good nes data file ?

[mattmatteh]

i was looking at goodnes for a dat file with game info like crc32 info and rom sizes. i can not find it. i thought blargg said he found it or something like it.

an xml or some file would be nice for emulators to use for loading games. i am at the poing in mine where i am adding mapper support, but not sure how to go about that. i am thinking of using a text file as a database to check for known games.

matt

[Disch]

an xml or some file would be nice for emulators to use for loading games.

I must be the only person in the world who thinks storing binary data in plain text form is like the dumbest idea ever. Since when has XML been considered an easy file format to work with? Give me a plain old binary .dat file any day of the week. No chance to screw up... much simpler, much, much more efficient, and a whole lot easier to work with.

But I see lots of people doing stuff like this all the time now. Even a friend of mine online (bbitmaster) is doing something like this for data for his game he's working on. I guess I must be in the minority. Or perhaps there are benfits I'm unaware of.

</totally offtopic and unhelpful>

[mattmatteh]

doesnt have to be plain text. i didnt think it would be that large. doesnt matter. any file. i just want the data so i can use it my emu for opening games.

but what ever the file is, binary or plain text, it should be agree'ed on every one.

and i think it should be installed like a lib. that way one file to keep up to date and multiple emu's can use it.

back to the topic.... does goodnes have this data file ?

matt

[tepples]

I must be the only person in the world who thinks storing binary data in plain text form is like the dumbest idea ever.

Game titles and board names are not "binary data" as it is normally understood; they're plain text.

Since when has XML been considered an easy file format to work with? Give me a plain old binary .dat file any day of the week. No chance to screw up

Unless no documentation for the format is available. You try reverse-engineering the Microsoft Word document format from scratch.

much simpler, much, much more efficient, and a whole lot easier to work with.

And a lot harder to make semi-self-documenting. I'd choose pipe-separated or comma-separated or tab-separated for publicly distributable files containing much text.

[mattmatteh]

is there a dat file from goodnes ? or anywhere else ? i was thinking about grabbing some of the data from bootgod's site to start with but not sure bootgod would like the hits on his site.

bootgod, do you have a dump or mind the hits ? probably less than 10 games.

matt

[kyuusaku]

No, the database is INSIDE GoodNES. People have made GoodNES-like databases such as the TOSEC dats which are open for people to use. If the GoodNES convention is what you're after, at least a few people have managed to RE GoodXXXX because there are unofficial Japanese versions of GoodXXXX, so it's possible.

[mattmatteh]

do you know where i can get a database ? maybe just somthing to start with?

thanks

matt

[blargg]

Here, I found the data file versions in some kind of MAME text format:

http://www.emuxhaven.net/cowering.shtml#goodnes

I just downloaded the latest GoodNES and it doesn't have the same files as the one I downloaded a while back. I guess the author changed the format to be internal and compressed in the program

[mattmatteh]

thanks blargg. i noticed that there is only one crc32 for a game. is that for the prg and chr rom ?

matt

[Quietust]

GoodNES stores a single checksum covering everything past the first 16 bytes of the file. That's right, it doesn't even check the PRG/CHR counts in the header, nor does it actually fix them if they're incorrect. There are actually a few hundred recognized "bad dumps" that are actually truncated files, likely resulting from incomplete uploads.

Nice useful program, that GoodNES.

[blargg]

It looks as if GoodNES 3 does correct the headers, based on the readme. Apparently the author is keeping the database in a proprietary format, preventing others from improving on it.

[hap]

Ah, so a new version is out then...

It looks as if GoodNES 3 does correct the headers, based on the readme.

Well, then the readme should be corrected (with GoodREADME maybe?), because I've just tried it with a random bunch of games that I know to have bad headers, and it corrected about half of them, a few of which were even corrected incorrectly.

*edit* looks like most of blargg's tests have been included too, useless in this format though: scattered, renamed, no documentation, eg. what would an ignorant person make of IRQ Handler Test by Shay Green (30 Jun 2005) (PD)? ... I'm interested, what's your (blargg) opinion on their inclusion? Knowing that every ROMs site in the future will have them for download, washing away the intended purpose you've created them for in the first place.

[Nessie]

GoodNES stores a single checksum covering everything past the first 16 bytes of the file. That's right, it doesn't even check the PRG/CHR counts in the header, nor does it actually fix them if they're incorrect. There are actually a few hundred recognized "bad dumps" that are actually truncated files, likely resulting from incomplete uploads.

Nice useful program, that GoodNES.

Numerous "bad dumps" also come from Vimm, who figured it was a good idea to append his name and url to the end of every rom on his site, thus giving the rom a different signature in GoodNES.

[Quietust]

GoodNES stores a single checksum covering everything past the first 16 bytes of the file. That's right, it doesn't even check the PRG/CHR counts in the header, nor does it actually fix them if they're incorrect. There are actually a few hundred recognized "bad dumps" that are actually truncated files, likely resulting from incomplete uploads.

Nice useful program, that GoodNES.

Numerous "bad dumps" also come from Vimm, who figured it was a good idea to append his name and url to the end of every rom on his site, thus giving the rom a different signature in GoodNES.

Actually, those are overdumps. Those are different from bad dumps.

[BootGod]

is there a dat file from goodnes ? or anywhere else ? i was thinking about grabbing some of the data from bootgod's site to start with but not sure bootgod would like the hits on his site.

bootgod, do you have a dump or mind the hits ? probably less than 10 games.

matt

You can do what you like with the info, that's what it's there for If you'd like, I could generate a text file for you to use, just let me know which data fields you need. It surely beats trying to grab the info manually from the site.