[SOFT] Skraper

[Bkg2k]

@cotedeporc I just discovered your two Themes. Very good work, I'll probably test them very soon.

Since I just start adding missing features to the "image composition" system, it's the right time to tell what you need.
Here is what's already planned (including your last requirements):

• Add game genre icons types (Genre1, Genre2, Genre3) working the same way than Region1 & Region2.
• Add Developer/Publisher logo.
• Add "ParentIn" in the children object to enable sub-objects to get the inner parent rectangle as the new reference. Useful when using Bezel/Overlays, otherwise the "ParentIn" is equal to "Parent".
• Add more variables in LocalFilePath. Currently it supports only %SYSTEM%. Adding %GENRE%, %PLAYERS%, %MINPLAYERS%, %MAXPLAYERS% or even %PUBLISHER% and %DEVELOPER% would give more freedom to play with customized images.
• Add conditions on min/max players.
• A "barrel effect" (moderated fish-eye effect) to give an image a nice old CRT screen b*mp & shape. Early tests show that screenshots fit nicely old srceens/TVs overlays like the one you used in the FoolScreen theme for the Atari ST

[cotedeporc]

@bkg2k

Just one request! ;o)

Can you make possible to choose, for the Genre, between PictoList and Picto Monochrome?
And the same for the company logo?

The next release is very promising!!

Thank you!

[Bkg2k]

@cotedeporc Yes, available in all versions.

[Bkg2k]

@cotedeporc You can visit the ScreenScraper's IRC channel where I make intermediate IRC-only releases, if you wanna test and help debugging the next Skraper

[cotedeporc]

@bkg2k

I will check that! Thx!

[Bkg2k]

Working symbiotically!

Starting from the Beta 7, Skraper silently (almost) adds two features that help the new Recalbox 18.06.27:

• <hash> are automatically inserted in gamelist.xml, for every game where it's possible (excluding, for now, DOS, ScummVM, Arcade). If you scrape with Skraper, it is not necessary to make Recalbox computing game hashes.
• Default configurations add 3D boxes in 300x200 max. in <thumbnail> tag to help Recalbox displaying folder contents faster. Restarting the Wizard or adding new medias to existing configurations will populate the <thumbnail> tag. If you configure it manually, it's strongly recommended to make Skraper resizing output images to a reasonable resolution (i.e. 300x250 max).

Next?

• Speed optimizations
• New mixes (PC-DOS, ZX-81)
• Improvements, new features and effects in user mixes, such as the CRT-b*mp effet:
  

[Sam Saju]

Hey there I am a user of Skraper but I use it for LaunchBox and since this is the only forum which had a topic for Skraper I figured it would be better to post here and so @Bkg2k could you assist me to use all 10 Work Engines or at least 2 work engines on Skraper because currently, only 1 is working and so scraping one of my the ROM collections I have takes around 8 Hours and I would honestly love Skraper even more if I were able to get the ROMS scraped in a lower amount of time

[screech]

Hi @Sam-Saju
if you want more 'thread' you need to help us on ScreenScraper DB
The easy way : give a little of your time filling the hole in the DB (Synopsys, media, info,...)
The money way : give some buck on Tipee or patreon

The soft and DB access is fully free, but to thanks our helper and donnator, we give them more "speed" and ressources from our server

And you can always come to see us here : https://www.screenscraper.fr/ Or on IRC
(there is a forum also where you can talk about Launchbox )

[Sam Saju]

Can you make a platform for Pokemon ROM hacks on screenscraper.fr because I don't see much stuff that you are missing in terms of media because you've done a pretty good job of getting well everything or I guess I could try to get the missing media for some FB Alpha titles and one more thing could you update SKraper to have FB Alpha scraped into FinalBurn Alpha instead of arcade or give us the option to customize where it should go because I just find pain trying to fix things after like it goes in arcade and the last thing I want to say is thank you for creating such a good scraper.

[BiZzAr721]

I originally was using Universal XML scraper until I came across Skraper beta (through screenscraper). I used it to supplement UXML, but I finally decided to make the switch to Skraper. Main reason is it scraped more reliable. I would be missing random boxart with UXML for example. I am impressed with the customizability, and the progress Skraper is making. Looking forward to DOS scraping!

