new compilation creation tool in the making

[jotd]

Hi all,

Been working on a lot of scripts for a while, but decided to make it more serious this time.

I'm about to release a new tool to create AGS-based compilations

What's new you're going to ask? Well, this tool does all the job:

- it scans the games directory for whdload slaves
- it analyses and extracts the info (game name / copyright) from whdload slave
- it creates startup scripts
- it creates startup sequence and inserts all needed files to boot AGS from an empty disk
- it tries to find a matching game screenshot from my personal database (delivered with the tool)
- it's currently able to produce menu for whdload, but soon will be able to produce menu for CD32load / CD32load HD IDE / JST, for HD, CF, or CDs

no manual intervention is needed, that's the cool point.

tool is command line but also GUI, running on Windows:



some examples:




I have passed the contents of my personal "CD32load compatible" arcade-like games and it created a bootable file set with all stuff required to run all the games from whdload.

Comments? requests for beta? anything.

[spudje]

Nice!!

[Amigajay]

Great work JOTD! I prefer to work manually , but this will help a lot of others to create their own compilations.

[Amiga1992]

YEah this would be great for a quick and dirty setup for hard drives for CD32s.
Thanks JOTD!

[jotd]

The tool is now able to create menus with images for whdload & cd32load & cd32load (IDEHD mode).

all 3 modes have been tested and work. No copyright infringement since all copyrighted data (kickstart ROMs) must be provided by the user. I'll post a test version in my dropbox in a few days.

Note that if ppl are interested by IFF/ILBM mass rescaling tools I wrote some for the task (taking all 320x256 iGame screenshots to convert to 640x200 IFF using only Windows tools like netpbm/image magick convert and some python wrapping). This wasn't exactly trivial BTW.

[liveevil]

This sounds fantastic ! As it's a Windows tool does that mean that all the WHDLoad games have to be extracted ? I know that a few of the games don't extract properly on a Windows filesystem. There is a short list of the ones that have problems on the server under 'Unpack on Amiga' but I extracted several of Retroplay's LHA files to my PC and got some different results. I found that I needed to extract them with WinRAR because if you use 7zip it doesn't keep the empty directories, WinRAR does. Also there were a lot that left files on my PC that I couldn't delete, I had to use a special program to delete them. These were not listed on the server as 'Unpack on Amiga'.

This is a similar tool to what Cyberhead97 is writing but yours seems to be a lot lot easier to use (hopefully !). So could you give more info on how it works ? Does it create a bootable PFS3 HDF file as a result ? Can it scan multiple game directories ? Looking forward to your work. Thanks.

[jotd]

Originally Posted by liveevil

This sounds fantastic ! As it's a Windows tool does that mean that all the WHDLoad games have to be extracted ?

The input isn't any packs or whatever. You have to unpack games, and keep the relevant slave & data dir (or you get an error when processing)

Originally Posted by liveevil

I know that a few of the games don't extract properly on a Windows filesystem. There is a short list of the ones that have problems on the server under 'Unpack on Amiga' but I extracted several of Retroplay's LHA files to my PC and got some different results.

I know some (Puzznic, Batman): spaces at the end of the name, other strange chars which also prevents ISO burning, but installs/slaves have been fixed to use more standard filenames.

Originally Posted by liveevil

I found that I needed to extract them with WinRAR because if you use 7zip it doesn't keep the empty directories, WinRAR does. Also there were a lot that left files on my PC that I couldn't delete, I had to use a special program to delete them. These were not listed on the server as 'Unpack on Amiga'.

must be some KG packs. I'm not supporting those directly. You could report that to him.

Originally Posted by liveevil

This is a similar tool to what Cyberhead97 is writing but yours seems to be a lot lot easier to use (hopefully !). So could you give more info on how it works ? Does it create a bootable PFS3 HDF file as a result ? Can it scan multiple game directories ? Looking forward to your work. Thanks.

The tool cannot create HDF files (I'm interested if someone has some python script to do that), it just takes a "GAMES" (or other) root dir (or multi-root dir), and scans for slaves in it.
It computes the ID of the games from the slaves, and creates AGS menus from all the slaves at the same level.

Ex: if you have C:\foo\bar\MY_HD\GAMES, it creates startup seq, all required dirs in C:\foo\bar\MY_HD. So when you start winuae you just select this dir, make it "bootable", and it works.

If you want it to work on a real miggy, then mount this partition, your system & your amiga HD drive in Winuae and copy all the files to your fresh amiga HD (CD32load HD mode needs FFS only, WHDload mode can use any format, PFS..)

Special CD32Load mode features looking up game name in a built-in database to set the proper joypad/keys mapping (can be a lot of work to do manually).
It also tries to find a relevant image in the internal IFF image base. There's a good % of success on known games.

It can also take a kickstarts directory as input, to copy on the DEVS/Kickstarts dir of the target.

