Has anyone compiled screenshots for console emu's ???

[Skeleton]

Has anyone compiled screenshots for console emu's (Sega Genesis, NES, SNES, Atari 2600, etc.)??  

Ideally the screenshots would follow the Cowering's GOOD Tools naming convention so that the frontend would match the screenshot to the ROM name.  

I hate not having screenshots in my frontend for all the console games. I've considered making these screenshots myself, but this would be a huge, time-consuming undertaking (there are thousands) and that thing called "real-life" doesn't permit me to do this.

[Howard_Casto]

I think it's a good idea to start compling screenshots, but cowering's good naming convention isn't the preferred naming convention.  As a matter of fact I don't think I know of a single fe that actually uses it.  

99% of the fe's out there name the snapshot after the rom, and save it in png format.  

Here's my suggestion to ya.... whenever you play a game take a screenshot.  Don't worry about naming it or converting it right now.  In about a month compile them all and release them.  If eveyone running console emus can do that, in about 6 months we shall have a fairly complete set.  It's what I do with the arcade emulators.  You would be suprised how fast you can get them all.  I'm about to release a set that contains All of the available artwork for all of the non-mame arcade emus.  It's only taken me about 3 months to get them, and it's no hassle either.  I simply take about 15 minutes of my day and take a few snapshots and perhaps check out klov and the flyer archive to see if any new artwork is out there.  

[Lilwolf]

Also, consider just doing it yourself.

Why?

It's a great way to try each game at least once.

For a few weeks, start each game that doesn't have a screenshot... play it... and save one screenshot....

I have something similar in JFront.  You can set a favorite value (0-10).  You can also set a filter saying all games that don't have a favorite set on it.  

[twist]

Why doesn't someone make a program that opens an emu, runs a game, takes a SS, and closes it? All you would have to do is collect all the games, and leave the computer running.

You could put all the games in a folder, and have each game run from there. Not too hard...

[Lilwolf]

Howard looked into do this for Raging Dragon, but not knowing how long to wait made it...well..take bad pictures...

[twist]

Set the wait to 30seconds or something..it can't take that long.

[Howard_Casto]

Set the wait to 30seconds or something..it can't take that long.

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

[Howard_Casto]

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

All of that is good but i think your a bit confused on cowerings naming convention.  What you described isn't his naming convention.  It's rather odd and I don't remember the details.  Also png files are the preferred format although many support jpg, png has better quality when you stretch the image, as some fe's do.  This is easy enough to fix though, just use ifanview and batch convert.  

[bdp]

Howard,

Yeah, I know Cowering's conventions go further than that, when I get home from work I can send more specific examples, but whatever the case, I don't know anyone who collects roms and renames them all manually, most everyone uses the Goodtools to rename, so it would make sense that the screenshot names do match the goodtools name for each ROM.

[)p(]

Howard,

Yeah, I know Cowering's conventions go further than that, when I get home from work I can send more specific examples, but whatever the case, I don't know anyone who collects roms and renames them all manually, most everyone uses the Goodtools to rename, so it would make sense that the screenshot names do match the goodtools name for each ROM.

cowering's will work but as it has all sort of extra info in the filename is not really suited for this. What we would like to see is a conversion utility that takes cowerings filename and extracts the pieces of info from it and outputs it in a clearmame datfile we can use to generate gamelists...

Peter
Actually we are hoping that

[bdp]

That's fine with me as long as there's a mass rename utility for my console roms other than Cowering's that I could run my roms through.  If the rom names don't match the screenshot names, the frontend isn't going to be able to link them up.

--BDP

[Howard_Casto]

Console roms should be named to match the game's title with proper version information similar to how it's done for mame.  In other words the clear and complete title of the game, no abbreviations, no added comments, followed by a space, and some parentesis containing any additional version information.  

Versions should be named with the abbreviation "ver" followed by a space and the actual numbers.  In the case of console roms this can be substituted for the Reigon or the display type. (ntsc or pal)

Artwork should match this naming convention.  

There is, however, one more factor involved..... namely determining which roms we choose to be the "parent" roms and thus the main artwork is named after.  I'm not sure how well documented console roms are but for mame the parent rom is the first revision.  Since it might very well be impossible to determine this, we could pick the ntsc/us version as a parent or more realistically the japaneese ntsc version.  

What all of this means is that we have to make full, very detailed, dat files for each console.  What makes this even harder is no one in their right mind has every single console rom... there are just too many of them.  

Ok thouse are my thoughts.  Btw the naming convention I mentioned above is already used in my vpinball utility and it seems to work very well, making very clear descriptions and also making the artwork easier to track down.  I will be releasing a artwork conversion utility eventually that will rename this files for you and get rid of the silly naming conventions they use now.  That is if it catches on ;-)

[bdp]

Howard,

Okay, questions/comments then -- First off, I agree with you on the Console roms, but the burning question is this -- Is there a renaming tool that supports this?  The only one I knew of was the Goodtools.  If there are other DAT files that will rename and check console roms to your standard would be fine with me, I just know that I'm not going to do it by hand!

Parent roms -- I just see it as this - Take a screenshot for each version.  That way you're safe.  Sure it's duplication and overkill, but at least you don't need to worry about it.  If there's 5 versions of Donkey Kong Country out for SNES, just have 5 screenshots.  That way you don't need to code all that parent/child relationship stuff in.

As for collecting roms, if we're going by Goodtools standards, I can say that I have access to a lot of complete sets.  There are collectors out there that keep them ALL.  It's just a matter of finding these folks and coming up with an assignment list.