Is there a thread dedicated Skraper forum for user contributed mix profiles (or Skraper in general)? I haven't been able to locate any except the small handful that's included with Skraper. I was trying to make one but I was having a very hard time not seeing the changes in real time, and I figured there must be some creative mixes out there.

[PlayingKarrde]

Hi there, really enjoying this scraper but I have a couple of requests. The first is allowing us to specify a custom gamelist node since it selects 'none' for anything that it doesn't recognise (which is nearly everything).

The other would be to add support for Pegasus Frontend. The details of this frontend's metadata can be found here: http://pegasus-frontend.org/docs/user-guide/meta-assets/

Thanks and keep up the great work!

[serpi]

While I like Skraper, how can I make it recognice a rom it didn't catch by itself?

I have, for example, in psx a rom "Tempest X3.pbp" and "Tempest X3" is also the name on screenscraper.fr, but Skraper doesn't get it.

Can I select this somehow manually?

Sadly, the inbuild scraper on retrobox latest beta (pi 3b+) is broken, so I cannot use this for individual scraping.

[BiZzAr721]

@serpi Look to see what rom file Screenscraper has listed and rename a copy of the file to that name (eg: I have some exoDOS disk art named according to the screenscraper rom name - I literally used an advanced renamer to change the extension from .png to .dos and was able to scrape 2,000 MS-DOS games)

EDIT: this thread is not very active. Is there a more active thread related to Skraper? I would really like to check out some custom mixes!

[voljega]

@bizzar721 I don't think Skraper is actively maintained anymore or at least its dev doesn't visit the recalbox forum

[abunille]

@serpi

Your example is not correct

The "Gamename" is Tempest X3, thats correct.
But the matching "Romnames/Filenames" are different.
Go to screenscraper Homepage, log in and search for the Tempest X3 Game.
Click on it and look in the "ROMs/ISOs" field.
You will find for example:

• Tempest X3 (USA)
• Tempest X3 (Europe)
• Tempest X3 (USA) [SLUS-00283]

And on Skraper Soft:
look in the "Miscellaneous" section that your "Database matching method" is not only "CRC".

@BiZzAr721
Maybe a better way is to join the IRC or Discord from Screenscraper

[serpi]

@abunille

Ah, now I see!

I've never noticed that "ROMs/ISOs" field, now it makes sense, at least some kind of.

And I have already set the matching mode in Skraper to filename only, so CRC should not be a problem.

Many thanks, that should do the trick.

[abunille]

@serpi

With pleasure

[lmerckx]

@Bkg2k A big thanks for this tool. Very useful and, for me, the best scaper to use with Recalbox !

I just made a small correction in the mix "ArcadeMoon":
In ArcadeMoon.xml and ArcadeMoonPlus.xml, the first point of Vertical presentation (Portrait) should be 84,167.

[Bkg2k]

@lmerckx Thanks, I'll fix it

[lmerckx]

Another strange behaviour:
The arcade game "1941 - Counter attack" is not recognized by Skraper.
The system is FBA libretro, the ROM name is 1941.zip and the MD5 is C4FFF5A2D094D663ECCA7D307067B63D, which is referenced in ScreenScraper.

Is there something wrong with numbers as name ?

(sorry if I'm in wrong place for the post)

Edit: The only error I've got in log is this one. But I'm not sure it is the cause of the problem.
For information, it is my only game which is not scraped ...

[2019-01-04 20:30:06.073] EXCEPTION   : Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: <. Path '', line 0, position 0. : 
[2019-01-04 20:30:06.080] STACK TRACE :    à Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader.Pa&ast;&ast;eValue()
   à Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader.Read()
   à Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReader.ReadForType(JsonContract contract, Boolean hasConverter)
   à Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.Deserialize(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, Boolean checkAdditionalContent)
   à Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer.DeserializeInternal(JsonReader reader, Type objectType)
   à Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(String value, Type type, JsonSerializerSettings settings)
   à Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject[T](String value, JsonSerializerSettings settings)
   à Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject[T](String value)
   à SkraperLibrary2.ScreenScraper.ScreenScraperApi.GetObjectsExt[T](String method, Dictionary`2 ext, Int32 systemid, Hashes hashes) : 
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