Setup

AKL offers many features and possibilities. But if you want to get the complete experience you might want to read up on a couple of things here.

After install

Directly after you have installed the addon following the steps from the installation page, the addon's background service will start up. AKL will then scan your kodi installation to see if you have any AKL compatible addons installed. If not it will ask you if you would like to install the default plugin for AKL. For new and standard users I recommend to install it too.

First run

Opening up AKL the first time you will start in an empty root with only the main menu options visible.

Categories

Within AKL you can categorize all your ROMs and collections so that you will have a better overview of what is in your library. The way how you want to categorize is completely up to you. AKL supports multiple layers of categories, meaning that a category can have subcategories underneath. Furthermore a category in AKL has a full metadata set associated so you can give it extra details like year, studio and plot.

Example layout

Here is an example setup where in the root we have create two main categories, namely Arcade and Consoles. Underneath Arcade we directly put two ROM collections for MAME ROMs and one for Capcom specific ROMs.
In the case of the Consoles category we add an extra layer of categories for each of the console suppliers. Although not shown in this example, but of course we can add ROM collections for each specific console of that supplier in the correct category.

- ROOT  
    |   
    | - Arcade  
    |      |  - Mame   
    |      |  - Capcom   
    |  
    | - Consoles  
    |      |  - Nintendo   
    |      |  - Sega  

Create new category

Open AKL and navigate to the location where you like to add the new category.

Update category

Delete category

ROM Collections

ROM Collections is as the name already implies a collection of ROMs or games within AKL. You can compose the collection by using one or multiple scanners or you can import or reference existing ROMs/games from other collections. The ability to associate multiple scanners to your collection makes it possible to have diverse collections. You can associate different sources or file directories with your collections, but treat the contents as one set. Just like the category the collection also has a range of metadata and assets to give the collection more detail. Associate one or multiple launchers to your collection to make the ROMs or games in the collection executable with those launchers.
You can create ROM collections based on a certain console or you might want collections based on a popular franchise. The choice is yours.

ROMs

The ROM is the entity that references a specific game or ROM file. It is a launchable item and can not contain child items.

Scan

Scanning is the process of collecting games or ROMs from a specific source and adding them to a ROM Collection. This can be a file scanner that looks up files with certain extensions or an online scanner that reads out certain online accounts or storages.

Scrape

Scraping concerns collecting metadata and assets for all of the entities in AKL.

Launch

Launchers are the plugins that execute a separate application or service with a given ROM or game entity. You can create launchers of your favourite emulators or online services to open and execute one of your ROMs or games.

Setting up collections

Wintermute0110 has a some good documentation about setting up certain emulator configurations. Check:

• Setup Console
• Setup Computer
• Setup Arcade