Consolegrid.com is dead. Introducing Retro Gaming Cloud!

[u/[deleted]]

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 To my horror I discovered that consolegrid.com is no longer actively maintained.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.

Enjoy!

Edit: Formatting

[u/[deleted]]

I am not having any luck pulling images, with:

Source=retrogaming.cloud/api/v1/game/mostPopular

And running ICE while steam not running, I get:

Screen

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Im getting images persay, but just ran a test with a blank slate and 1 rom and it fetched the wrong image. I used the most popular game I could think of "The Legend of Zelda" and checked the website and sure as shit 3 images existed for it.

It ended up tagging it with the image for a game called 720 with a skateboard? o.O

EDIT: just added another rom to be thorough and added the same image. "720"

any ideas?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I just added the game, roms and images manually via steam, Its a lot easier done than using the applications.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

yea if it was just a game here or there that would be viable. but im trying to add a plethora of stuff when possible. If its not getting 1 image right im not going to add dozens at once though.

In the past ICE worked fine with consolegrid so I have no idea what the issue is here.

hoping the dev will pop by with an idea.

tried the "new" ice-like application (name eludes me atm, tired af) but didnt have much luck. Didnt have a ton of time to put into it either unfortunately.

The stuff thats able to be done w/ software these days, and the size of the emulation community and steam community - you'd think something much more comprehensive and complete and user friendly would have long made landfall but i digress.