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Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

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Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#61

Post by gassi »

Arelius wrote: post #52
bogwog wrote: post #14

I had an idea once but not the time nor motivation to build it: a database of game design with links to gameplay snippets. So for example an article on "2D platforming" that discusses the implementation in Super Mario, and includes a "demo" button which launches a web emulator with a save state that demonstrates a specific jumping section of the game. Legally perilous maybe, although my non-lawyer brain sees that as…

> Legally perilous maybe, although my non-lawyer brain sees that as fair use, especially if the emulator doesn't let you play the full game. Idk, but it'd be a unique thing on the internet. IANAL, but I think what a lot of people don't understand is that "fair-use" is a defense. Which basically means you have to be prepared to argue in in court. A lot of potential fair-use is quashed before it gets to that point. It'…

This is incredibly relevant to projects in this space, and we continue to hold discussions about what is and isn't tolerated in our community, and what features we should avoid building, in order to protect ourselves from legal attacks. One thing you'll never see integrated into the RomM is a way to pull/download ROMs from cloud services or website; you'll always need to provide the games to RomM directly, after sourcing them legally of course.

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#62

Post by Gamemaster1379 »

I get the impression the authors are monitoring the thread. I'm not home to check this out but I like the idea. A few questions.

1. Does the web interface allow you to download your ROMs in a similar fashion to Plex letting you download your files? I could see myself using this to fetch from my libraries and would like a nice GUI box art interface to grab a game I'm looking for. 2. How does this work with ROM hacks? How is the metadata pulled? Filename? Header? How could I set custom metadata where it doesn't match. 3. Does this have an accessible and documented API if I want to build extensions to it (or am I forced to use the interface?)

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#63

Post by zurdi »

Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #62

I get the impression the authors are monitoring the thread. I'm not home to check this out but I like the idea. A few questions. 1. Does the web interface allow you to download your ROMs in a similar fashion to Plex letting you download your files? I could see myself using this to fetch from my libraries and would like a nice GUI box art interface to grab a game I'm looking for. 2. How does this work with ROM hacks?…

Of course! we are excited about the post and we want to answer any question regarding RomM. Answering you:

1. That's exacty what RomM (among other things) does. You will have a Jellyfin/Plex interface from where download your games 2. Right now we match using the name of the file, but we are planning to add match by hash thaat will increase the accuracy even more. If it doesn't match anything, you are able to match it manually from the interface in a very user friendly way. 3. Yes, our API docs are integrated into RomM itself, so any RomM instance you can access will show the docs. It can be your own instance, or the demo site one for example (https://demo.romm.app/api/docs) or (https://demo.romm.app/api/redoc)

Apart from that, we have some integrations with different systems, like a plugin for playnite or an app for muos or portmaster to avoid download from the browser itself but from a native client (https://docs.romm.app/latest/Integrations/Playnite-plugin/) and (https://docs.romm.app/latest/Integrations/muOS-app/). A lot more integrations are in the works

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#64

Post by bityard »

pdntspa wrote: post #42

Can we collectively stop using the word "beautiful" for app descriptions. It is so overused and now effectively meaningless. Besides, beauty is supposed to be in the eye of the beholder, not the creator trying to put words in other peoples' mouths. If you are aiming for 'beauty' (whatever that actually means), then build it to a high standard and let other people find the words on their own accord.

Could be worse, it could be "blazing fast!"

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#65

Post by pdntspa »

zurdi wrote: post #59
pdntspa wrote: post #42

Can we collectively stop using the word "beautiful" for app descriptions. It is so overused and now effectively meaningless. Besides, beauty is supposed to be in the eye of the beholder, not the creator trying to put words in other peoples' mouths. If you are aiming for 'beauty' (whatever that actually means), then build it to a high standard and let other people find the words on their own accord.

We put a lot of effort in making it responsive and aesthetically beautiful dude! Sorry to sorry to hear that you dislike it

All I'm saying is to not contribute to rendering the word meaningless by putting it in other peoples' mouths. If what you built is truly beautiful then people will call it as such without your prompting.

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#66

Post by zurdi »

pdntspa wrote: post #65
zurdi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We put a lot of effort in making it responsive and aesthetically beautiful dude! Sorry to sorry to hear that you dislike it

All I'm saying is to not contribute to rendering the word meaningless by putting it in other peoples' mouths. If what you built is truly beautiful then people will call it as such without your prompting.

Respectable opinion, but not accurate from my point of view because we could say the same for powerful or any other adjectives!

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#67

Post by shitloadofbooks »

I made my own really mediocre version of this 2 years ago just for PS4 and Switch ROMS, also using IGDB etc. Glad to see something so polished and professional looking.

For the maintainers, does this pull the metadata (e.g Title ID or PKG ID) from the (supported) ROM files directly, or only from the filename? I skimmed the README and Docs and couldn't find a clear answer.

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#68

Post by bane »

gassi wrote: post #20
bane wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anyword on integration with Batocera, ES-DE, or Retroarch? Those mega systems would get supercharged with it. The homelab community would likely catch on very quick.

Not a plan but we wrote this up a while back as an exploration into which systems/platforms we can target. We're really hoping the community continues to step up with more plugins and integrations so we can focus on the core service.

Not thinking about you guys needing to write these integrations, but if there's interest on their sides for building it themselves?

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#69

Post by zurdi »

shitloadofbooks wrote: post #67

I made my own really mediocre version of this 2 years ago just for PS4 and Switch ROMS, also using IGDB etc. Glad to see something so polished and professional looking. For the maintainers, does this pull the metadata (e.g Title ID or PKG ID) from the (supported) ROM files directly, or only from the filename? I skimmed the README and Docs and couldn't find a clear answer.

Hi! for some platforms like switch where the games have a Title ID we first try to match against a static file RomM already has loaded and fallback to metadata providers (igdb, screenscraper and mobygames for now) searching by filename

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#70

Post by wolrah »

M95D wrote: post #46

Fetching anything from the internet means some cloud knows what games I'm playing. It's a privacy risk. Games played are very revealing to personality type, and probably lots of other individual info, and that means the temptation to gather this data and sell it to advertisers is very high.

> Fetching anything from the internet means some cloud knows what games I'm playing. It's a privacy risk. Games played are very revealing to personality type, and probably lots of other individual info

It seems like OP already replied with an upcoming feature to entirely eliminate your concern, but I would also point out that this doesn't mean the cloud service knows what games you're playing, they just know what games you have which for many gamers are two very different things.

That's especially true for those with a large enough ROM collection to be interested in tools to manage and simplify access to their libraries. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of potential users have collections that are exponentially larger than the list of games they actually play, in many cases some variety of a "complete" collection.

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