Homebrew [Release] Pico/TwilightBoxart - NDS/GB(A)/SNES/NES/GG Boxart Downloader

[KirovAir]

Hi all,

Good news: TwilightBoxart is back from the dead. The old server was shut down years ago, so I rebuilt the whole thing from scratch: new server, new apps, and way more consoles. Say hi to TwilightBoxart 2.0 with DS Pico support!

It still combines GameTDB and libretro + NoIntro DB to cover the full spectrum of consoles supported by TwilightMenu++, but games are now identified by what they contain (title id, game code, crc32, sha1), not what they are called. So a wrongly named ROM still gets the right cover, and .zip/.7z archives are scanned without decompressing: an 18,000 game card scans in minutes.

The main way is the browser app at https://boxart.kirovair.com. Nothing to install: open it, pick your SD card, press scan, and the covers land straight in _nds/TWiLightMenu/boxart. (Chrome/Edge/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi write directly onto the card; Firefox and Safari get the same scan and a zip.)

And my favourite: a DSi homebrew client. The console downloads its own box art over WiFi, no PC and no card pulling at all.

Prefer a real app? There is a new desktop version for Windows, macOS and Linux. One file, works offline too:

Everything is open source. The old 3DS TWiLightMenu-Updater build is retired; the browser app is the way to go there. But if you still have the 2020 desktop exe lying around: the old API answers again, so even that works.

Supported systems:
Everything is matched by title id / game code where the ROM has one, then crc32, sha1 and finally filename.
- Nintendo DS / DSi / DSiWare
- Game Boy / Color / Advance
- NES / SNES / Famicom Disk System
- Nintendo 64 (new!)
- Pokemon Mini (new!)
- Sega Mega Drive, Master System, Game Gear and SG-1000 (new!)
- NEC PC Engine / TurboGrafx 16 (new!)
- WonderSwan + Color (new!)
- Neo Geo Pocket + Color (new!)
- Atari 2600 / 5200 / 7800 (new!)
- ColecoVision, Intellivision, MSX + MSX2 (new!)

Every cover is delivered under TWiLightMenu++'s own size limit, so nothing silently refuses to show up on the console. And whatever misses gets a list telling you exactly what it was recognised as and why there was no cover. Never a silent skip.

Download here, or skip the download entirely and use https://boxart.kirovair.com.

Cheers and have a great night.

 

[Flame]

nice work.

ill test it now.

 

[godreborn]

nice. for some reason, whenever I scan for gameboy roms, it can't find the boxart for some popular titles like super mario 3d land 1 and 2. and, when I scan over nds roms, it messes up the box art for sonic rush. sonic rush and sonic rush adventure come out as the same box art.

 

[RocketRobz]

Your app has motivated me to add in correct box art sizes for games outside the NDS, GBA, and GB(C), in TWLMenu++.

Please use these sizes in the next app version.

FDS: 115x115
NES/MS/GG/GEN/MD/SFC: 84x115
SNES (.smc): 158x115

Also, can you add support for LZ77-compressed SNES/SFC and GEN/MD ROMs? They have ".lz77" before the file extension.
You should just decompress the ROM on-the-fly, and then check SHA hash.

 

[robyspy]

Excellent work!

 

[KirovAir]

nice. for some reason, whenever I scan for gameboy roms, it can't find the boxart for some popular titles like super mario 3d land 1 and 2. and, when I scan over nds roms, it messes up the box art for sonic rush. sonic rush and sonic rush adventure come out as the same box art.

I’ll look into it. For gameboy art the correct nointro hash needs to match. I am working on an update that the titleid of gameboy games will be sufficient. The current NDS algorithm is very aggressive in the sense that some art is better then no art so I’ll check it out and have this fixed in the next version!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Your app has motivated me to add in correct box art sizes for games outside the NDS, GBA, and GB(C), in TWLMenu++.

Please use these sizes in the next app version.

FDS: 115x115
NES/GEN/MD/SFC: 84x115
SNES (.smc): 158x115

Also, can you add support for LZ77-compressed SNES/SFC and GEN/MD ROMs? They have ".lz77" before the file extension.
You should just decompress the ROM on-the-fly, and then check SHA hash.

Woah that is awesome to hear! I’ll add these as soon as I get home.

 

[Alexander1970]

Hello.

What a great Tool,it works very,very good.
Great to see another collaboration is "growing".

@KirovAir Thank you for this great Tool.
@Robz8 Thank you for helping him.That is a big trait.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Right now TWLight can't actually launch GBA roms, correct? Is this planned to change eventually?

 

[ImLEBrAn]

Thank you for your program. Thing is, I have a little problem with getting the boxart for Pokémon Platinum (German version). As you can see I have named all my roms like they are on GameTDB and it still doesn't pick up the boxart for Platinum (https://www.gametdb.com/DS/CPUD). The platinum rom has been dumped from a legit cartridge that I own. TwilightMenu is also not able to download the boxart for some reason.

 

[Alexander1970]

Right now TWLight can't actually launch GBA roms, correct? Is this planned to change eventually?

Hello.

Thanks to @Gericom we HAVE the option to play GameBoy Advanced Roms.

These are TWO different Projects and I think it takes TOO MUCH Time and Work and Effort.
If it was that easy @Robz8 and he would have done it already.

