| preview of rom files in file manager [message #953] |
Mon, 29 October 2007 07:18  |
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I had an idea of adding possibility to preview rom files (nes) in konqueror (linux) file manager. The main thing here is to somehow get the preview icon from the rom file. I think mednafen could be idea engine for that.
Actually, I'm not really sure if this is actually possible - as roms seem to be like usual executable programs, but probably there could be some solution for that - maybe there are some graphical resources inside the rom file, or if the game could be rewinded for some seconds (to the graphical startup menu) and screenshot could be taken at this moment or whatever other way.
Any ideas how this could be implemented using the mednafen code base?
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| Re: preview of rom files in file manager [message #956 is a reply to message #953 ] |
Mon, 29 October 2007 19:40  |
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There are graphics inside ROM images, but they're not even guaranteed to be uncompressed or parseable without writing a special program for each game.
The most feasible(and time-consuming) would be to compile a list of MD5 hashes of the ROM image(sans header) and title screen screenshots.
If you want real-time previews of NES games... you could talk with blargg about his QuickNES emulator and the feasibility of this.
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| Re: preview of rom files in file manager [message #958 is a reply to message #956 ] |
Tue, 30 October 2007 18:05 |
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If the OS supports custom icons on any file, it would make most sense to have a program which went over your game files and added an appropriate custom icon. The best approach would be a program with a database of checksums and icon images. The images database would need to be built up by several people collaborating. The initial images could be created automatically with a script that loaded a game file and ran it a few seconds until the title screen, then these could be checked and over and redone as necessary. Some people might want box art instead, and I think there are some sites with these.
Having an emulator invoked in real-time doesn't seem worth the trouble of making it work, at least not in a general-purpose file manager. Maybe in an emulator front-end that already has some kind of game browser.
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| Re: preview of rom files in file manager [message #960 is a reply to message #956 ] |
Thu, 01 November 2007 16:50 |
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Ok, thank's for answers. I think the idea of having pre-created image data base is the most real to implement. This is like a music disk cover db, but much simpler. And also the fact that the number of roms is now limited and new ones are not created also simplifies the task - all the images of all games ever created could be put in one package (I think it might be 20mb maximum if each picture is 20kb). In this case, on a fly generation of game screenshot would not worth efforts - the base with images from gameplay or with cover art would be much better.
So, the last question - what can be the key for such database? If I take md5 sum of rom file for example, would it be the same for all roms of one and the same game? I mean, if I download one and the same game rom from 2 different resources, is it the same file with equal md5 sum, or they might differ - probably there different file formats or different rip method or something else - I don't know.
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| Re: preview of rom files in file manager [message #961 is a reply to message #960 ] |
Fri, 02 November 2007 00:07 |
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You should ignore the first 16 bytes of iNES (.nes) files, as the headers are often wrong or have junk in unused portions. The rest of the file is just a straight dump of the PRG and CHR ROM chips on the cartridge. There is another NES cartridge dump format (UNIF), but that's rare.
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| Re: preview of rom files in file manager [message #1220 is a reply to message #953 ] |
Sun, 27 April 2008 15:56 |
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ROM preview icons are shown in KDE3's konqueror and KDE4's dolphin - more details and also screenshots are available at http://romdigger.sourceforge.net/
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