Extra tools developped with other EAB members allow to create an ISO image. That's not built-in in the tool for now but that will be done if enough need it.

[liveevil]

Originally Posted by jotd

must be some KG packs. I'm not supporting those directly. You could report that to him.

I actually used Retroplay's fairly recent completely repacked WHDLoad files. I'll have to let Retroplay know.

Thanks for the info.

[liveevil]

Hi, how's it going with this ? Would love to try a Beta if it's fairly stable.

[jotd]

hi,

you can download it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oapjpn1skk..._maker.7z?dl=0

[liveevil]

Thanks, I only had time for a quick test, not really sure how to use it though ! I couldn't get any games to run. It scanned my GAMES directory and some said '0 games in category .....' in the DOS window. I ran it in WinUAE, got the AGS menu but when choosing a game it went to AmigaDOS and said 'Menu is empty, nothing to select'.

What's the 'missing DB filepath' and the 'Opts DB filepath' for ?
Do we have to add our own screenshots ?
What about tooltypes ?

Sorry for the questions, I just wasn't very successful. I'll check again tomorrow.

[liveevil]

I had another quick test and found out that the games need to be in a second sub-directory and now they boot. So I have for example :-

GAMES
..AGA
....BansheeAGA
....ChaosEngineAGA

etc.

I also got an error 'Cannot process JetstrikeAGA, 2 slaves found'. So it doesn't like folders with more than 1 slave ?

Have you tried Cyberhead97's package ? It contains screenshots and basic metadata for all WHDLoad Games and Demos. The only thing is there are a ton of options and it's based on an older version of Turran's WHDLoad packs (I prefer to use Retroplay's up-to-date repacked files). Maybe Cyberhead97 has some scripts you could use.

[jotd]

sorry, I didn't see your posts. Yes, games need to be at 1 level. I could change that.

Yes if there is more than 1 slave the tool doesn't know which one to choose. So delete the one you don't want.

you found the screenshots did you? I think there's a lot of them. If some package has some good screenshots, I'm interested, although I have a shitload of them now and even can create / rescale them using my python+imagemagick+netpbm tools to create valid IFF readable on amiga (I won't analyse another set of scripts, my scripts are fine and analyse whdload slaves directly from the .slave data)

I'll answer about the database .csv files later on. thanks for testing.

[jotd]

the "missing DB filepath" options aren't active yet. It's used when creating CD32load compilations. If a game is not in the database, it will have default controller mappings / possibly needs expert settings to run. So those games are logged in the "missing DB" csv file for you to complete the options (or do nothing if OK) and copy the line into the existing database csv file.

If you update a lot of lines, I'd appreciate if you send me a copy of your updates so I can deliver a better database next time.

[liveevil]

I extracted my AGA collection (which consists of English only and 1 version per game) and I got a few more errors.

JetstrikeAGA, 2 slaves found (you already know about this)
Sleepwalker [AGA] is duplicated in directories ? (but the directories and slaves are named different) :-

SleepwalkerAGA.Slave
SleepwalkerAGAComicRelief.Slave

Super Street Fighter II is duplicated in directories ? :-

SuperStreetFighter2AGA.Slave
SuperStreetFighter2DXAGA.Slave

SuprStrtFtr2TrboAGA, 2 slaves found

So after deleting one of the Sleepwalker versions and one Super Street Fighter II version, there are 146 AGA games detected.

Only 52 have screenshots and some are a title screen instead of in-game, for example :-
Alien_Breed_2_AGA
Clockwiser_AGA
Gunship_2000_AGA

Is there any way you can change the listed name with the full game name ? For example, the game 'D-Generation' is listed as 'DGnrto_G'.

Not to worry, it's a good tool for small compilations but currently requires some manual deleting and renaming.

[jotd]

- D-Generation case is a bug. I have to fix that... I could add a new column in the database for an alternate name too.

- the multi-slave in a dir: I cannot choose one for the user.
- screenshots: it's difficult to create IFF screenshots to the proper dimension without tools. I have scripts (in "extra"), but you need to install imagemagick (&rename convert to imconvert because of dumb Windows convert.exe too) & netpbm. Not trivial.

maybe you can e-mail me the screenshots you want integrated. Would be simpler. Contact me in private for that.

[jotd]

fixed some stuff:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v04968a10x..._maker.7z?dl=0

[jotd]

BTW most annoying, I'm using AGS2, and it seems to have a big memory leak: the first images work, then they don't until you reboot...

Is that a known problem and is there anyone out there to fix it? or should I change my gaming menu again?

Apart from that my tool works a treat... I should add whdload.prefs & other small options. But if you cannot see images, that's really a pity.

[jotd]

Found the reason at least: using FFS-formated drives, it fails, using Windows filesystem or PFS3 works perfectly (winuae or real amiga, cool!).

So must be a bug in async image loading in tasks on AGS (just speculating), that a proper filesystem is able to work with.