Thank you.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Sorry yes I know of GBARunner2, its awesome, and its been included with TWLight for a while. Most of TWLight's included emulators are written by others, but are set up so you can select the Rom in TWLight and it will launch the emulator with that rom. That's why it makes sense to start creating icons or box art that TWLight can use when you are browsing the roms. But AFAIK this doesn't work with GBARunner2 at the moment, you can only select roms within GBARunner2's own interface. Nonetheless effort is being put out to make TWLight display GBA box art even though there's currently not much reason to browse GBA roms within TWLight as you can't launch them. That's why I wondered if there were plans to eventually be able to select a GBA rom within TWLight and have it boot up GBARunner 2 with that rom.

 

[Nomelas]

Malwarebytes does not like that file for windows...

 

[DSoryu]

I'm getting garbled images on everything except NDS games, also, GBA covers doesn't show up yet, I guess that happens because the GBA images need to be in another directory.

 

[KirovAir]

I'm getting garbled images on everything except NDS games, also, GBA covers doesn't show up yet, I guess that happens because the GBA images need to be in another directory.

I think this is because Robz8 already updated TwilightMenu++ to use the new sizes and I still need to make a build with the latest changes. Give me until tonight, I was a bit busy due to some circumstances.

Malwarebytes does not like that file for windows...

Should be a false positive. You should be able to compile it yourself with visual studio community 2019 if you don't trust it.

 

[Nomelas]

Should be a false positive. You should be able to compile it yourself with visual studio community 2019 if you don't trust it.

yeah was just an FYI - I added it to the exclusion list.

Btw, I also raised this: https://github.com/KirovAir/TwilightBoxart/issues/1

 

[KirovAir]

yeah was just an FYI - I added it to the exclusion list.

Btw, I also raised this: https://github.com/KirovAir/TwilightBoxart/issues/1

Just fixed it.
Also pushed a release which should download the art in the correct size. @Dartz150. I haven't tested all kinds roms as of yet.

 

[Alexander1970]

Hello.

Thank you for this great Tool,it saves a lot of work on the DS/DSi titles.

Would you be so kind and can you please give me an Advice ?
I have a little "issues" with Covers for the DSi Ware.

I have tried it with both of your Releases and get the following Error Messages one every DSi Ware Title (in German);

It says:
Something bad Happened: The request was canceled. Unable to create a secure SSL / TLS channel ..

Do I make a mistake ? Are the Titles named wrong ?
Thank you for any Help or Suggestions.

 

[KirovAir]

Hello.

Thank you for this great Tool,it saves a lot of work on the DS/DSi titles.

Would you be so kind and can you please give me an Advice ?
I have a little "issues" with Covers for the DSi Ware.

I have tried it with both of your Releases and get the following Error Messages one every DSi Ware Title (in German);

View attachment 180665


It says:
Something bad Happened: The request was canceled. Unable to create a secure SSL / TLS channel ..

Do I make a mistake ? Are the Titles named wrong ?
Thank you for any Help or Suggestions.

The name of the titles should not matter as it uses the internals of the file. For most DSi titles there is no boxart unfortunately so it downloads this default image: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KirovAir/TwilightBoxart/master/img/dsiware.jpg. It seems on your computer it does not like the github ssl certificate. Are you using a proxy maybe or have a firewall in place?

 

[chronoss]

Hello.

Thank you for this great Tool,it saves a lot of work on the DS/DSi titles.

Would you be so kind and can you please give me an Advice ?
I have a little "issues" with Covers for the DSi Ware.

I have tried it with both of your Releases and get the following Error Messages one every DSi Ware Title (in German);

View attachment 180665


It says:
Something bad Happened: The request was canceled. Unable to create a secure SSL / TLS channel ..

Do I make a mistake ? Are the Titles named wrong ?
Thank you for any Help or Suggestions.

I have the same issue but with all my roms (Gba, Gb, Sega...), i think its was renamed... so how to renamed it to proper name ?

"
18:35:08 - Searching art for World Masters Golf.smc..
18:35:08 - Something bad happened: No NoIntro name found for rom! Could not download from libretro github.
18:35:08 - Searching art for World League Soccer.smc..
18:35:08 - Something bad happened: La demande a été abandonnée : Impossible de créer un canal sécurisé SSL/TLS.
18:35:08 - Searching art for Power Instinct.smc..
18:35:08 - Something bad happened: No NoIntro name found for rom! Could not download from libretro github.
18:35:08 - Searching art for Contra3.smc..
18:35:09 - Something bad happened: No NoIntro name found for rom! Could not download from libretro github."

 

[KirovAir]

I have the same issue but with all my roms (Gba, Gb, Sega...), i think its was renamed... so how to renamed it to proper name ?

"
18:35:08 - Searching art for World Masters Golf.smc..
18:35:08 - Something bad happened: No NoIntro name found for rom! Could not download from libretro github.
18:35:08 - Searching art for World League Soccer.smc..
18:35:08 - Something bad happened: La demande a été abandonnée : Impossible de créer un canal sécurisé SSL/TLS.
18:35:08 - Searching art for Power Instinct.smc..
18:35:08 - Something bad happened: No NoIntro name found for rom! Could not download from libretro github.
18:35:08 - Searching art for Contra3.smc..
18:35:09 - Something bad happened: No NoIntro name found for rom! Could not download from libretro github."

Hmm this is definitely something to do with the .net framework I think.. The names of the roms should not matter. Can you try this build? @alexander1970 maybe this works for you too.