Release v1.4.3

A new update for bigscraper-qt is finally here. It's not the big UI update, but rather a smaller update that will enable you to continue scraping for now.

Fixes:

• Launchbox scraping works again (links are fixed)
• Logs actually log now (they do so on app exit)
• Having too many logs doesn't crash the app anymore
• Accents are removed in media filenames, which fixes metadata on Pegasus Frontend in Steam Deck's game mode
• Repeated log lines are not shown (no more [W] No controller found spam)

Release v1.4.2

This release is a minor release that holds plenty of small fixes, properly tested this time for functionality.

New Features:

• Added Scraping stats to the top right of the window when scraping
  • Currently, this only shows the current number of daily requests for ScreenScraper
• Added Colored terminal output (warnings are red, debug is grey, links are blue)
• Added -l flag, which displays links in terminal output
  • Note that links are not placed into logs, to protect users who need to share logs from unintentionally sharing passwords.

Fixes:

• Fixed numerous bugs related to ScreenScraper's errors not being handled properly, resulting in crashes
• Fixed a bug which caused a crash if the formatted name of the file and the formatted name of the game do not match
• Fixed a bug which caused a crash if ssuser is not found in game requests

Release v1.4.1

This release of bigscraper-qt provides some fixes to address issues found in v1.4.0.
Before listing these fixes, here are some minor new features:

• Log file management
  Now, log files are automatically cleared. By default, if there are over 50 log files, all older ones are cleared. The method used to clear old log files is based on their names: filenames that are first alphabetically are deleted first.
  The maximum number of log files is adjustable, but no dialog has been implemented yet in the app. Instead, you need to go to [bigscraper-qt config directory]/options.json to change the value in the options file. [bigscraper-qt config directory] refers to either ~/.config/bigscraper-qt {appimage} or ~/.var/app/io.github.fr75s.bigscraperqt/config/bigscraper-qt {flatpak}.

• Clear Cache button
  This option provides a quick way to delete all metadata stored on your device. Note that this deletes everything except for your configuration off your storage, meaning you will need to rescrape everything if you use it.

• New Systems under ScreenScraper (#7)
  The following systems have been added under ScreenScraper:

  • MAME
  • Neo Geo
  • Atomiswave
  • Sega Model II
  • Sega Model III

And here are the all-important fixes I referred to previously.

• Launch commands are now preserved when exporting for Pegasus, meaning you can re-export without your launch command being deleted (#3)
• Exporting for EmulationStation no longer crashes bigscraper-qt if the media folder doesn't already exist (#8)
• ScreenScraper scraping now doesn't stop if the release date is provided with a year only (#4)
• Passwords now hide as dots in the options menu, and are not shown in the logs (#6)

Note as well that in this update, the Local Paths option has been moved under the new Exporting category in the settings.

Release v1.4.0

This release of bigscraper-qt adds plenty of new features and some fixes.

• ScreenScraper Support
  As of this update, ScreenScraper has been added as a scraping module for bigscraper-qt. ScreenScraper provides excellent metadata, provided you have the actual game files. Video support with ScreenScraper is way better, as videos downloaded with ScreenScraper are guaranteed to be 30 second clips.
  Note that with ScreenScraper support, new options have been added to allow you to input your ScreenScraper login. This means you can benefit from the benefits of being registered or a contributor.
  Read more about scraping with ScreenScraper Here.

• Pegasus (Lutris IDs) export option
  With the addition of this option as an export format, you can now export games to Pegasus frontend replacing their filenames with their Lutris game IDs. This allows you to configure launch options externally in Lutris, rather than directly in the metadata file.

• Local Paths
  A new option was added to allow you to export with local paths (game.zip) instead of full paths (/path/to/game.zip). This allows you to transfer your metadata files along with your game files. You can choose to toggle it on or off, depending on your needs.

• Region Select
  Another new option added allows you to choose the region for image exports when exporting metadata, allowing you to display game metadata based on your region. As bigscraper-qt downloads all images, regardless of region, you do not need to rescrape to take advantage of this option.

This update also comes with some fixes; one I will specifically note regards a fix related to game file paths sometimes not matching with game files, due to some games of the same system already being scraped.

As per usual, an AppImage and a single flatpak bundle are included.

Release v1.3.0

This release of bigscraper-qt adds some new features which enable you to do more with it.

First, support for Arcade Database (ADB) has been added. With this tool, you are now able to scrape arcade games with not only LaunchBox, but with ADB. Please read the information here regarding scraping with ADB.

As well, you are also now able to export to the EmulationStation gamelist.xml format directly. This means that data gathered from bigscraper-qt is now usable in EmulationStation and its forks.

With this update, I have also taken the time to update the screenshots on the website, as well as make some information up to date with this version.

Finally, I have added a credits page to the app and website, allowing you to see who is behind the scraping services and export formats. The credits page in the app is accessible by clicking the version info in the options page; the credits page on the website is linked in the footer.

Release v1.2.0

This release of bigscraper-qt provides a variety of new and different features that help provide a better experience than before.

• Logging
  With 1.2.0, bigscraper-qt now has logging. This means that you no longer need to have a terminal open or stay focused on the application while scraping to see what happens. Logs are stored next to the media and metadata in ~/.local/share/bigscraper-qt/logs (~/.var/app/io.github.fr75s.bigscraperqt/data/bigscraper-qt/logs for the flatpak version)

• Skip cached games
  By default in bigscraper-qt 1.2.0, games that already have their metadata downloaded are skipped when scraping. This is useful if scraping large collections that have slight modifications, and helps reduce the time it takes to scrape. You can scrape metadata again by turning on Recache mode in the settings.

• Command-line flag help
  While flags have been available in previous versions of bigscraper-qt, 1.2.0 introduces some more flags (-d and --nolog). To help with this, there is now some help text, complete with a new help flag (-h).

More features and fixes are also available in this version of bigscraper-qt. As well, for the first time, I provide a single-file bundle flatpak with the release, allowing you to easily install the flatpak version of bigscraper-qt. Note that the flatpak version has some differences, including a native UI and file pickers rather than folder pickers (pick any file to select its parent folder)

Release v1.1.1

This release fixes a few things with bigscraper-qt:

• Switched controller input system to a Python-based one
• Prevented startup functions from running on tab switching in native UI mode
• Some more build fixes

Release v1.1.0

This release fixes several bugs regarding the last release. As a result, bigscraper-qt should be more functional (i.e. it won't crash if an image fails to download). As well, a few features have been added:

• More efficient folder scraping: Now, instead of going to the last page, folder scraping stops if the games in the page are all alphabetically after the last game in your library alphabetically.
• Controller Support: You can now navigate bigscraper-qt with a controller. All functionality is accessible with a controller, minus the system file and folder dialogs.

Also with this new release comes some essential fixes which should help the flatpak build. I want to guarantee everything is working well before opening a PR on flathub, and with this release at least, it does work much better. An AppImage is provided here, though.

Release v1.0.0

This is the initial release of bigscraper-qt. As of now, this application is able to do its main task of scraping LaunchBox well. As of now, however, there is still plenty that can be done, with features, fixes and more being possibilities.

Currently, only an AppImage is provided. With this release, however, I can complete another step in trying to make this app compatible with flathub.