With Arcadia I have committed to research everything that I suspect will make for a better design. Because of this, Archaida’s backend is shaping up to be elegant and efficient. I researched how to do inheritance in C#, and have used that to save myself from writing a lot of code. This has drastically decreased development and testing time. I learned how to use basic regular expressions over the summer, and have used them in some areas (more on that later). For the frontend I decided to switch from WinForms to WPF. All I can say is that databinding is epic, and I still have a lot more to learn about it.

Here’s a shot of Arcadia in its current form:

I’ll hopefully release an alpha soon.

edit October 12, 2009 at 10:57am:

Also generics. Generics are amazing. (More on that later, too.)

Here is a screenshot of the FRI version 1.8.0.0 main window with no search filters applied.

Here I typed mario kart into the title search box.

Clicking onthe Advanced Search button gives the user more options.

For example, here is the result of an advanced search for all Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 ROMs that are categorized as English or an unknown language and are a not known bad image dumps.

Sorting the results by community rating brings the some of the best ROMs to the top.  At the time of this writing community ratings only include some Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis games, however FRI checks for updates to the community ratings file every time it starts, and will automatically pull it from my web hosting and apply the changes if I make a new version available.

FRI can pull ROMs from multiple file locations.  This allows more flexibility to the user, and offers some very convenient solutions.  For example, a user may have a desktop computer with a large ROM library and a laptop computer with a small ROM library.  FRI allows the user to add the local and remote libraries (via network share) into each copy of FRI.  When both computers are on the same network, the user can then right-click on a ROM that is in his desktop computer’s local library and have FRI send a copy to his laptop computer’s local library.  While both computers are on the same network, the user could also select any ROM displayed and it would just run, regardless of the file’s location.  In addition, when the laptop doesn’t have access to the desktop computer’s network share, the user can hide all of the unavailable ROMs by doing an Advanced Search.

When FRI scans for ROMs it automatically picks out all of the ROM files and infers a lot of information about each ROM, including platform, language, image health, status in the public domain, region, and number of players.  The information is totally dependent on the contents of the ROM’s file path/name.  Below are the default Vocabularies that come with FRI, which are completely user-editable.

The most important (and most difficult) part about FRI is telling FRI what emulators use what platforms.  Note how the “Compatible Emulator Detected” column shows whether or not an emulator is configured to work with FRI for each of the known platforms.  For now users have to locate, download, and configure the emulators themselves (which is the status quo for most emulated gaming), and then tell FRI where each executable is and what platforms each emulator supports.  As FRI integrates more with my web hosting, I plan on having a simple selector to download, configure, and integrate emulators with ease.  The emulator lists would of course be updatable by me at will.

For more information about FRI, see entries about it on my blog.

Download FRI version 1.8.0.0 here

Thanks to FlotsamX for providing feedback as a beta tester, and Vimm for providing me access to his website’s user ratings.

Change log:

• New feature: FRI now automatically retrieves a “master database” from the web, which currently contains “community ratings” of some ROMs.
  
• The process of scanning for ROMs is more responsive and provides the user with more information.
   
• FRI can now handle ROM files that have filenames that are too long.  Previously FRI would simply skip over these.  The user is now warned when a ROM with a really long file name is added.
  
• Generic file extensions are no longer attached to specific platforms.  That functionality never made sense, because they were generic file extensions.  Now generic file extensions are one list, available on the new "Other" tab of the Settings window.  The "Generic Extensions" column in the Platform Vocabulary list has been removed, and the other column widths have been increased to fill the space.
  
