Changelog

Changes¶

Added: Support for scraping of PDF manuals (Modules screenscraper, import and esgamelist) and gamelist output with these manuals for frontends (ES-DE Frontend, some EmulationStation variants). See configurations options manuals=true and gameListVariants=enable-manuals. Thanks for the initial PR, @pandino
Added: Present also release year as hint. This is useful when in interactive mode and more than one game with the same name is found. Skyscraper can be guided to prefer a specific game when the release year is added in parenthesis as part of the ROM name (or alias in aliasMap.csv). Thanks @mjkaye
Changed: Persistent config option for counting and scraping only games which have no game data in the cache. This is a commodity to the already existing flag with the same name. If you use a scraper with a scraping limit for games to be scraped at once (e.g. MobyGames). Documentation here. Thanks for the suggestion, @sleve_mcdichael

Added: Support for EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE Frontend). Use frontend=esde in config.ini and see documentation on the default settings. Thanks for the hints and for testing, @maxexcloo, @Nargash
Added: Entries in aliasMap.csv are now also applicable for Screenscraper. Thanks, @retrobit.
Added: Enhanced game name detection for ScummVM platform.
Changed: In module Screenscraper, in some cases if multiple media types are queried (NB: most queries are single-typed), now the first type is selected with the first matching region. Only if this does exists in any provided region, try the next type with all provided regions (in short: type has precedence over region). Previously the regions have been tried to match on any media type (=region had precedence over type), which resulted in picking the alternative type. This approach gave less suitable media files, especially for screenshots (type:ss) and screenshot from title screen (type: sstitle).
Fixed: Some corner-case bugs fixed, thanks to all reporters!

Feature: Preserve existing <folder/> nodes in gamelist or create skeleton <folder/> nodes when ROMs are stored in subfolders within a system folder, see frontend documentation and the gamelist specification.
Feature: Bash Completion on Linux installations. Use Tab twice for completion of Skyscraper options. On RetroPie the scriptmodule will handle the installation. On non-RetroPie-Linux put the file supplementary/bash-completion/Skyscraper.bash into $XDG_DATA_HOME/bash-completion/completions/ ($XDG_DATA_HOME is equivalent to $HOME/.local/share). Open a new bash -- et voila!
Feature: Customizable installation folder when running make install. See PREFIX in skyscraper.pro.
Feature: Improved MacOS support. Unified update script update_skyscraper.sh (thanks, @jeantichoc) and Docker support via Dev Container (kudos, @retrobit).
Fix: Various minor fixes reported from the community on different setups, thanks!

Feature: Import of data in XML format is now more lax (does not rely on strict identical indention). Read also the hint here
Feature: Configuration option tidyDesc added. See documentation here
Feature: Documentation reviewed and hosted with mkdocs for ease of access. See here
Update: Added index of configuration parameters to CONFIGINI.md. Details see here
Update: Refactored skyscraper.cpp class. Factorised configuration settings into settings.cpp
Update: Various other refactorings to remove duplicated code
Fix: Quit Skyscraper when neither -p <PLATFORM> nor --cache help nor --flags help is provided
Fix: Warning remediated when NULL image was applied in composer/gamebox rendering

Feature: Mobygames scraper genres limited to two most relevant genre categories ('Basic Genre' and 'Gameplay')
Update: Removed legacy and unused code
Update: Code formatting (LLVM)
Fix: TGDB scraper retrieves screens from screenshot/ and as well screenshots/ URL path as some platforms (supported since configurable platforms) have their screenshots served from screenshots/.

Feature: Mobygames scraper respects game id from mobygames.com website via --query=<gameid>. Handy to hint to the right game information when usual search returns false positives.
Feature: Scrapers which provide an web API (Screenscraper, Mobygames, The Games DB (tgdb)) have the full platform information shipped with this release (see <scraper>_platforms.json files). These files are used as reference.
Feature: Less 'aliases' maintenance needed in former platforms.json.
Update: Streamlined external platform configuration. File platforms.json is replaced by peas.json (platforms, extensions/formats, aliases and scrapers). Precise platform determination for Screenscraper, Mobygames and TGDB via platform_idmap.csv See platforms documentation for details.
Fix: Failed media download when TGDB provides PNG files instead of JPG files and vice versa.
Update: Scriptmodule for this Skyscraper now official part of RetroPie.

Feature: OpenRetro scraper retrieves now also score/rating, if available for a game. Precedence is to use reviews from external websites first (right header), then the Score label (above the game details). See this example
Feature: Additionally to the existing import with rating values of 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5 ... 5 ("Star rating") it is possible to use 0.1 ... 1.0 scale for rating in import files (EmulationStation gamelist.xml internal rating range). See also import formats
Fix: Wrong score/rating calculation from Mobygames scraper / Mobygames API. See also this gist on how to update your existing Skyscraper db.xml files.
Fix: Use of --query free-text search in OpenRetro scraper fixed. This bug did not occur when the switch is ommitted and an Amiga WHDLoad file is provided to Skyscraper.
Fix: RetroPie Scriptmodule, removed surplus boolean negation (Thanks @s1eve-mcdichae1)
Fix: RetroPie Scriptmodule, fixed use of legacy option --unattend (Thanks @windg)
Update: RetroPie Scriptmodule, relaxed the remove function of the scriptmodule to not zap the Skyscraper cache. Plus various cleanups.

updated mamemap.csv from MAME 0.240 (Arcade).dat, fbneo.dat, mame2003-plus.xml and cleanup of surplus device information
update script for make mamemap.csv does no longer rely on mame binary
removed discontinued *.php scripts
platforms.json sorted and formatted
updated documentation especially to reflect the supported platforms
scriptmodule file for RetroPie aligned to their naming convention
Mobygames platform information refactored from hardwired mobygames.cpp.to mobygames.json

These pull requests from other repos have been merged into this fork.