Manually match artwork?

[GiSWiG]

Sorry if this has been answered already, but I cannot find it.

I've run a scan to match the artwork to the rom, but it did not do all of them. I downloaded the set from emumovies and the missing ones are there, so I guess I got three questions...

How can I manually associate the proper artwork? Some ROMs, I need to use snaps from other sites.

Is there an option to rescan or is it automatic?

What is the best naming convention to get it right?

Thanks!

[nullPointer]

Hi GiSWiG and Welcome to the GameEx forums!

I'll address your questions in the order in which they were asked.

How can I manually associate the proper artwork? Some ROMs, I need to use snaps from other sites.

If I'm understanding the question correctly, all you would need to do is rename the artwork exactly the same as the ROM (minus the extension). Then you would just need to put the renamed artwork into the artwork directory(s) you've configured. If you're looking to get sophisticated about it, I'd take a look at Perfect Match written by our forum's very own Tempest.

Is there an option to rescan or is it automatic?

The GameEx artwork download feature uses the exact same functionality as the EmuMovies Download Service Utility. So if you wanted to force an immediate rescan, I'd probably just use that.

What is the best naming convention to get it right?

Depends on what ROM set we're talking about. Generally speaking No-Intro is preferred, then TOSEC, and trailing in a distant third is GoodNames. Then you've got some dark horses like ReDump for disc images etc.

Good luck to you!

[GiSWiG]

The GameEx artwork download feature uses the exact same functionality as the EmuMovies Download Service Utility. So if you wanted to force an immediate rescan, I'd probably just use that.

Do you have to change the download folder or do you copy the files to the Assents folder?

P.S. I'm just starting out with NES ROMS. I've used the Goodtools names but it didn't get me any further

[Tempest]

I believe that Emumovies uses the no-intro naming convention.

[nullPointer]

Do you have to change the download folder or do you copy the files to the Assents folder?

P.S. I'm just starting out with NES ROMS. I've used the Goodtools names but it didn't get me any further

Typically you would set the download folder to your existing artwork directory. Among other things the EmuMovies utility will scan the artwork directory to determine what artwork files you already have (it will skip those), and what files need to be updated in the event that better/newer artwork has been uploaded to EmuMovies.

GoodTools names should work fine, but as I noted above No-Intro is probably the preferred naming standard.

Edit:

I believe that Emumovies uses the no-intro naming convention.

Tempest may be correct here. I thought the download utility employed some sort of name matching algorithm, but I myself use No-Intro, so I'm not 100% certain on that

[Tempest]

It does do a fuzzy match, but obviously would have better luck matching no-intro to no-intro. Sometimes game titles are completely different between the various naming conventions.

[GiSWiG]

I've never really dealt with No-Intro before although I've seen it in passing. I've usually used Goodtools to verify the ROMs, strip out what isn't English, keeping English translated ones, then I rename then to a friendlier name like 'ROMS Name' instead of 'ROM Name (v.1.5) (J) (Eng+T0.99ds)[!]'

So how do I convert to no-intro? I can rename my ROMs to GoodTools and go from there.

[nullPointer]

So how do I convert to no-intro? I can rename my ROMs to GoodTools and go from there.

It sounds like you're familiar with ROM management software such as ClrMamePro or ROM Center, so basically you just need to grab the applicable No-Intro DAT from here, use that as your data source in your ROM management software, and run the tool against your ROM set. If you're running against a GoodTools set, it will probably take a while since it will have a lot of ROMs to uncompress and subsequently recompress. It goes with out saying, but you'll want to back up your ROM set before attempting this.

As a side note, you'll generally want to avoid renaming ROMs from one of the standard naming conventions. There are parts of GameEx and the EmuMovies utilities that rely on the utilization standardized ROM naming. There are multitudes of ways to exercise control over how your ROMs are actually displayed in GameEx (i.e. they will be displayed in a more friendly format despite having all the markup in the file name), so it's not the end of the world or anything.

[GiSWiG]

Actually, I just finished it with ROM Center. It doesn't like the translated roms but I can't speak Japanese. So I extracted the ones from my full merged set, let ROMCenter name the original Japanese ones, renamed the translated ones to that name, removed all the ones from the full merged set, copied the renamed translated ones over, deleted one that seemed like a crap ROM, and I now have a modified NoIntro named set zipped in individual zip files. The same amount of ROMS -1. And probably about 30mins of time.

As long as the artwork matching goes by name and not CRC, then I'm thinking I'm in good shape. I'll import tomorrow cause I'm feeling a little sick right now.

Thanks for the help.