  
• ROM files that are executable (with .exe extensions) will now be run directly.
• The “Advanced” item in the “Edit” menu is now hidden.
• Fixed UI problem in the Platform Information Editor, where the "Cancel" button would not move properly when the window was resized.
• Fix: FRI no longer makes the “you can’t do that” sound when the user presses enter in the search box to start the search.
• "Other" tab added to the Settings window.
• Fix: The “defaults” button for the File Flags Vocabulary tab in the Settings Editor now works properly.
• "rom" added as a generic ROM file extension
• The "Unique Extensions" column in the Platform Vocabulary list has been renamed to "Unique File Extensions".
• ".a26" unique file extension for the Atari 2600 corrected to remove the decimal point.
• "Atari" removed as another name for "Atari 2600"
• Platforms added:
  1. Amega
  2. Amiga CD32
  3. Atari 7800
  4. Neo Geo
  5. Neo Geo CD
  6. Neo Geo Pocket
  7. ColecoVision
  8. Vectrex
  9. Magnavox Odyssey
  10. Magnavox Odyssey²
  11. SuperGrafx
  12. TurboGrafx 16
  13. Game & Watch
  14. Pokemon mini
  15. N-Gage
  16. 3DO Interactive Multiplayer
  17. Sega Dreamcast
  18. Sega CD
• Platform extensions added
  1. "col" added as a unique extension for "ColecoVision"
  2. "vec" added as a unique extension for "Vectrex"
  3. "min" added as a unique extension for "Pokemon mini"
  4. "vb" added as a unique extension for "Virtual Boy"
  5. “mdf” added as a generic extension

“Sony PlayStation”, “PSX”, “Sony PlayStation 1”, “Sony Play Station”, and “Sony Play Station 1” added as other names for “PlayStation”

I literally just got this working, but I’m really excited with the results.  I’m going to have to work on polishing the process a little more, and develop a method to deliver the “master database” containing the community ratings.  The delivery mechanism will also be expandable for me to add more data in the future, such as links to game manuals and walkthroughs.  That’s in the future, though.  For now I’m just glad for a little success!

Flotsam’s email address: (yes, the text is a picture.  I don’t want him getting automated bot spam!)

Now for the release.  FRI version 1.7.0.2 contains updated to the default Platform Vocabulary, as well as a fix to a bug that I will describe in detail below.

Download FRI version 1.7.0.2 here

To get the updates to the Platform Vocabulary, open the Settings window, click on the "Platform Vocabulary" tab, click the "Defaults" button, and click OK on the dialogue box.  This will overwrite your current platform vocabulary with the new defaults.

Change Log:

• "Compact Disc Interactive" added to the Platform Vocabulary, with "CDi" and "CD-i" as other names for the platform.
• The GameCube entry in the Platform Vocabulary was updated to make change the display name from "Game Cube" to "GameCube".  Variations of the name were added as other names, such as "Nintendo GameCube".
• The extension "gcm" was added as a unique extension for GameCube in the Platform Vocabulary.
• "Xbox" added to the Platform Vocabulary.  Variations of the name (including "Microsoft Xbox (original)" and "Xbox 1") were added as other names
• Bug Fix: In previous versions of FRI, file extensions were case sensitive.  That would mean that if, for example, a ROM was called "game.GB"  it would not be recognized even though "gb" was listed as a ROM extension in the Platform Vocabulary.  This problem is fixed in this release.
• Bug Fix: Previous versions of FRI would include the ROM database in the Default Settings File created by "Edit"->"Advanced"->"Generate Default Settings File".  This feature is only used in developing FRI, so it didn’t affect users.  At any rate, the bug is fixed in this release.

Download FRI Version 1.7.0.1 here

Change log:

• New Feature: Advanced searches can now be filtered by Library Folder.
• Tweak: FRI if there is an unexpected error when FRI is closing, FRI will report the error and gracefully close.

Download FRI version 1.7.0.0 here

Here you can see that I have two libraries added.  The "Desktop" library is over a network share, and the "Laptop" library is just in my local home folder.

Now if I do a search to find "Super Mario RPG", I could double-click on one, which would open SNES 9X (which is my SNES emulator of choice) and the ROM would be pulled from my desktop computer.  If I tried this away from the network, I would get an error message saying that the ROM file couldn’t be found.  This is why I want to get a local copy of the ROM file.  Doing this is simple with this version of FRI, and how I set up the library folders above.  I simply right-click on the ROM that I want, click "Copy to…" and select "Library: Laptop Library".

Now if I click the search button again I see that the ROM has been copied over and added to FRI.

