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Has anyone compiled screenshots for console emu's ???
twist:
Set the wait to 30seconds or something..it can't take that long.
Howard_Casto:
--- Quote from: twist on August 13, 2002, 05:40:26 pm ---
Set the wait to 30seconds or something..it can't take that long.
--- End quote ---
You would be suprised. Each attract mode, console or otherwise is a little different. I've found no matter how long you wait, at least 60% of your screenshots are going to be of a nice black screen.
twist:
you could always find an open-source emu and modify it to do what i said before, but instead it detects when the game is loaded and snaps the shot then...
Howard_Casto:
I don't think your getting this.... I CAN detect when a game is laoded. Remember you would only be getting snaps from the attract mode, and thus snaps that aren't a black screen are only captured about 40% of the time. Even when you do get a snap it's probably of some crappy intro sequence, which has nothing to do with gameplay.
I can do the same for arcade games.. but half of the time you would get a nice blank screen, a picture of the startup sequence.
Each game boots up totally different for the last and it's games bootup/intro sequence is different. It would be impossible to automate such a task without writing a emu from scratch desigend specificy for this, with the proper timer for each game built into each individual game driver.
bdp:
I actually think this is a fantastic idea. I once considered doing this, however the thought of tackling them was quite frightening.
The original suggestion of using cowering's goodtools naming convention IS spot on. This is the ONLY way to do it.
For example, if you collect ALL the SNES roms, you're likely going to run them through the goodtools to check them and rename them (most ROM collectors do).
So, for Donkey Kong Country v1.0 for example, the ROM is called
"Donkey Kong Country v1.0.zip"
You'd want your screenshot to be called
"Donkey Kong Country v1.0.jpg"
Only because most of the popular frontends that I know will look for a screenshot that matches the file prefix exactly. (the .jpg part doesn't matter).
One way to tackle this may be to find a large group of us that have ALL of a certain console, then assign a certain letter/letters to each person. Agree on a resolution (640, 800, 1024, etc..) and a format (GIF, PNG, JPG) and go from there.
If an emu only takes one format, we can always use a batch graphic converter to match them up in size and format if we really need to. The NAME given to each snap is going to be the most important.
Romcenter and other type programs currently do have DAT files that can check MAME marquee packs, screenshot packs, etc. These type of DAT files could eventually be created for console screenshots as well, but that's the long term.
I bet Howard could serve these all at Lazarus, just like he's doing with his excellent packs for the smaller emus and logos so far.
Thoughts?
BDP