With the new Madmab Edition XPORT emulators, the user will be able to pull up a brief (to not-so-brief) game synopsis from the game selection menu by clicking the right joystick.

Hopefully, the headline information in these documents will be able to be used down the line with a sort/filter feature that hasn't been conceived yet.

Here we're keeping the most up-to-date synopsis files and placing only one person in charge of adding any information to any one of them at any time so two people aren't working on one at the same time. (A friggin nightmare to clean up when stuff like that happens).

If you would like to help out with the project, PM Gilles9999 or me for info on where you can started.

For more information about this project, check out this thread: The Game Synopsis Option

Bump.....

I guess we can post here. Forgot we can't link to it from Gilles first post in the synopsis thread and it was getting pretty buried there. New Genesis synopsis updated here, and FrankMorris is the current holder. I've begun work on getting the Gameboy synopsis set up, so I'm the holder on that. I'll upload the new atari ones when I get a chance and relinquish control of them.

Thread updated with newest Atari 7800 Synopsis.

Good news everyone!

Got Frank's latest additions to the Genesis up here. I've also put the merged (and updated and edited) 5200 synopsis that both Gilles and Madmab had created separately.

The Gameboy "blueprint" synopsis is also up now. It's 483kb right now and that's with most of the headline info missing and absolutely ZERO body work done! Crash said he wanted first crack at it, so it's all yours man.

Don't anybody start a new one at this point. We've got plenty that needs to be done with what's already up here.

I'm going to do blueprint synopsis stuff for all the other systems with my downtime at work. It's something I can easily do there without visiting 200 URLs in a day trying to get the body work done and raising red flags with the network security at work. I've become quite good at getting it done and since the Gameboy one is all prepaired now, the largest emu by far now has a solid basis for you guys to work with.

Expect a SNES and Atari 2600 blueprint synopsis in the coming weeks.

Later,
~Rx


EDIT: I've got the NES Hot Potato. Stupot added some great games and I'm going to put them in there. I also want to make sure all my CRCs work.

Is this the latest Mednafenx_nes synopsis? I need to know so I can go thru an edit a few things for the "public beta release".

Thanks!

I am pretty sure that is it...

EDIT: I guess xenepp
Was giving "S" a stab, last I heard, around may 4th. So he might have the potato now. Hopefully he can report his progress soon.

That's it, but I've got the hot potato. Let me upload the new one for you to work on. I'll remove the hot potato tag when I'm done.

ok. I go out of town come this thursday, so if I can't get everything together before then I'll just wait until next week..

Have at it man. I can't remember why I still had the hot potato on that. I think I was going to add my CRC's but never got around to it. The one up there is the newest version.

Just to say, i'm working on the synopsis for the nec turbografx 16 you can consider me as the "hot potatoe holder" for this one (lot of great games on this system)

Later~Gilou999

Now that I think of it, Crash may have been the holder of the NES one and I messed up and put my name there. Better find out from him first Madmab. Hopefully I didn't screw up and two people are working on the same thing. Oops.... sorry if that happened guys.

ok. Well make me the hot potato guy for the NES synopsis for now. Although I shouldn't have it for very long.

I'm not "adding" anything, perse. Just touchin' up some stuff.

If he is adding some missing games, they can just be inserted in right?

That's what I said... but you should know best madmab.

I don't know... you gotta be careful with crash, he might just turn around and have the whole thing done before you know it.

Yeah... It shouldn't be too much of a pain. I've definately dealt with worse (SEE: Gilles & Madmab's completely different 5200 synopsis files)....

lol. I was just thinking about that little "incident". It was just a case of me wanting to surprise everyone. Somehow I get the feeling gilles was thinking the same thing.

Haha! Sure surprised me!

Not a big deal. It's all fixed now.

I like having something to do at down time at work. If I'm not smoking, or drinking a beer, or doing work, or playing guitar, or working on Xtras I get anxious since I feel I should be doing something (productive, or otherwise.... ).

I should probably be a CEO of a major company now, but that probably isn't in my foreseeable future.

ok. Here are the changes I've made to the synopsis. I'll include it with the latest MednafenX Beta when I upload it in the am.

removed crc's for sample synopsis (interferes with proper display of actual game)
removed space in between some crc32's
replaced * with + in bullet lists within synopsis text
replaced international characters with displayable characters

Haha no I never had the NES hot potato.

Ah.... good to hear crash. No double work. I was worried there for a minute.

Get your updated TG16 synopsis here! Thanks Gilles. It included most of my roms before editing.

I take it that the NES synopsis that I have is the latest right?

I just need to know before I prepare the "package".