Change log:

• Library folders can now be named.
• A ROM, or group of ROMs can now be copied or moved to a different library or the desktop.  The folder structure is preserved.  For example:
  • A ROM is in the "Source Library" library.  The location of the library is "C:\SourceLib\", and the location of the ROM is "C:\SourceLib\A folder\rom.zip"
  • There is another library, "Target Library", which is located in "C:\TargetLib\"
  • If the ROM is copied to the "Target Library", it will be copied to "C:\TargetLib\A folder\rom.zip"

Download FRI version 1.6.0.0 here.

Change log:

• New "FRI User Settings.xml" file for storing user settings
• Change: the last search is not stored in the new user settings file
• New feature: the user can now rearrange the columns in the main FRI window
• New feature: the selected columns and sorting are now saved when FRI is closed, and reloaded when FRI is opened.
• Fix: When a Library Folder is removed, the associated ROMs will once again be removed.  (This was not the case in the previous version of FRI)
• Fix: ROMs with very long file names no longer crash FRI when FRI is scanning for ROMs.  Now in many cases the ROMs will be added anyway, and in other cases FRI will simply skip that ROM, informing the user of the error by adding a dummy ROM to the list with "!!! error when finding roms: <message>" as the name, where <message> is the error message.
• New Feature: FRI now reports any error messages that occur when it loads, and gracefully closes.  Before if there was an error on load, the user would often have to kill the process with Task Manager.

I have a friend who is an open-source fiend, and so he nag nag nagged me to make the source code  for FRI available for download.  After a lot of re-organizing and commenting, here it is!  The "Frie" project in the Visual Studio solution is the FRI back-end, stands for "Fantastic ROM Indexer Engine".  Yes, it is pronounced "free" just like the front-end.

I’m putting this code out on the Internet, but please keep in mind that FRI is still my baby.  If you want to make a derivative work, email me first for permission.

Download FRI Version 1.5.0.0 Source Code here

Download FRI version 1.5.0.0 here

Change log:

• cleaned-up and documented code for increased efficiency and to get FRI ready for open sourcing
• Relative paths are now fully supported.  This means that the user can now put all of his ROMs and Emulators with FRI onto a removable data storage device and have FRI work no matter what drive letter the host operating system assigns the storage device.
• ROM’s locations are now stored relative to the Library Folder that they are associated with.  This means that if you move a whole Library Folder to another location, you can simply tell FRI that folder’s new location and all of the ROM’s file paths will be updated.
• Reorganized menu bar
• FRI can now use a master FRI database as a reference for filling in missing information in the user’s ROM library. (This feature will be further developed in the coming weeks.)
• New file icon:
  
• New title bar icon:
  
• FRI now displays the "waiting" cursor when it is processing information.
• FRI now remembers the user’s last search when it is opened
• The Note Editor now opens centered on the FRI window
• The status bar now displays more relevant information about the number of ROMs displayed, selected, and in the library in a more logical way.

Download it here

Change Log:

• New Feature: "Release Year" values can now be edited manually.
• New Feature: ROMs can now be individually removed from the library.
• New Feature: ROMs can now be deleted.
• Tweak: "Super Nintendo Entertainment System" has been added as another name for "Super Nintendo" in the Platform Vocabulary
• Tweak: When there are ROMs listed, but none are selected, the status bar now reports that "none are selected" instead of "none is selected".

So here’s a demo/tutorial:

More information about FRI version 1.4.0.0 is available here.

Change Log:

• Fix: emulator compatibility is now caps-insensitive
• Fix: emulator selector centered and has correct icon
• Re-Write: Emulator loader re-written.  The emulator selector now looks finished.  Note that ROMs can no longer be opened in bulk.
• New Feature: Image Health (good dump, bad dump) can now be searched.
• New Feature: The default size of the Advanced Search window is now just the right size to fit all of the content.
  
• New Feature: The default size of the Emulator Selector window is not just the right size to fit all of the content.
  Here is the Emulator Selector when I select a PlayStation ROM to play. (I don’t have any PlayStation emulator configured to work with FRI, so it just shows all of the emulators.)
  
  Here is the Emulator Selector when I select a Game Boy ROM to play.  Since I have more than one Game Boy-compatible emulator configured in FRI, it gives me a choice.
   
• New Feature:  More-detailed status messages in the status bar.
  
