Add more info to the xmls

[ghutch92]

I'd like to request that the xmls being distributed for HyperSpin to add more game related information to them.

1.) I'd like to be able to have multiple genre tags.

2.) I'd like have number of players

3.) I'd like to see if it is local multiplayer or online multiplayer, local co-op or online co-op

4.) I'd like to see if the game had any prequels or sequels at least on the same platform preferably across the different platforms

5.) I'd like to see a critic score on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0 or 0 to 100

6.) I'd like to see how many axis the game uses, how many buttons/keys the game uses, touch support, mouse support

7.) another category for publisher

8.) language support tags

9.) brief description/plot summary

I know nothing will support the information right now but when the information is added to the xmls 3rd party apps like hypermarquee and hyperpause and list managers could use this information.

I am willing to help gather this information if it is implemented.

Thanks,

ghutch92

[Fromlostdays]

I don't have any idea about the workflow required here, but if and when you all work out the steps (and credible places to get the info) I volunteer to help.

[brolly]

This has been discussed several times before, we even had a new format pretty much set when HL2 was under development. Don't think it will be doable to add any of this to the HS standard format right now though because #1 HyperSpin doesn't support it and #2 HyperList doesn't support the extra fields so all the extra info would be lost after importing the XML files.

That being said we have plans on the HyperLaunch side to create a new standard which will include many new fields including some of the ones you suggested (I think you're being too ambitious with some of those btw). The biggest issue is updating the databases with all the new data, so for something like this to move forward we would need a few volunteers to help filling the new info. And I mean people really committed to help otherwise this just won't work since there's quite a lot of work involved in getting all the extra info filled for all systems even though I already have something to ease filling some of the fields.

It wasn't in our plans to work on something like this anytime soon, but if there's a reasonable group of persons interested on helping we can start looking into it sooner.

[Iggy]

Hi Brolly, ive been working on number of players in my setups however because of the lack on info on the internet...I have designated the info as player 1, 2, 3, or 4+. Reasoning on 4+ was to include 4 players or more....finding the exact info on the net is painful at best. Definitely did not want to open each game and find out how many players they may have especially the Japanese ones since my Kanji is not up to par. If you think this info might still be useful, I have completed NES, Famicom, Famicom Disk System, SNES, Super Famicom, Satellaview, PC Engine, TG16, Wii, N64, SuperGrafx, PC-FX, and Gamecube. Cheers!

Sites I relied on for info were:

-http://www.rfgeneration.com

-www.play-asia.com

Also used

-Dark13's tsvs within his FTP folder

[brolly]

That would help of course and would be a good start, I'd love to have the number of players following the standard from nplayers.ini for MAME (http://nplayers.arcadebelgium.be/), but that would be a hell of a work considering the amount of systems so I think this will only be doable if simplifications are done.

Thus why I was saying ghutch sounded a bit too ambitious since some of the stuff he has listed on his post will require quite some work to gather properly.

[ghutch92]

My top desired items in order are:

1.) multiple genre tags

2.) publisher

3.) brief description of game like you see on the back of boxes.

4.) critic score

5.) player number (for example I personally only care about separating single player (1), two players (2), multiple players (3+))

the rest are just things that would be nice to have, but not critical in my opinion.

HyperList is the one that needs to support the extra fields first in my opinion. So my request is for HyperList and not HyperSpin.

EDIT: I'd personally like to schema proposals with the extra fields.

[damageinc86]

I really like the idea someone else had for number of players. It was controller icons that highlighted how many players there were. There was some weird workaround though, which is why I haven't tried it. It would be nice if hyperlaunch could take that and display those little icons somewhere.

[brolly]

Presentation is the least of our problems for something like this, the grunt work is putting the data together.

I already have a model that supports all those (and more) ghutch, but like I said without people interested on helping out it's not a priority for me since I don't have the time to gather all the extra info needed to update the databases.

Description of the game would probably be better off on a separate file though (at least when working with XML) since this will make the XML file sizes way too large for big databases thus slowing down the parsing.

There's no need for multiple genre tags, what we need is a genre system with multiple depth levels just like Gamefaqs which for me is about perfect and it's what I'd like to base things on.