Screenscraper.fr and 3D box art compositing

I’ve found about this site existing this week so i don’t know all the details and i’m not affiliated with any of it.
This is another huge database for media and metadata on the level of the LaunchBox Games Database and EmuMovies that LaunchBox could scrape from.

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It is a french website, there is a bit of a language barrier, but you can select english language, the translation is not perfect but managable for the most part. It does get a bit iffy here and there.
https://www.screenscraper.fr/

They do have an API for 3rd party apps (in fact you can’t even utilize the site on its own, you NEED some app to get those pictures)

Our API allows you to download all the data and media from ScreenScraper and integrate it into your applications: front-ends, utilities. All our queries are used to obtain the required information in XML, JSON format.

Who can use the API?

The ScreenScraper API can be integrated only in completely free and distributed applications, or, if not, with the prior authorization and conditions dictated by the ScreenScraper team. Any breach of this rule may be subject to a breach of account, see possible legal proceedings!

If you are a developer and want to integrate our API, contact us through the ScreenScraper forum to present your software and get your username and password to provide the API to validate your rights to use it.

How to make requests to our API?

Information and / or media requests to the ScreenScraper API are made by calling GET-type URL requests and an XML or JSON document is returned.

Example Game Search: https://www.screenscraper.fr/api/jeuInfos.php?devid=xxx&devpassword=yyy&softname=zzz&ssid=test&sspassword=test&output=xml&crc=50ABC90A&systemeid=1&romtype=rom&romnom=Sonic%20The%20Hedgehog%202%20(World).zip&romtaille=749652

How many simultaneous requests to the API is allowed?

Depending on the user's level of contribution (to the database or financial), the user is assigned « Threads » openings.

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I found a 3rd party app called “Skrapper“, currently in Beta

http://skraper.net/index.html?lng=en

it prominently supports RetroPie, Recalbox and LaunchBox
that is a compromise.
If it was integrated in LaunchBox we could scrape for single games with missing media, if the name doesn’t match we can rename it and try again etc. this App here seems to only scrape the entire rom set and if some game has the wrong name you are pretty much screwed and have to do it all over again.

If you do nothing else …at the least promote this app a little, tell ETA Prime to make a tutorial video on it for example.
This thing opens up a complete new Database to your userbase after all, that seems quite significant.

I’d still rather have it implemented directly in Launchbox.

3D Box art compositing

Another thing i find really interesting, i’m not gonna start a 2nd request for this, just think about it, is that they take the cover, spine and back art that users uploaded, automatically create a texture (practically a full spine, but with clearly defined edges) for 3D box art server side, that way practically every game that has a 2D cover uploaded gets a 3D box, no need to rely on people creating Sets on Emu Movies or Hpyerspin for everything, not to mention there are ALWAYS some games missing in even the best and most complete sets, new roms and romhacks and translations show up all the time which then have no 3D boxes until that set gets updated, IF it gets updated at all… quality varies a lot with existing 3D box sets as well.

If we could do that in LaunchBox or the Database, add different .psd templates for all the different boxes that exist, set a per system default and be able to save per game and region what kind of box/template comes closest to the original right there in the database, we could stop relying on 3rd parties and practically have no holes in the 3D box art anymore.
If no official artwork exists, fanart can be used. Creating 2D fan-artwork is a lot easier for a lot of people than to deal with 3D boxes.

If no spine exists, add a generic one and use the Clear Logo on it.

One iffy point is that there is no category for Spines or full covers in the LaunchBox Database yet at all (which i think is a bad oversight, because anybody who wants to create 3D box art has to find that stuff elsewhere and needs to go outside of the LaunchBox eco system) but if that was added you could absolutely do that and also composite 3D Box art on the fly, heck, maybe even render it in 3D right there in LaunchBox, make animations in Big Box and all kinds of nonsense, wouldn’t that be something?

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