A HOL screenshot pack?

[DDNI]

Hi all this is a long shot, is there an Amiga game screenshot pack that I can get to use with iGame?

If none exists, can one be dragged out of HOL?

I have manually gone to HOL and grabbed Screenies for a few dozen of my favourites, but damn is it labourious.....

[Retro-Nerd]

Get the Gamebase Amiga screenshots pack.

http://gbamiga.elowar.com/files/@Main/

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Get the Gamebase Amiga screenshots pack.

http://gbamiga.elowar.com/files/@Main/

Thanks for that! Now to MANUALLY copy the right file to the right directory and rename to iGame.iff ....! (a 1000 times )

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by DDNI

Thanks for that! Now to MANUALLY copy the right file to the right directory and rename to iGame.iff ....! (a 1000 times )

You need a file manager like Total Commander. You can rename the 1000+ files easily with a few clicks. Mark the files with Ctrl+/- and use the multi rename tool with Ctrl+M.

http://ghisler.com/index.htm

To add a screenshot to appear when a game is selected, simply save an image in
the game's folder with the name igame.iff.

Aah, that's stupid. Yep, you have to rename the screenshots manually then.

[OddbOd]

The problem is definitely soluble without resorting to manual renaming!

DDNI, if you can specify the problem a bit more completely (i.e. give some examples of your existing directory structure from the main igame directory downwards) then it shouldn't be too difficult to cook up a script that will sort and rename the screenshots from the Gamebase package into their correct locations.

[Retro-Nerd]

You can solve such problems always with scripts, but save it really some time in that case. You have to copy 1000+ igame.iff (when you find a good way to rename them) files into the correct WHDLoad folder.

[DDNI]

Hi, igame looks in each directory for a file called igame.iff
iGame lives in its own SCSI3:Igame/ directory

I have directorys from 0 (zero) - Z with each WHDload game in a separate folder within the folder of its capital letter.

ie. Alien Brred II AGA is in:

scsi3:A/AlienBreedIIAGA/

For iGame to find the Screenshot for ABII I need to put the correct gamebase pic in scsi3:A/AlienBreedIIAGA/ and rename it to igame.iff

If there is a way to automatically take the Gamebase screenshots, put the screenshot in the right place (based on KGs WHDLoad packs) AND rename the screenshot to igame.iff then I would be VERY VERY impressed.

[OddbOd]

Unless I'm ignoring something then all the hard work has already been done by Belgarath, KG and eLowar, it should be no big deal to match all the screenshots to their corresponding KGWHD names by using the info that is already in the GBA database and from that create a screenshot package that matches the format expected by iGame.

I'll make a start on it this afternoon - it's 7am here and I got to get some sleep.

[Retro-Nerd]

I'm curious if you are able to solve this tricky task in a short time.

[DDNI]

hmmm iirc the gamebase screenshots are .png format.

If you can get the pics in the right places, then a batch rename of all .png extension files in a given location to igame.iff would be straightforward.. no?

[DDNI]

@oddbod, any progress with this challenge??

[OddbOd]

Yup I'm finished! Download the pack from http://oddbod.merkin.cx/iGame_Screenshots.zip

Here's a few background notes to explain what I did and why it took so long to get finished.

The first step was extracting the screenshot filenames and the KGWHD pack names out of the Gamebase database, this was done by querying the relationship between the Games and Extras tables then filtering out all the matches that have no screenshots or no WHDLoad installs and pasting the result into a text file. I then used this list as the basis for a script to rename all the screenshots to match their corresonding WHDLoad zips. This took less than 5 minutes.

It was here that I noticed a serious problem. The names of KillerGorilla's zip files bear almost no relationship to the directory names of the installs that are packed inside, for example AlienBreed2_v1.3_AGA_0044.zip contains a directory called AlienBreed2AGA. This meant that to match everything up to the screenshot I would need to download all KG's packs again because the copies I had were all out of date. The download took about 40 hours!

The next step used a clever little tool called FoldMonkey which is able to generate directories from the names of existing files while at the same time renaming the files and placing them inside the newly created directory under a new name. This step is easier to do than explain and is the trick that made this whole exercise possible. Time taken was less than a minute.

Now I extracted all the WHDLoad zips over the top of the directories that were created in the previous step which took about 40 minutes. Now every WHDLoad directory had the correct screenshot sitting inside it (renamed to igame.iff as requested) all that remained was to run a few scripts that I had already to fix all the top-level directory names, sort them into alphabetical directories then zip it all up.

Phew, I've managed to bore myself

Two questions. Did I get it right? Were the pictures supposed to just be renamed or should they be converted to IFFs? (I dont trust documentation)

@Retro-Nerd: The solution took seconds, it was the implementation that took the time

[DDNI]

holy shamoly batman! we got a winner!
Damn i gotta get home and look at this.....!!

Brilliant work oddbod!

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

@Retro-Nerd: The solution took seconds, it was the implementation that took the time

That's what i've meant. Great job matey. This FoldMonkey tool sounds interesting, have to check this.

[DDNI]

A brilliant job! Well done and many thanks...

I now have a nice screenshot for every game in iGame.... You saved me from renaming hell!

BTW KillerGorilla might want to host your screenshot pack on his WHDownload website... Drop him a line.

[Belgarath]

*cough* whose screenshot pack?

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by Belgarath

*cough* whose screenshot pack?

LOL Sorry Belgarath a big mistake there!

Of course we are talking about the EXCELLENT Screenshot pack from BELGARATHS SUPERB GAMEBASE!

[Belgarath]

lol that's more like it

[OddbOd]

Glad to here it worked as expected.

@Belgarath: The image and information sources were clearly spelled out in a previous post, "all the hard work has already been done by Belgarath, KG and eLowar", is an unambiguous attribution. You have my thanks for an excellent resource.

Update: In-game screenshot packs are now available.

• Unmodified PNG version
• 256 Colour ILBM with RLE compression enabled this time

[Retroplay]

If I want to use 2 screenshots, a title pic and an ingame pic, how should I name the iff files ?
iGame.iff, iGame2.iff etc ?

[edit]
Doh nm.