Archive:Games Library Ideas

Development article for Awen's Games Library concept (and other developers assisting him with this with project).

The source of this new concept

Many of these ideas started been discussed in these threads in the XBMC feature suggestions forum:

• http://forum.xbmc.org/tags.php?tag=games+library

Games Library Concept

To allow XBMC users to reference and play Games.
Games may have various forms such as Emulated Roms, Standalone Executables, (XBMC plugins ?)...
The idea is not to compete with über roms integrators, but to offer a rich and detailed interface to play from XBMC.

Goals of the new Games Library

• 1) Tight integration
• 2) Detailed information
• 3) Smart behavior

inspired from 1) minimizing the glitches between hard context changes, consistency with other library look'n'feel

inspired from 2) a lot of information about games on the web, description, genre, credits, snapshots, cross referencing, statistics

inspired from 3) suggestion for user, statistics about playing, 'most played' tab

Implementation ideas

?

Features List

This is what we want to achieve

• Python Integration: scrapers and all
• Dedicated GUIs
• Platform Portability
• Game Information Dialog
• Emphasis on Immersion
  • Soft transition between app contexts
  • Ambient sounds (skin dependant ?)
  • Detailed game description

And this is what needs to be done for :)
The Task List

• Better GUI: intermediary solution for settings and various record forms
  • Versatile solution inspired from plugin settings (0.2)
  • Record forms: executables, games, launching infos
  • Game Description über Panel (0.2)
  • Game Category Finalization
• Game Classification
  • Game Categories
  • 'Stand Alone' game support (0.2)
• Better Thumbnail Management
  • Analysis (0.2)
  • Animated thumbnails ?
  • Icons for Categories, and executables
  • Overlay support: rating
• External Execution
  • Analysis
  • Launching params and related options
  • XBMC related code (suspend-like)
• User Info
  • Analysis
  • Last Played
  • Most Played
  • Rating
  • Stats
  • Suggestion (=>dedicated scraping)
• Plugins Support
  • Analysis
  • Python bindings
    • 'Plugins' Field on the 1st Game Menu Page
    • Contextual Plugin on Game Basis ('Get Info', 'Get Rom' ;))
  • Native C++ History.dat support as plugin testbed (0.2)
• Database
  • Record/SQL implementation
    • User Info
    • Thumbnails
    • Launching cmd line/options
    • Game description/fields
  • Auto rebuilding, at least for roms (is that a good idea ?)

Obtaining metadata

project 'scrapers friendly' + use of dedicated community files (like mame's history.dat)