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[foxxfella]

To anyone making box art packs

Will you be including FDS and Japanese boxart?

Great site!

[Chron Johnson]

In all of the "ChronJohnson"-labeled packs, there is japanese and other box art if I had the source material for it. The Turbo Grafx 16 pack has the most Japanese boxes I'd say...probably more than US (and almost every US verified rom has box art). When I do the Gameboy Advance pack every single ROM should have a box cover and title and screenshot at least. Since it will be a complete set I'll adopt guybird's method of upload, I suppose. How do people want to deal with FatX? Guybird's not dealing with it at all now I think...should I do the same and leave the end user to configure the names as s/he wants?

Edit: Someone out there has to know how to rename a set of files named 0001.png through 2350.png to the names contained within another folder, in order. 0001 - F-Zero (J)(Independent).png, 0002 - Super Mario Advance (J)(Independent).png, 0003 - Battle Network Rockman EXE (J)(Eurasia).png etc. I'll whig out if I have to do this by hand, who has the batch renaming skills of this magnitude.

This post has been edited by Chron Johnson: Mar 26 2006, 07:49 PM

[Scoobysnaxx]

Check this progrem out. It's free and I am finding it amazing. It can rename, crop, convert, resize etc in batches (many at the same time). Goto the "tools" option after installing.

Seriously - I just started using this yesterday, and it's awesome for anyone who wants to work quickly on this. I am trying to get the entire process of creating a whoel new pack to down to hour per system (this includes transferring to the xbox). I am getting super fast.

Anyway - here's thast program, let me know what you think. It has been able to do anything I have wanted to so far.

LINK



This post has been edited by Scoobysnaxx: Mar 27 2006, 02:55 AM

[foxxfella]

Check this progrem out. It's free and I am finding it amazing. It can rename, crop, convert, resize etc in batches (many at the same time). Goto the "tools" option after installing.

Seriously - I just started using this yesterday, and it's awesome for anyone who wants to work quickly on this. I am trying to get the entire process of creating a whoel new pack to down to hour per system (this includes transferring to the xbox). I am getting super fast.

Anyway - here's thast program, let me know what you think. It has been able to do anything I have wanted to so far.

LINK

thast funny as shit I just downloaded it a few days ago. everyone should get this its just as good as photoshop and its free.

This post has been edited by foxxfella: Mar 27 2006, 03:01 AM

[Scoobysnaxx]

Seriously - the more I use it, the more I like it. Glad to see someone else thinks it's great too.

[madmab]

Edit: Someone out there has to know how to rename a set of files named 0001.png through 2350.png to the names contained within another folder, in order. 0001 - F-Zero (J)(Independent).png, 0002 - Super Mario Advance (J)(Independent).png, 0003 - Battle Network Rockman EXE (J)(Eurasia).png etc. I'll whig out if I have to do this by hand, who has the batch renaming skills of this magnitude.

Do you mean something like......

This?

CODE

@echo off
for %%i in (*.zip) do call :process %%~ni
goto :done
:process
set rom=%*
set number=%rom:~0,4%
set name=%rom:~4%
ren "%number%.png" "%number%%name%.png"
goto :eof
:done
echo Done
pause

Just copy -n- paste it into a text editor (like notepad). Save it as a batch file. Copy it and your box pics into the same directory as your roms. Be sure to keep your original box pics incase something is foobared.

Then run the batch file.

This batch file will NOT work in Win 98, but it should work in Win 2000, NT, and XP.

It only check for *.zip rom files and *.png picture files so if they are different you will have to modify the 2nd line.

Silly me before I went to work I forgot to check to see if I had the box sets you were missing. Maybe this will make up for it in the meantime.

This post has been edited by madmab: Mar 27 2006, 04:04 AM

[guybird]

Wow, I step away for a day and this thread explodes with content!!! Alrighty here, let me address everything bit by bit.

Gameboy Advance artwork - I have all of the artwork (covers, titles, snaps) in my usual format for 0001-1500 already done and renamed. I had uploaded it to hargle's server, and assumed that it had been uploaded but apparently not. I'll break it into sections as with the NES set, and upload it in a few minutes. I'll also reupload the NES pack with the non FATX names, so that way people can do more with it.

Chron's artwork - As far as your artwork Chron, I honestly haven't gotten around to actually looking at any of it. Elder Scrolls Oblivion has stolen my soul and has eaten all of my free time . I'll have to keep away from it for a few days to make sure I get some work done for once. Anyhow, your packs definitely have their audience as do mine. I'd think that mine is geared more towards the casual user, who only plays the US roms, and would like the pretty artwork for it like with Surreal. Yours is geared more towards the hardcore, who has every rom, and likes to play a lot of foreign/hacked roms that most people don't. Now as I've said before, people could definitely combine our packs and have artwork for every rom dump, and have the "great" artwork for the US roms. The main reason I haven't done Japanese/European rom artwork as there aren't big packs like on the screenshot archives. If there was, I'd definitely do it, but as it is, it'd be a lot of work digging up all of the box art. This will definitely be very different though with my Genesis pack, as many of the games are World, or a combination of European or Japanese. So a much higher percentage of all roms will have artwork done.

