ZFBTool

ZFBTool is a utility specifically designed for the Data Frog SF2000 arcade system. It provides a user-friendly way to create .zfb files by pairing custom thumbnail images with game ROMs. It includes features for single-file processing and bulk processing from a selected folder. ZFBTool is a great tool for enhancing the SF2000 user experience by personalizing your game library.

Features

• Easily create .zfb files for your arcade ROMs
• Add custom thumbnail images for each ROM
• Single file and bulk processing capabilities

Dependencies

The following package is required:

• PIL

You can install this package using pip:

pip install Pillow

How to Use

1. Download ZFBTool-v1.1-python.zip and extract anywhere.
2. Ensure you have Python and the 'Pillow' package installed (see above).
3. Run the ZFBTool.pyw file, and you will see the GUI.
4. In the GUI, you can either create a .zfb file from a single ROM or choose to compress an entire folder of ROMs.
   • For a single ROM, input your PNG file and the name of your ROM file. Then click "Create ZFB File".
   • For multiple ROMs, go to File > Compress Entire Folder, and select the folder containing your PNG and ROM files. You will then be prompted to select an output folder.
   • When compressing multiple ROMs, your .PNG and .ZIP filenames must be the same.
   • After .ZFB files are created, you can rename them to change the title of the ROMs in the Arcade menu
5. After building the .zfb files, they should be moved into the following folders:
   • ZFB files: \ARCADE\
   • ROM files: \ARCADE\bin
6. Run frogtool to rebuild the game list

Please note that the thumbnail images must be in PNG format.

Renaming .ZFB Files

As of version 1.1, ZFBTool now supports renaming of .zfb files based on the data from the [clrmamepro .dat files] created by adcockm (https://github.com/vonmillhausen/sf2000/tree/main/arcade). Included are several .txt files:

ALL-INFO:

Files: fullset-romnames-all-info.txt and playable-romnames-all-info.txt

Entire description from clrmamepro data, with names sanitized for Windows filenames (ie: slashes converted to dashes, etc).

REGION-FULL:

Files: fullset-romnames-region-full.txt and playable-romnames-region-full.txt

Description from clrmamepro data with full region and set info. Anything after "/" (typically Japanese name) removed for brevity

REGION-SHORT:

Files: fullset-romnames-region-short.txt and playable-romnames-region-short.txt

Shortened region and set info, ex: (J) instead of (Japan), [p] [B] to denote prototype/bootleg, (copy 1) etc. used for copies

NO-INFO:

Files: fullset-romnames-no-info.txt and playable-romnames-no-info.txt

Only the name of the short game with no other information (except Gun.Smoke and Varth in playable set, to avoid duplicate filenames) WARNING: Use recommended only with the PLAYABLE set. FULL SET has many filename conflicts and is provided for reference only.

Advanced Users

Here are a few scripts for advanced users, or for implementing into your own scripts.

create-thumbnail.py

extract-thumbnail.py

extract-all-thumbnails.py

.ZFB File Format

based on taizou's description here

The .zfb files used by the Data Frog SF2000 are custom files that include a thumbnail image and references to a ROM file. Here's a brief overview of how these files are structured:

• The first 0xEA00 bytes: This portion is reserved for a thumbnail image in RGB565 RAW format with dimensions of 144x208px.

• The following bytes: This portion contains the actual filename of the ROM in the "bin" folder, preceded by four 00 bytes and followed by two further 00 bytes.

It's important to note that .zfb files for arcade games don't contain the actual game ROM, they only reference to it.

Credits

Thank you to taizou for the great work on frogtool, and to the entire Data Frog SF2000 community. This script is only possible thanks to the information that tzlion posted here: https://github.com/tzlion/frogtool#technical-details

Thank you to EricGoldsteinNz for the great work on tadpole, which is an excellent user interface to manage your SF2000 handheld system.

Thank you also to Von Millhausen for his excellent repository of information on the SF2000, which can be found here: https://github.com/vonmillhausen/sf2000

Contact

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvements, feel free to open an issue on this repository.