Yep



EDIT:

Hey guys,

I've been working very hard on the Atari 2600 synopsis at work and I plan to give the SNES the same treatment when it's done. After making the "Blueprint Synopsis" for them, I thought "it's a damn shame that these no-intro datfiles have all this information and I'm not including it. So.... for every game where the info is available in the dat I have added the year of release and the developer/publisher too. I'm also going to grab all the body-work info from Wikipedia that I can before relinquishing the hot-potato for it. I can't get to many sites at work with game info so I'll have to rely on you all to finish what I started when I put it up here.

Later,
~Rx

BTW guys....

The Atari 2600 synopsis is coming along great! I was hoping to get it done this weekend, wont have it done for at least another 10 days or so. It's amazing how much you can learn when you use the datfile in conjunction with wikipedia and atariage (yes, I can somehow get to atariage at work when they block 99% of video game specific sites...... must not have had Atari in their videogame language rolodex since it's an ancient language )

When I originally did the 2600 testing it was so long ago that I wasn't very accurate in where I placed the roms. If you take a look at the spreadsheet now you will see great changes in the directory structure and the synopsis reflects that new knowledge. I think, by far, the 2600 was the biggest mess I made for myself and I never thought I'd really get around to cleaning it up and I'd just keep those roms thrown into generic categories. Well.... I'd say it's about 95% cleaned up now thanks to the synopsis work! I'm sure I have plenty of testing to do when I get back to it (so much more synopsis work too).

Anyways.... I'm on the letter K now in filling out the body work on the US roms. I haven't done much with the other categories except for fill out as much of the headline info as I could glean from the datfiles. Between the two sites I'd say I'm steadily able to fill out about 70% of the synopsis info. Hopefully somebody will step in and finish that info off for us when I post it.

Later,
~Rx

I'd say I'm about 80% done with the Atari 2600 now. It's about 600kb.

I'm also about 60% done with the US/Europe SNES now too! It's almost 1MB now. After hacks, translations and all the stuff I missed that one will probably be about 2.5MB to 3MB.

Going through the synopsis stuff on SNES I've found that there definitely are licensed games that we missed first time around (surprisingly, some of them are US games too like Zoop. I have no clue how I missed them). I also have zero hacks for it, so we'll have to get vids made for all of that when I get around to the second round of SNES testing. I didn't want to push any more hacks on Horscht since he seemed like he was just about burned out on making videos at the time. Now that we have a couple people that can make vids I'm hoping somebody can step up and fill the blanks when I figure out what we need.

I'm also going to have to get the HQ boxart from Sotu and TheCoverProject before a new artwork release on that as well.

Later,
~Rx

I just noticed that classicconsoles has Atari 2600 games. I'll have to go in there and see if I can get better synopsis from there than stuff I already have.


SNES - I've finished all US games that had info at either classicconsoles or wikipedia. I'd say it's about 90% or more finished on the US front now. I'm going to go into the gamefaqs reviews next and see how many more I can knock out starting Wednesday night. Then it's on to romhacking for the hacks/translations, and seeing how much info I can find about prototypes and other misc stuff. So far it's about 1.25 MB of synopsis goodness.

Some of the headline info on both of these isn't filled out much, mainly the Genre and the # of players. I figure the best way for me to do that is when madmab finishes the sort/filter code. I like doing it that way better since I did that with MAME a about 18 months back. It's really much easier trying to edit stuff when I can see it sorted on my TV with the game video playing right there than to do it by hand and take wikipedia's word for it.



Hey CRASH!!!! Do anything with that Gameboy synopsis yet? Haven't heard from you on that in like 2 months.

Later,
~Rx

Hey yea sorry I've really neglected it a bit. Things in the real world got quite intense there for a while and havn't really done much work on it. Good news though is that things have settled down and I will have more time to start working on it again. Here is the little amount I have done on it just so you can make sure I'm doing the right thing.

Just saw how much was done on the NES synopsis good to see it's almost finished.

SNES and Atari 2600 are almost finished too...

I'm sure what you have is good. I'll look at it tonight when I get a chance. Just make sure you fill out as much headline info as you can, include the web address you pull the info from on the very last line, and remove any tabs or other weird characters or the "[1]" crap that shows up when you pull from wikipedia.

I would also recommend that you stop to Consoleclassix.com first for the best synopsis info before you go on to wikipedia or other sites.

Thanks Crash.... good to hear from you again and we all look forward to your contribution to the project.

Later,
~Rx


EDIT: Just checked it out. Looks great man

Yea thanks I was just a little bit worried about the length of some of them is there any restriction on maximum length?

I'm sure there is a max length now, but I have yet to hit it. Madmab did some adjusting and I haven't broken it with any of the lengths on mine yet.