Sega Genesis pack - I have to make title snaps for over 50% of the games there, so that's going to take some time, lots of repeditve work to be done. However with the high demand, I'll upload the Box fronts, backs, and cart scans as those are all done minus a few I can't find artwork for, and really won't change. I'll upload the snaps & titles once I finish them.

Now for a mini tutorial. I use Advanced Batch Convertor which has every option I'd every need or dream of. Its not free, but that's not a problem . For the Sega Genesis & Master System box art, since the scans are of the entire front, back and side all in one picture, you need to do some batch cropping. What you do first, is to resize ALL of the box art to be the same size. Usually ends up being something like 320X600. Then its super easy to crop: Just crop a width of 225 (ends up the average width) starting at 0 X coord (the very left of the picture) and output the results into individual folders with the name of 0002.png for each. This will give you the backs. Then repeat the process for the fronts using an X coord of 375 (or whatever the difference of the total width of the scan is minus the width of the front). This will give you all of the fronts, and if you're really anal, I guess you could repeat the process for the sides, although no one would really care to see them IMO. The way I see it, box backs are a rare thing, not very often can you find them. So when you have a pack (SMS, Genesis) that has all of them, I recommend exploiting it. Once hargle's forum is up, we'll be able to make more in depth tutorials on a case by case basis. But for now, I think I'll probably make one for the news section so people can see it.

Oh and Chron, about the FATX thing. I'd like to have it as simple and ready to use for the user as possible, but as I'm finding, with Samba sharing cutting off at 37 characters, and FATX at 42, its a LOT of work to backtrack to remove the FATX renaming. So I'd rather upload non FATX named files, that people can use however they choose, and not have to pretty much redo the entire pack for Samba sharing or whatever else we find.

Ok, after looking over the site, I realize that hargle hasn't upped any of my "beta" packs. These are just a compilation of all of the existing screenshot archive packs for that particular system, and NOT renamed using the Good standards, nor has the clones/other dumps been weeded out yet, or missing artwork put in. So it makes for a 75% compatible pack, but not a 100% good to go one like my NES or up and coming Genesis. I have done this already for SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Sega Master System, Game Gear, & Atari 2600. I'll up these as a working solution/alternative until I complete them.

This post has been edited by guybird: Mar 27 2006, 04:22 AM

[Chron Johnson]

That batch code is tight, it's so oblique to me that it has to be exactly what I need. My intuition tells me everything has to be in the same folder? Have to clean up the screen names first then I'll perform tests.

Here's a question. If I do things guybird style, with different releases for different styles (titles, boxes, screens), how do people get everything into one folder if they want to merge the packs? Like Joe Downloader would be sitting there with 2000 folders full of 0001.pngs and another 2000 full of 0002.pngs...how's he get his 0002s into the same folders as his 0001s?

Also, who cares about the difference between OLL naming standards and GBA-Renamer? From my limited experience it seems the GBA-Renamer set is much less tolerant of bad/overdumps so I'm going with that for now. People will want to cut off the numbers probably but I'll leave that to them.

[guybird]

Putting all of the folders containing individual packs together is simple! For the biggest part, people won't be using these packs on their pc's (really no reason to) so all that matters is that it's in the right place on the xbox. Well, all you'd have to do is transfer one pack over to the Xbox via Flash FXP (or ftp program of choice), and then transfer the second, only this time it'll keep writing the new files to the existing folders, as long as the file names don't clash. If for whatever reason you want to combine them on PC, you'd rar up all of the folders containing the artwork making sure you select the "Put each file to separate archive" and "Do not store paths" options under the Files tab. Now cut and paste all of the rar'd files into the folder containing the artwork you want to add them too. Now "extract each archive to seperate folder" on all of the rar files. If any prompts come up hit yes to all. That'll add all of the files into one mega pack. That's what I had to do to make my packs in the first place.

This post has been edited by guybird: Mar 27 2006, 05:49 AM

[Chron Johnson]

Dude. releases.pocketheaven.com Such headies. Such art.

[madmab]

Well my suggestion would be to, and this is just me.

Have the pictures named in goodtools -forcexbox format. (With the .png) extension of course.

For example.... (I know it's not a good tools name, but let's just pretend for fun, ok?)