• Tweak:  Many improvements to program responsiveness.  Previous versions of FRI freeze temporarily when scanning for a large number of new ROMs, or when populating the ROM list when a large number of ROMs.  Various tweaks, combined with the new status bar messages, ensure that FRI remains responsive and keep the user in control.
• New Feature: Maximum number of players can now be an implied meaning of a File Tag.  This means that if a ROM has "[p1]" in the file name, then FRI will recognize it as a 1-player game.  As always, the user can create new tags, so if the user has a lot of ROMs with "(1 player)" denoting that it is a 1-player ROM, then he can easily add that to the File Flag Vocabulary.
  
• New Feature:  FRI now has the ability to randomly-select a ROM in the ROM-list, or (if multiple ROMs are already selected) to randomly-select a ROM out of the selected ROMs.
  
• New Feature: Now when FRI is closed it only saves the database if changes have been made.
  

New File Flags Vocabulary:

Updated Platform Vocabulary:

Download it Here

Change Log:

• Fix:  The "Net Play" window’s icon is now the FRI icon instead of the default Visual Studio icon.
• Fix: The "Net Play" window now opens in the center of the main window.
• Tweak: When checking for updates, if the received message is blank then FRI will no longer display it.
• Tweak: Sorting has been improved.  Now "unknown" fields always sink to the bottom.
• New Feature: The user can now customize which columns in the ROM list are shown.
• Teak:: Items in the Settings Editor and the Advanced Search dialog are now sorted alphabetically
• Tweak: "Cancel" is now spelled correctly everywhere.
• New Feature:  FRI now supports region information.
• Tweak:  Fields in the ROM list that are unknown now appear blank instead of "Unknown".
• Tweak: Platform Vocabulary has been updated to include many more platforms.
• New Feature: FRI now supports release year information.
• New Feature: FRI will now interpret "flags" in ROMs’ file names.  For example, a ROM named "Super Cool (US)(2008).rom" would be detected as an English ROM with a region of the United States, a release year of 2008, and a title of "Super Cool".  The user may edit File Flags in the new File Flag Vocabulary.
• New Feature: Previously the user could tell FRI to infer missing ROM information, but now the user can tell FRI to also overwrite existing information.  This is a useful feature for after the user updates the File Flag Vocabulary.
• New Feature: "File Name" and "Full Path" fields have been added to the ROM List.
• Tweak: FRI now more accurately infers ROMs’ platforms.
• New Feature: FRI now automatically scans for new ROMs when a new ROM Library Folder is added in the Settings editor.
• Tweak:  When scanning for ROMs, FRI now shows that it is scanning in the status bar.
• Tweak: The Settings Editor is a little wider now to accommodate more information.
• Tweak:  The default columns for the ROM list are now "Title", "Platform", "Language", "Release Year", "Players", "Rating", and "Image Health".
• New Feature:  FRI can no generate a "Default Settings File" based on the settings in shown in the Settings Editor.  A default settings file is basically the regular FRI database file, minus the ROM and emulator entries.
• Fix:  Now the "Default" buttons for the Platform Vocabulary and Language Vocabulary reset the lists instead of append the default values to the existing list.

Note:  "Region", "Release Year", "Image Health", and "Public Domain" fields are not directly editable or searchable yet.  For now their values can only be changed through File Flags, but the ability to edit the information directly is coming.

To upgraders:  To get the updated Platform Vocabulary, go to the "Platform Vocabulary" tab in the Settings Editor, and click "Defaults".

I pronounced FRI the wrong way the last time I said it.  It’s pronounced "free" now.

Also note that FRI supports editing the information of ROMs in bulk.  Just select more than one before you right-click.

Also, I was talking with a friend about FRI, and he brought up an interesting point.  Previously I pronounced the FRI "fry", but he thought it was pronounced "free", which makes more sense to me.  Now FRI, the Fantastic Rom Indexer, is pronounced "free".

Download it here

The problem with ROMs is that they can be tricky to use. If you want to play a specific game, you have to think what platform the game is played on, then find the emulator on your computer, open it, and then find the ROM file. If you’re organized this is a hustle at least, and if your aren’t this is a big pain.

