New Banner Image Scraper Suggestion

[closer2thelung]

I would like to suggest using the website http://thegamesdb.net/ as the image scraper for Ice. It seems to have a much more complete database than consolegrid.com. I am not smart enough to figure out how to implement this myself in my own configuration, but if anyone knows how please share the info.

here is a link to their api info if anyone is interested: http://wiki.thegamesdb.net/index.php?title=Main_Page

[scottrice]

This has been suggested before, and honestly I think it is a good idea. Thegamesdb does a much better job of organizing games by their platforms than consolegrid does. Unfortunately thegamesdb doesn't support steam banners. Steam requires images to be a very specific size (460x215), and thegamesdb doesn't have a section to upload just steam banners.

I was in contact with the owner of the site a while ago to work on making this a reality, but I haven't heard from him in a couple months. If that functionality gets added to thegamesdb then I will definitely move Ice over.

[closer2thelung]

would it be possible to have Ice scrape the box art and then resize the image leaving the aspect ratio?

[scottrice]

I could, but it doesn't work very well. When Steam gets an image in the wrong aspect ratio, it will just black box it. It looks especially bad for the vertical box art that is common on games today, since Steam grid images are mainly horizontal. You end up with a tiny image of box art and two giant black bars on either side.

[SonicBoom89]

Anyway i implemented a provider for thegamesdb.
I solved the problem of the black borders by generating a fitting image using background blurring.

See my fork for an example https://github.com/SonicBoom89/Ice/raw/master/ice-example-new.png