Progress of the nes synopsis:

US-EU English roms:

A-E: COMPLETE! ~Rx
F: Purged, Headline fields created by Rx; completed by Gilou9999
G-H: COMPLETE! ~Gilou9999
I-L: Purged, Headline fields created by Rx; completed by Gilou9999
M: COMPLETE! ~Lawdog
N-R: Purged, Headline fields created by Rx; completed by Gilou9999
S: Purged, Headline fields created by Rx
T-U: Purged, Headline fields created by justgoonies; Complete by Gilou9999
V-Z: Complete ~Mega_Man_(?)

Lightgun and multigames carts: complete by Gilou9999
Translations: Complete ~Rx
Update Hacks: Complete ~Rx
All FDS Games: Complete ~Rx

Only "S" need to be made now, and guess what? i'm working on it right now!! the nes synopsis will be 100% finished this week for the licensed games, and that's a good news for the public release!

Nice work man!

Hopefully I'll have the full 2600 synopsis up here sometime tonight too so you guys can mess around with that new beta that Madmab updated. I'll have datfiles and the Enhanced Artwork up as well. No videos yet though..... we still need over 200 to be made.

If things go well, we'll have a full SNES synopsis by the end of July as well. I will probably end up re-testing the roms in the XPORT emu since we will see the emu updated and you made the dynamic skin too. I know that XPORT plays about 25 roms that ZSNESXBox doesn't play. I wonder how many that ZSNESXBox plays that XPORT's doesn't?

These synopsis' could always use improvement of course, but all the games are represented and I tested that they all work with the roms in my datfiles. I'll wrap up the headline info for the games whenever sort/filter is made available.

Later,
~RX


P.S.....

Hey madmab. Two questions about the synopsis....

1) Could we remove the CRC header of the game if it is found? I was hoping to only see the CRC number when we need it (when we're missing it).

2) Could we underline the title to the games?

I was screwing around, putting an underline of 25 characters right below the game title and another right below the last piece of headline info before the asterisk. The one below the headline info looks great, but the one below the title is too low. Plus, if it was "attatched" to the game title, then it wouldn't scroll off the screen as soon as you moved the text.

Not sure how doable that second one is.

Hey guys.

I know I didn't claim hot-potato on it, but I figured nobody has done anything with it since February and decided to clean up the LYNX synopsis a bit while I was using the LYNX emu to test out madmab's recent artwork fixes.

Just did some re-arranging of things, cleaning up some text and adding about 5 prototype games that weren't in there. (Not really adding much, just giving them representation).

It's in by no means "done", but it's a little cleaner and now it works with all my roms.

Let me know if anybody added anything to this and if work needs to be merged.

Later,
~Rx

Okay.... Finally!

Got the Atari 2600 ready to upload. I've still got the hot potato on it though because I'm sure I'll be making more changes. Check it out!

Look for the Xtras thread to be updated with Artwork packs and datfiles before the end of the night too.

Looks like we've got:

530 Boxart
127 Title Shots
642 Action Shots
611 Carts (and 26 Blank Carts)

And we only need 213 videos!

Here's the links to the 2600 and the updated LYNX synopsis:






Later,
~Rx

Hey gilles999... let us know when your done with the NES synopsis so I can pull all the crc's from it and add them to the cheat code database.

Yes i know guys, you are waiting for my synopsis; hopefully lawdog is helping me for the last letter "s". I'll give it to you this week for sure (my work is almost finished for a 100% licensed games synopsis).
We are reaching the end my friends!

p.s.: really great what you have done with the atari 2600 synopsis resX, that was a big baby!

Thanks man. SNES looks just as good. I'd expect it to be done sometime before August (hopefully).

Here is the BIG baby synopsis! (2 megas of pure greatness for all the nes lovers!)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TMBP1YYZ

licensed games "A to Z!!" are 100% complete (thx to lawdod to help me with the "s" letter, all lightgun games have synopsis, i have added all my crc's, i have also completed some famous jap games (all the dragon ball z games, the hokuto no ken games, super mario 2 jp, etc...) and i have credited all the helpers in the top of the file!

Madmab it's up to you bro to add the last touch before the public release bro'!

p.s.: i know it's a copy/paste from status x, but sometime our private site is down, so i want to be sure you'll read this!

Do we have any type of WIP SNES synopsis? I'll need one for testing..

Here's the SNES synopsis: DOWNLOAD

I'm still working on it so I still have the hot potato.

So.... you guys are done with NES for now, right? I'll take the hot potato on that one too if you are.

