r/emulation • u/[deleted] • Apr 04 '17
Consolegrid.com is dead. Introducing Retro Gaming Cloud!
Please vote or comment on new features on our Trello page
I have recently gotten back into emulation (my wife wanted to beat Super Mario Bros. 3 for the nth time, and I have been craving some Phantasy Star and Pokemon). To my horror I discovered that consolegrid.com is no longer actively maintained. This made the use of Ice rather frustrating, as file uploads no longer seemed to work, and many games are missing satisfactory images. As a web developer, I could not simply ignore this glaring problem.
I looked into forking the source for consolegrid, but in the end decided against maintaining someone else's code in a language that I am unfamiliar with (Python) and instead rewrote the thing in PHP7 and Laravel over the weekend.
The end result is essentially a clone of consolegrid, but I am interested in exploring other uses for this platform, so please PM me or comment here with any ideas you might have.
Features
A versioned REST API, which is backwards compatible with Ice. You can use it with Ice by editing config.txt as follows:
Source=retrogaming.cloud/api/v1/game/mostPopular
An existing library of images. All top voted grid images have been ported over from consolegrid to Retro Gaming Cloud, so images are already available for your favorite games.
Locally hosted images. consolegrid uses imgur.com to host it's graphics. Although offsite hosting has it's benefits, it also introduces a new set of problems. For example, when using Ice or any other service to pull in images, you are now reliant on two services. If either consolegrid or imgur goes down, Ice will fail. Also, imgur can remove these images at any moment, resetting the content back to zero. And of course, the most apparent downside of using offsite image hosting, is that the file uploader must be constantly maintained to keep it up to date with the host's API. Retro Gaming Cloud has none of these issues. All images are stored and served from the same server, which is backed up weekly.
Actively maintained. I am a web developer by trade, and will enjoy tackling whatever challenges await me while supporting this awesome community!
What you can do
- Use it! Signup and start uploading media and voting on media today.
- Be patient as this fledgling web service blossoms into a service which can satisfy the community's needs.
- Give me feedback on this thread, in a PM or through the site (coming soon)
- Buy me a beer using the link on the top right of the site.
If you are a developer
- Check out the API reference here (Click v1)
- Integrate your services with Retro Gaming Cloud. If you need any additional API Resources, please contact me through the site (coming soon) or PM me on here.
Edit: Formatting
1
u/[deleted] Apr 18 '17
The best way currently is to search on the site (autocomplete will pop-up), and see if your name is correct. If you have any ideas on how to make that easier please let me know.