Screenshot Collector are a couple of scripts, collect.py and mosaic.py, that allow you to collect, organize and
show in a nice way the screenshots you take while you play video games. The only requisite is that you have access to
those screenshots either through a standard folder in your computer, a shared samba folder in another device, or a FTP
folder in another device.
Ideally, you should install Screenshot Collector in a dedicated home server and run it periodically to gather all the possible screenshots from your multiple gaming devices. If you don't have or you don't want to have a big home server, you can use a small Raspberry Pi (~50$ with everything you need) or similar device for that purpose.
Main system, it should work fine in other operating systems if you are able to fullfill both requisites:
- Python 2.x installed. You can do it in Linux, OSX, Windows...
- Imagemagick installed and added to the PATH of the system so you can call it from wherever you want.
External Python libraries:
- PySmbClient (0.1.3) - in Linux
pip install http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/P/PySmbClient/PySmbClient-0.1.3.tar.gz - Requests library - in Linux
sudo apt-get install python-requests - lxml library - in Linux
sudo apt-get install python-lxml
TO DO
To configure both programs, the collector collect.py and the mosaic generator mosaic.py, you need to edit the file
config.ini with any plain-text editor. Common programs are gedit in Linux, notepad in Windows (standard program for
Mac?, no idea).
There are three different sections to configure:
The basic options for screenshot collector are configured in config.ini file, under [collector] section. The typical
aspect of that sections is:
[collector]
temp_dir = images/temp-historic ; Directory for temporal files during collection
hist_dir = images/historic ; Directory for historic images
hist_ext = png
Where the meaning of the parameters are:
-
temp_dir - Temporary directory for image manipulations after the collection. The source images are copied from the sources to this directory where they are renamed and converted to the store format. After all the operations, the images are copied to the historic directory and deleted from this temporary directory.
-
hist_dir - Historic directory, the place where the processed images are stored (ideally) forever.
-
hist_ext - Image extension (or format, if you wish) for historic images. If you don't want any kind of quality loss,
pngshould be your preferred format. If you prefer to save more space in your hard drive,jpgshould your preferred format.
Image manipulations are done in Screenshot Collector using Imagemagick which is a quite powerful
and popular image manipulation software compatible with most image formats. So maybe you could play with other image
formats than png and jpg.
Screenshot sources (the places where you get the screenshots from) are configured in config.ini file and you can add
as many as you want. To do so, you just need to add a [source x] section, where x is an integer, i.e. 0, 1, 2... For
example:
[source 0]
name = Sega Megadrive
type = dir
address = localhost
root = /home/john_doe/.Kega Fusion
user =
password =
database = megadrive
scheme = kega
get_exts = tga, gif
del_exts = txt
recursive = no
clean_dirs = no
The only caution you need to have is avoid the repetition of the x number. [source 0], [source 1] and [source 2]
are a right group while [source 0], [source 1] and [source 0] are a wrong group.
Here you can see the meaning of each parameter:
-
name - The name of the source. Use a descriptive name, it doesn't affect program functionality and it's just shown when you run the script. Examples of
nameareSega Megadrive,John's SNES emulator,Gameboy emulator in my laptop... -
type - The type of source. There are three valid types by now:
dirfor directories in the same computer you are running the program in,ftpfor FTP servers andsmbfor Samba servers. -
address - If the type of the source is
ftporsmb, you indicate here the network address of the server. It can be an IP like192.168.0.106or also a domain name likemy-ftp. Fordirsources you don't need to specify any address but it's a good habit to putlocalhostjust to remember it's actually located in the same computer that's running Screenshot Collector. -
root - Here you specify in which folder are located the screenshots inside the localhost computer (for
dir) or the remote server (ftporsmb). -
user - Name of the user for FTP and Samba servers.
-
password - Password to access the FTP and Samba servers.
-
database - Name of the database of games to use for the screenshot source. Yes, this is a mandatory field, Screenshot Collector only works if you have the right databases of games. Maybe the biggest drawback of the program... or maybe a feature. Full explanation about the subject here.
