Pictures, box art, and snaps, oh my...

[dishwater63]

Ok, I'm just gonna lay it all out there, full disclosure: I know very little about GameEx and the ROM scene in general.

Now that we have the painful disclaimer out of the way, let's get down to business. I'm trying to figure out the best route to add images, such as box art and title screens, to the previews of games. I understand that there's a particular folder set aside for each emulator that's labeled "box art" and "manuals" and so forth, but I don't understand how to populate those folders. I downloaded a screenshot zip from the main GameEx site to which I realized that the naming convention corresponded to the GoodSets nomenclature. That's all well and good, but what if you use a different set, like no-intro? Or if you're an idiot, like me, and scrubbed all the unwanted symbols and icons ([!], [h1], etc) out of names? Is there a way to scrub those out of the display name, but keep the original name intact? Also, what's up with this EmuMovies site? I just don't really understand it. How do I download things from them? I see there's a separate download service utility for EmuMovies, but do I need that to download box art databases from them?

I apologize for the myriad of questions, but I just get a bit flustered when I search for answers and I come up dry. Trust me, I'm definitely not the kind of guy to start a thread without thoroughly exhausting the "search" button. Generally, my problem comes in the form of not knowing how to funnel down my question (as you can see in the long winded paragraph above), but I try and try until I find the right combination of words. However, in this situation, I feel as though I can't find a single, straightforward answer.

So please, help a fellow game nerd out here. Throw me a bone, point me in the right direction, give me some words of wisdom, I humbly kneel at your feet.

[starbuck]

Its acually very easy. Click on the dropdown box at the end of the line ,box, snap etc. and point it to the folder you have your snaps, etc. in. Check out emumovies. They are setup to download automately the pics you need and they will match your rom names.

[dishwater63]

Thanks for the input, but could you be a bit more descriptive . You said click the dropdown box "at the end of the line", but what line are you referring to? Then you tell me to check out emumovies, but check out what specifically? Do I use the download serfice utility or do I download databases directly?

[T. Goodchild]

You can do it all manually by going into Setup Wizard>Custom>Advanced Emulator Setup then simply choosing whatever paths you already have but I have to also strongly suggest EmuMovies for all artwork. It does cost some money but think of it as a long term investment, and for it you get a program which only asks you for your roms folder and then a place to store ALL the artwork and it does the rest of the work automagically. After it all gets downloaded you only have to tell GameEx where those paths are and thats it.

[dishwater63]

So after some more reading and testing, I decided to ditch the GoodSets and use No-intros because the box art, snaps, and the like all use the same naming convention.

[nullPointer]

This is an excellent call (IMO). In doing so you also ditch a bunch of bad dumps, alternate dumps, etc. GoodSets were fantastic in their time, and even still serve as a good archival tool consisting of 'all known dumps', but in terms of playable sets they really are a bit antiquated at this point (IMO once again).

[KRC]

So after some more reading and testing, I decided to ditch the GoodSets and use No-intros because the box art, snaps, and the like all use the same naming convention.

Good call, you can't go wrong with no-intro

[dishwater63]

This is an excellent call (IMO). In doing so you also ditch a bunch of bad dumps, alternate dumps, etc. GoodSets were fantastic in their time, and even still serve as a good archival tool consisting of 'all known dumps', but in terms of playable sets they really are a bit antiquated at this point (IMO once again).

Yeah, I've had GoodSets for a while now, but I always used them as a pick and choose kind of list. However, once I built my NESPC, they became cumbersome and unwieldy. After learning about No-Intro, I can now see why the majority of the community uses them. As you said, it's much of a playable library instead of an archival library.

I learn something new everyday. This place is great!

[Draco1962]

A great tool for helping to manage and name/rename your arcade art is Perfect Match by Tempest. You may want to give it a go with any manual renaming you may need to do to get things in order.

[dishwater63]

A great tool for helping to manage and name/rename your arcade art is Perfect Match by Tempest. You may want to give it a go with any manual renaming you may need to do to get things in order.

This is...AWESOME. I'm gonna use the crap outta this program! Thanks!