[Wiki]POP files

What genre’s would be defined? games can have multiple so probably looking at a bit flag

Well, each game in the games and apps page has been given one category to reside in for now. Even if that changes in the future, it would be nice to be able to place each game in a single category just to be able to divide them up into more manageable groups, unless we want to get into the complexities of sorting and searching by tags, which might be asking a lot.

True, but even with the categories I end up having to scroll through a long list.
If I get desperate I’ll resort to the search bar.

I think we could handle categories some other way,
but I’m just not sure how.

I’m still waiting for the great tagged filesystem revolution.
(I.e. database file systems.)


I think we also discussed sorting them by creator, but I can’t remember the details and don’t have time to check.

(I, and a few others, have advised on the flash cart project.)

That approach is flawed too unfortunately.

Look at the distribution of games per category in eried’s repo:

Some categories are full to the brim, while others are barren.

Not sure what the reasoning for sorting by creator from a user perspective. it could be searchable with the 8 - AUTHOR string in pop files

It seems like everything is pointing at putting every game in to root of the filesystem and letting the loader manage it in some way with filters and search

It’s all sorted manually by the user before flashing the games on the flash chip.

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That’s how I tend to sort my Arduboy and Pokitto games because I tend to remember who published the game more than anything else.

For example, if I think of Pokitto Grand Prix, I automatically think @Hanski,
and if I think of Abbaye des Morts I think of @HomineLudens.
(I know some other people helped, but @HomineLudens published the thread and wrote the post-mortem, which I still have yet to read.)

And even on PC games companies tend to create company-specific folders to store stuff in,
thus my documents folder has folders named ‘Almost HUman’, ‘BioWare’, ‘EA Games’, ‘Klei’ and ‘Rockstar Games’.
(I don’t condone sticking said folders in a user’s documents folder, but I think the practice of having a folder named after the company makes sense.)

Besides which, I think it’s good to encourage people to remember who made which game.

If there was a search feature then we wouldn’t really need to worry because people could just search for a game’s name every time they wanted to play a particular game,
it would probably be a lot quicker and easier.

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On handheld entering text for search would be slower.
If search is possible, could games also enable it to find there resource files?
in that case users can do there own folder setup, if its by creator, genre, favorites, etc.

Search is a good solution when you have a keyboard.
Going with the database idea, the loader could have an index of files by category, and each pop would have a list of categories it fits in. Abbaye could be in both “Platformer” and “Port”, and then the user would pick one of those instead of digging through folders. :thinking:

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Having category filters is one of my ideal ways of searching. It also helps find new games to try out that could get lost in the shuffle.

@FManga , could you add an “auto generate icons from screenshots” to mkpop tool?

The problem is 9/10 are now without icons and it would help alot in making the gamedisk better

Would the screenshots still be recognizable at that size?

IDK but at the moment using Kraken loader looks pretty bad to be honest.

I can try to make idons for some of the games but its a llllooooot of work

I’ll give it a shot.

Thanks! If it doesn’t look like an easily workable idea, then lets just ditch it.

I made the change, have a look to see if it’s any good.
Edit: Hang on, didn’t push to the right branch. :stuck_out_tongue:
Edit 2: Ok, done!

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Felipe, works really well

Thank you, it’s a lot of help

EDIT: so much help, that it has probably just tipped the situation on the side of having POP files of all games

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Whew! That’s all action games POP-ped! For example:

cpong guns pyrates

EDIT: can’t wait to see what this looks like on the device itself!

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Could upload buttons be added to mkpop tool? I don’t have drag&drop on my computer :frowning: Also mobiles etc. probably don’t.

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People are developing on phones?

There are computers that don’t have drag&drop? o_O