My program, The Fantastic ROM Indexer (FRI) makes it easier. With it, if you want to play a game, you open FRI, type the title of the game, and double-click on it. That’s much more simple! Among other features, it also allows you to rate your games, which is great if you have a ROM library of 1,000+ ROMs, most of which you haven’t played.

to see a quick demo you can click here.

So, here’s some directions for how to set it up. At the time of this post, the latest version of FRI is 1.0.0.0.

First you have to download FRI. You can get version 1.0.0.0 here, but search this blog for a later version. If you download an old version, no sweat. FRI will tell you when it is opened and tell you how to get the latest version, but it’s easier to get it right the first time. The download will be a ZIP file, so extract the executable file inside it to a safe place.

pretty.

Telling FRI where the ROMs are

When you first open FRI, you will get a message telling you to add a library folder. Click OK.

The settings window will open. Here is where you tell FRI where all of your ROMs are. Click “Add”.

A dialog will come up. Click “Browse…”.

Select the folder that contains all of your ROMs, and click OK. Then click OK on the other dialog.

Telling FRI where the emulators are

Now FRI knows where your ROMs are, but it still can’t let you play them until you give it some emulators to act in place of each ROM’s respective platform/console. So the next step is to download all of the emulators. Note that FRI expects each emulator to be in it’s own folder, but it will only squeal mildly bit if they aren’t.

To add an emulator, switch over to the “Emulator Integration” tab in the settings window and click “Add”.

This dialog will open. Click browse and find the executable of the emulator that you want to add. Notice how the “Name” field is automatically filled in. Next type in the names of the platforms that the emulator supports. Separate the names with commas, and use correct capitalization. If you know that the emulator can play ROM files that are nested by themselves inside of ZIP files (this is often done to reduce the size that the ROMs take up), then check the first checkbox. (This doesn’t do anything now, but in a later version of FRI it will automatically compress all of the applicable ROMs with only a few clicks.) Don’t mess with the last checkbox, unless the emulator gives you some sort of error message when you try to play a ROM through FRI. (Note that you can’t harm anything by checking it, though most likely everything will work fine if you don’t.) When you’re all done, click OK.

The emulator is added.

Do that for all of your emulators. When you’re all done, close the settings window.

Scanning for ROMs.

Now that you have all the settings done, it’s time to tell FRI to look for ROMs. In the main FRI window, click “Database Management” and click “Scan for new ROMs”.

Here’s where some magic happens. FRI scans the library folders that you specified, and looks for file types that are listed in FRI’s Platform Vocabulary. Based on the file type and what folders each ROM is in, FRI will try to figure out the ROM’s platform, language, and maximum number of players. It get’s the ROM’s title strait out of the file name. For example, a ROM located at “F:\My ROMs\Super Nintendo\English\1 Player\Super Mario RPG.smc” would be recognized as a 1 Player, English, Super Nintendo ROM with the title “Super Mario RPG”. “F:\My ROMs\Sonic The Hedgehog.smd” would be recognized as a Sega Genesis ROM with the title “Sonic the Hedgehog”. But anyway, that’s just a little FYI. A window will pop up telling you how many ROMs were added.

Everyday use of FRI

To quickly find a ROM, go type all or part of the title in the search box in the upper-right of the window and click the little search button.

To play a ROM, double-click on it or select it and press enter.

To rate a ROM, right click on it, click on “Rating” and select a rating.

To do an advanced search, click on “Advanced Search” in the upper-right of the window. Select what you want and click OK. If you select nothing in a group, like I did for the language filter in this example, FRI will not take that section into consideration in the search.

In this example I did a search for the Sonic the Hedgehog games, so that I could rate them rate them all 5 stars. Rating one ROM is just like rating one, except you select more than one when you do it.

Yes, if you really want to, you can select a bunch of ROMs and press enter.

FYI

Here’s what the Platform Vocabulary tab looks like by default in the settings window. If a ROM won’t play when you double-click on it, it is possible that the platform name in the Emulator Integration tab does not match anything in the Platform Vocabulary tab.

And here’s the Language Vocabulary tab:

I hope you enjoy using FRI. the ability to edit ROM information is coming. It was in previous versions, but since I have given FRI a major makeover inside and out since the last version, I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. Just know that it’s coming!

I would really appreciate any constructive criticism and error reports in the comments.