Format of [emulator].db3 file?

**gtdad** · February 10, 2013

Hi,

I'm trying to create an offline game-info scraper for thegamesdb.net. So far, so good - I can scrape XML info from the website and parse it quite easily.

Now comes the storage/integration part. I want to put the data into the emulator databases in c:\GameEx\Data\Emulators, and eventually - if I get it right - have it show up in the GameEx interface.

It's just that some of the fields in the database are not obvious. Publisher, Developer and Description are obvious, but what are "GoodName" or "NoIntro", for example?

Is there somewhere where the database format and fields are documented?

Also, anything else I should know? For example, does GameEx use the ROM name to look for a match, or does it first refer to the MAP file, then look for the mapping name in the database? Stuff like that.

Once the application is done, I hope it will be something I can share with the community.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

**nullPointer** · February 11, 2013

The GoodName, NoIntro, and TOSEC fields refer to ROM naming conventions as specified by those respective groups. Those fields in the .db3 database(s) are used to match your ROMs to the correct information in the database (I suppose you could think of it as a foreign key to the associated ROM naming convention). I'm going out on a limb, but if you were to incorporate those fields into a scraper you would need to cross reference the data scraped from gamesdb with DAT files from those groups. You can download any of the DATs corresponding with the associated group from the following locations:

No-Intro

TOSEC

GoodTools DATs are a bit more scattered, but they're also fairly antiquated at this point:

GoodTools