit Monday.

[joyrider3774]

in case anyone is looking for more overview files. I created and seperated some per skraper source / system using skysraper and uploaded them to github. The best ones are the the ones from previous url + the screenscraperfr one. They mostly follow hyperlist rom lists

https://github.com/joyrider3774/attract_overviews

[rand0m]

in case anyone is looking for more overview files. I created and seperated some per skraper source / system using skysraper and uploaded them to github. The best ones are the the ones from previous url + the screenscraperfr one. They mostly follow hyperlist rom lists

https://github.com/joyrider3774/attract_overviews

Thanks for sharing this, really useful.