Later,
~Rx

Hey guys. I asked this months ago and got no response. I appreciate what the members here are doing for the emu scene to preserve classics/nostalgia, but i've been watching this thread about these new emu's for almost a whole year now and not one person has ever mentioned a proposed release date for these emu's. All's i ever see is technical jargon going on. . It seems you guys are so close yet everytime i check in here there's nothing different.
Are you guys at least nearing a release of some sort?

Ive heard that a select few have play tested the beta and its very very very near completion. Apparently brings a whole new fresh feel to the emulation scene. So it probably wont be long now. I too have found the whole thing interesting. The wait will be worth it.

Yeah... Generally anybody here who's found time in the last year to contribute to the project has at least a beta or two for their troubles.

We didn't (and still don't) want to release anything that's very buggy to the public and get a ton of responses about fixing things we are already aware of. There are also several other things that we want to implement before release as well.

We figure, if somebody has gone to the trouble of making videos, working on the synopsis, adding cheat codes or any of the other misc BS that I've been trying to put together (privatley for two years before going public a year ago), than they're likely to stick around and help out more when they have working betas that nobody else has. (Incidentally, with all of the people who now have betas in their possession, I'm still unaware of anyone who we've given them to who has leaked them)

We're defenatley not hiding anything from anyone. It's just at this point it's far more beneficial to the entire scene to have something special to give people who really help out with the project, rather than have a thousand people download the beta, one hundred of them say thanks and then we're on our own again still.

This method has worked great with the video creation so far. The Atari 2600 is the first system that I actually released artwork for before the videos were done and I'm still getting help from people (at least one person) who have (has) helped on other systems because they really know how great this project is going to be when it's complete.

When I first started the Xtras project, more than a few people bitched at me that I was being an ass for not just giving away all my hard work for nothing and telling me that I shouldn't dangle it in front of everyone. Well.... since then we've had more than 1,000 to 1,500 videos made by a handful of members here that likely would never have been made if we didn't play the game this way.

All I can say at this point is patience... it will definately be worth your wait.

Otherwise... If you wanted to lend a hand, just say the word.

~Rx

Yeah... I'd have to say that the people working on this have definitely earned their paycheck. Especially the main helpers and the people who drop in and help from time to time.

It's just one of those things where we get close to what appears a potential release and then new ideas/stuff comes up. I was just looking at the changelist the other day and it is a rather hefty list of items! So maybe after adding a favorites list it will be time. We have some synopsis filter/sort plans but those may take longer than I would like.

Since the beginning of the year time has been scarce for me and finding decent blocks of times to come up with new code has been difficult. Converting over emu's and carrying over fixes from SVC's are fairly easy for me to do, even with all the distractions. For example I added a new palette to A7800 and may be able to get light gun support in.

Anywho we've been planning a NES public beta release for the last month or so but things just seem to keep coming up. But really I just have to finish up the cheat codes and there is some discussion going on between us on how to deal with the new media directory structure. Although that forum seems to be MIA atm.

You guys are done with the NES synopsis for now, right?

That's the next one I'm going to tackle when I release the full SNES synopsis sometime this week or next week.



EDIT: Guys......?

I'm probably going to start working on this in the next few days, so I want to know that what we have up there is the newest. Thanks...

Hey guys!!!!

You spending too much time posting at the other site? I need to know if I can edit the NES synopsis that's up on the main thread. The one that was uploaded on July 4th.

Later,
~Rx

For real! haha
I am losing track...

Well I was getting ready to pack it up in preperation for the official public beta release. But all I'm using it for right now is the CRC's. Finally got the rest of the cheat codes keyed in just need to finish adding the CRC's to the cheats.

Cheatcodes DB is ready now. So I'm pretty much ready to pack and ship this one!

Glad you're all set to go...

What say you give me a few days to see if I can clean it up and add things to it?

I'm 100% sure that it doesn't even come close to containing all the roms included in the Xtras set. Good thing is, it's got all (or at least most of) the Licensed US/Europe roms.... bad thing is it probably doesn't have many hacks/translations (I can't remember how much of that if any I did before). I know for sure that it doesn't have the 150 or so games that Stupot1 added after the "Final" Xtras release came out.

So.... to make this perfectly clear.....

Gilles and Madmab, we are in agreement that the synopsis posted on this thread from July 4th is the most current and up-to-date NES synopsis out there and neither of you are going to make any changes on it until I post the updated one?

Later,
~Rx

Sure, that's fine by me. I've always had a "when it's done" attitude anyways.

I'll just pack up Gilles latest skin update in the meantime.

I got plenty of other junk to keep me busy in the meantime..

Yeah IM can be nice, but then I'd never get anything done and my other half would kill me.