0001 - F-Zero (J)(Independent).png

If the pictures are screenshot pack, name them "screenshot-pack-gba.zip"
titles would be named "title-pack-gba.zip"
boxart would be named "boxart-pack-gba.zip"
These are just some examples.

This gives the maximum flexibility to the users. All the user has to do is unzip the pictures anywhere.
If they have the ROMS available on their PC they can unpack the pictures into the ROMS directory.

Run Xrenamer.exe

1) If you do not have the ROMS on the PC tell xrenamer that the default filespec is "*.png". Yes this will work!!

2) If the ROMS are in the same directory, then use the default filespec which should be "*.zip"

3) The user then gets too CHOOSE (and choose is the keyword here) which number to give the pictures.

4) Choose 37 characters if they like to samba, 42 if the pics are gonna be on the xbox.

5) Copy files over to the xbox if needed.

6) Unzip next screen pack, repeat above steps, but pick a different number for the pics.

-------------
Advantages
-------------

Easy to do, maximum flexibilty to end user, standard across the board format.

This post has been edited by madmab: Mar 27 2006, 07:43 AM

[madmab]

My intuition tells me everything has to be in the same folder? Have to clean up the screen names first then I'll perform tests.

Yes they all have to be in the same folder. Open notepad, cut -n- paste the batch code into it, do a "Save As", change file type to "*.*", save it as boxren.bat (or whatever.bat). Run it. Make sure you have backups of the boxart just incase it tards..

Also, who cares about the difference between OLL naming standards and GBA-Renamer? From my limited experience it seems the GBA-Renamer set is much less tolerant of bad/overdumps so I'm going with that for now. People will want to cut off the numbers probably but I'll leave that to them.

I personally prefer the GBA-Renamer but I dont think it has provisions for xbox naming, other than that it is fine. Goodtools does xbox but is not up-to-date. I personally have removed the numbers. I prefer my ROMS in alphabetic order.

On a side note for anyone considering doing screenshot packs... here are my plans (since I have a full plate) in the most likely order I will do it. So feel free to "beat" me to it.

Amiga and Atari ST gamebase compatible screenies w/boxart. I just found out recently that the game downloads currently available for the Amiga gamebase are incomplete, so I may have to update the pack as the new games are made available.

C64 database (if it makes sense to do it)

I'm toying with the idea of doing a Kegs one based on the Tosec library.

I need to do .cfg files for the intellivision anyways since I'm setting it up for my cousin.

Atarixlbox stuff would be last. I've been working on it here and there, but it may be a while.

I'd do dosxbox but the naming conventions are weird, plus xport has that weird naming system in place.

I don't wanna name anymore for fear that I never get to it, but I had a couple other systems in mind as well.

[madmab]

I just realized that it should be possible to create .dat files so that the resulting filenames would match what is applicable to the xbox, without having to jump thru a bunch of barenameX hoops. At the very least it would be handy for any non-good tool sets.

What do you all think.

In case anyone is wondering I picked the gamebase sets because they creators of these handpick the most compatible images out there. Even if the sets are a bit short. Plus TOSEC sets are a real mess. Once done I might retrack thru and work up some TOSEC alternate set (with .dat sets included).



This post has been edited by madmab: Mar 27 2006, 11:15 AM

[guybird]

How hard is it to create a .dat file? I know Romcenter has that ability, as it already has some dats for mame artwork. This would make it a lot easier to figure out what has artwork, what is missing, what to rename files to for FATX, etc.

[Chron Johnson]

X-Port already has an EXE and accompanying DAT file to convert the Gamebase for C64 into FATX compatible naming conventions that are also recognized by Vice64x. So if there have been updates to the Gamebase, I think he'll take care of that for us. So that's one system to not worry about. I've had the Gamebase and its screenshots installed on my Vice64x for months and they're very nice to scroll through.

Creating DATs for other things will make you want to hang yourself I think. Except you have the batch skills, so I bet you can knock it off with much automation. I think TOSEC is the key rather than Gamebase for all non-C64 computer systems...and DATs already exist to rename one's collections to those standards. An end user would then run a FATX renaming program of his choice on both the TOSECed ROMs and renamed artwork, install, and enjoy.

Also, your BAT file works perfectly. It's the best. And I've located the rest of the box covers and have to download over 1000 of them by hand. Click, wait, right click, save, repeat. It's the best. Sounds like your ROMs are already GBA-Renamer named. It's what I'll be using. To avoid confusion I'll include GBA-Renamer and the DAT I used for my collection. I'll upload everything in its own pack. Rather than forcing everyone to perform a procedure to choose the numbers of the PNGs themselves, I'll leave them in guybird's numbering conventions. Anyone who wants to change the numbers can do so with the same programs that would allow them to determine their own numbers.