-
scheme - Every emulator or gaming system (i.e. Freestyle Dash for Xbox 360) saves screenshots with a different name structure. i.e. For emulator A it could be
screenshot 0123 - Super Mario World.pngwhile for emulator B it could beSuper Mario World - 01 Apr 2014.gif. In order to convert those different naming schemes to the global format used for Screenshot Collector, you need to specify the source scheme. Valid schemes (by now, more to come in the future) are: -
get_exts - File extensions to obtain. You can select as many as you want separating them with commas. i.e.
jpg, gif, bmp. -
del_exts - File extensions to delete from the source. Typically, after obtaining the screenshots, you want to delete them from the source. Again, you can select multiple ones i.e.
jpg, bmp. -
recursive - (
yes/no) Indicates if you want to scan the root folder recursively or not, trying to find images in sub-folders of the root folder. -
clean_dirs - (
yes/no) Indicates if you want to delete the empty sub-folders (just the empty ones) of the root folder after you get the images with the desired extensions (get_extsoption) and you delete the files with desired extensions (del_exts).
TODO
Even though collect.py and mosaic.py are thought to be executed automatically by any kind of schedule launcher, like
cron in Linux, mosaic.py can also be launched manually from commandline with extra parameter that can override the
default behaviour of the program.
The different parameters are:
-
-h - It shows the help for commandline parameters.
-
-period [day, week, month, year, all] - It indicates what's the period to consider when building the mosaic. For example, day means you want to build a mosaic with all the screenshots taken during just one day. In order to specify which day, you also need to use the parameter
-date. -
-date YYYY-MM-DD - It's the date to consider in the format Year (four digits), Month (two digits), Day (two digits). i.e.
-date 2014-09-23. TODO: check what happens if you specify the date for one wednesday and week as period. It should get all the images for the PREVIOUS period, but I'm not sure right now. -
-db DATABASE_NAME - Using this parameter you can create a mosaic with just the games included in certain database. i.e.
-database snes. -
-id ID - Using this parameter you can create a mosaic with just certain game ID. i.e.
-id 3eab750b. It's very unlikely that two games from different databases share the same id, but it could happen. So if you really want to be sure you are creating a mosaic with screenshots from just one game, you should used combined the parameters-dband-id.
Tip: Use -period all -db DATABASE_NAME -id ID just after you finished one game to create a mosaic with all your
adventure ;)
Screenshot Collector uses different game databases which relate an unique 8 character code for each game with its real name. Those databases are located in the folder dats. For example, the database for Super Nintendo is called snes and its beginning looks like:
# Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System - 20141025-064847
#===================================================================
# Id # Title
#-------------------------------------------------------------------
05fbb855 '96 Zenkoku Koukou Soccer Senshuken (Japan)
e95a3dd7 2020 Super Baseball (Japan)
0d77933e 2020 Super Baseball (USA)
f2ee11f9 3 Ninjas Kick Back (USA)
f0810694 3-jigen Kakutou Ballz (Japan)
ad4ad163 3x3 Eyes - Juuma Houkan (Japan)
fbf3c0ff 3x3 Eyes - Seima Kourinden (Japan)
9008c18a 4-nin Shougi (Japan)
b090235a 46 Okunen Monogatari - Harukanaru Eden e (Japan)
b3abdde6 7th Saga, The (USA)
1ad61bd0 90 Minutes - European Prime Goal (Europe)
Typically, gaming emulators and other programs store the screenshots with the real game name. When collect.py tries to identify a game for a system, it checks if that title exists in the corresponding database and then, when saving the historic file, it adds the identification code to the filename.
For example, when obtaining screenshots from Super Nintendo using ZSNES emulator, the original file name looks like:
Super Street Fighter II (USA)_00010.bmp
And the file name after obtaining it with collector.py is:
2014-12-08 20-03-12.35 - snes f16d5ce9 - super street fighter ii usa.png
The reason to add that extra information —the 8 character code— is the game name can change in the future, so it's better to store something permanent —the 8 character code—. I know it can sound counter-intuitive, but it happens, game names can change through time for several reasons:
-
You simply don't like the official name of a game. i.e. Lara Croft: Guardians of Light is officially called Lara Croft: GoL in xbox.com web page.
-
For classic games, No-Intro project is making a continuous effort to update the name of every ROM they verified to the most accurate one.
The drawback of adding the 8 character code is Screenshot Collector is not able to work with screenshots for games no included in the game databases.
If you plan to use Screenshot Collector in a computer using Linux but you want to store the historic images in a NTFS partition (maybe because you want to have access to those pictures from a Windows machine), you need to properly mount the NTFS partition. Here it's explained how:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1604251
There is a FTP plugin for XBOX 360 consoles running Freestyle Dash that allows you to connect to the console even when playing. The author of the plugin says its speed is not as good as the official FTP server that Freestyle Dash includes but it should be more than enough to download your screenshots from the console.