Unofficial RetroAchievements 1G1R DATs and CUEs/GDIs. 02 February 2025

The one on RA read much cleaner to me? Am i missing something obvious that suggests a different name? See below for the example i quoted above:

• Black Cauldron, The - Disk 1 Back.nib[appleasimov]

  66f82e26d9417757ece6253dc140967c

• Black Cauldron, The - Disk 1 Front.nib[appleasimov]

  dbcc564fdd15795c4b994af26a01a09e

• Black Cauldron, The - Disk 2 Back.nib[appleasimov]

  02de27187fd6446daae8303066611f13

• Black Cauldron, The - Disk 2 Front.nib[appleasimov]

  89d90b22588fc4217348e334c60c6900

• Black Cauldron, The - Disk 3.nib[appleasimov]

  0d0ef0cace8ccde940c06781efe2fd78

• The Black Cauldron (4am and san inc crack) disk 1A.dsk

  8899ad83dbda2e772393f98abefdc058

• The Black Cauldron (4am and san inc crack) disk 1B.dsk

  6af43b5d837688b373529947d3fb04fc

• The Black Cauldron (4am and san inc crack) disk 2A.dsk

  9214fdb0b3a53c5f4160ac681a2002bd

• The Black Cauldron (4am and san inc crack) disk 2B.dsk

  a7cea209c45dacf4474753a701b4229d

• The Black Cauldron (4am and san inc crack) disk 3A.dsk

  3493f40aec829f98e4cf6ff739ff0f81

• The Black Cauldron disk 1A.woz

  20521505afaa87bb93533172f0ab5467

• The Black Cauldron disk 1B.woz

  7ee36f4258c655325bef305300bd6f6e

• The Black Cauldron disk 2A.woz

  db2d941216029330a9fe89a65dfdd459

• The Black Cauldron disk 2B.woz

  a3fad474e60da976c32c29bf7db7d7f7

• The Black Cauldron disk 3.woz

  147464e241a0b6065c49e1880f0f6e0a

Yeah RA names are cleaner so I might have to look at renaming all the games in these dats.

Edited January 6 by Ultra God Azgorath

Any chance to change the file names for "Black Cauldron" (Apple II) for the next DAT? I'd love to see how it impacts what I am doing with RomVault.

can you teach us how to set these dat files or send us an youtube video with the instructions? I´m newbee in this dat process. Thanks

59 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

Any chance to change the file names for "Black Cauldron" (Apple II) for the next DAT? I'd love to see how it impacts what I am doing with RomVault.

I'll see what I can do.

16 minutes ago, retrospace said:

can you teach us how to set these dat files or send us an youtube video with the instructions? I´m newbee in this dat process. Thanks

I'll try to make a tutorial video and add it to the zip download when I can get some free time from work to do it.

Thanks. "Black Cauldron" could be a great test whetehr this improves.

RomVault basically works straight out of the box. You copy the DAT zip file into the DAT folder of RomVault (and unzip it). You dump all ROMs into the rom folder of RomVault. You hit scan, then check fix, then fix. Then it's done! Super easy with no configuration needed.

I changed the DAT file myseld to match the RA web-site. But no improvement (beyond it looking slightly "cleaner"). So, it doesn't seem to be worth the effort to change the DAT

One question to you @Ultra God Azgorath: Does Launchbox identify "The Black Cauldron" as one game for Apple II or you have several entries. Automatically or did you manually somehow group them.

I did some digging. It seems the ones with cue files and the ones that you tag as "clone of" in the DAT files all show very nice & clean (grouped, metadata, etc.). The multi-disks without a tag / cue show as several entries in LaunchBox?

5 hours ago, steve1977 said:

I did some digging. It seems the ones with cue files and the ones that you tag as "clone of" in the DAT files all show very nice & clean (grouped, metadata, etc.). The multi-disks without a tag / cue show as several entries in LaunchBox?

If you tick this option during import then It'll combine all discs of a multi-disk game into 1 entry. If you untick it, each disk will be it's own entry.

Let me try. This works for you for all apple ii games?

I'll have to check when I get home. It depends on the Launchbox Database entries on those games.

Thanks. Would be great if you can share when you get a chance.

It doesn't seem an issue about the DAT file, but more broadly about the RA-naming though? I would have hoped that the file naming from RA allows multi-disc games to be identified by Launchbox properly and in fact also identified in general. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. Naming is all over and I need to manually identify the games and then also manually combine multi-disc games into one record in Launchbox.

Surprising with all the work from no-intro and redumped? Any thoughts how this is working out for you? For "The Black Cauldron", but also other Apple II games (and other platforms).

Computer-based platforms like Amstrad CPC, Apple II and NEC PC 8000/8800 are cataloged by neither redump nor no-intro. Different groups catalogue them.

The combining feature works for me.

Did you manually combine them or did it work like on your screenshot directly by importing the roms?

The latter.

Tried it again and got the same results as you do, which is great. The Apple II files that are not working to directly import below:

* A2Sudoku v1.2 - Not picked up as games is called "Apple II Sudoku"

* Black Cauldron, The: Back, Black Cauldron, The: Front - the other version of the game. 4 are not identified. One (disk 3) is grouped with "your" version

* Flapple Bird - Not identified as homebrew game

* froggysoftware lafemme d1 / froggysoftware lafemme d2 - Not picked up

* King's Quest 2: Side A / King's Quest 2: Side B / King's Quest 2: Back / King's Quest 2: Front - Not picked up

* King's Quest 3: Disk 4: Back / etc - Not picked up

* King's Quest: disk A / etc - Not picked up

* Maniac Mansion Side 1 / etc - Not picked up

* Number Munchers v1.2 - Not identified; manually identified once removed v1.2

* Odell Lake v1.2 - same issue

* Portal in Applesoft BASIC - same issue (game identified as Portal)

* Prince of Persia side A / etc - Not picked up

* Space Quest 1: Disk 4: Back / etc - Not picked up

* Space Subtraction v1.0 - Not picked up (also not without v1.0), maybe game does not exist in LB database

* Word Munchers v1.4 0 - Not identified; manually identified once removed v1.4.0

* Zork I: The Great Underground Empire r75 - Not identified; manually identified once removed r75

 

I haven't added all Apple II games yet, so there may be more.

I did some checking on other platforms and most looking good and everything being picked up well.

Any thoughts / appetite to fix this through the DAT file? I could probably manually do it by adjusting the DAT file, but ideally this can be fixed for the community. Probably some [} for the versions or additions. And some fixing of the multi-side disks into something like "1A [disk 1-front]" or something similar.

The LB database probably doesnt have a lot of hacks and homebrew games saved in it so it won't pick them up and the names of some of the games dont match up to what is in the lb database either. I'll need to do quite a lot of changes during the month.

Thanks. Let me summarize a bit the issue for the group of Apple II games. Only 2 of the 16 games above are not part of the LB database. Others are either wrong game names or the need to solve the issue how to name multi-side games (not multi-disk, but multi-side):

* Not in LB database (2) - Nothing can be done as homebrew et al not well covered. From above, this is Flapple Bird and Space Subtraction

* Dual-side games (7) - LB doesn't pick up "side A", so need to change naming to be better picked up and work with [] for original info to be ignored by LB

* Spelling of the game incorrect (7)

20 hours ago, steve1977 said:

Thanks. Let me summarize a bit the issue for the group of Apple II games. Only 2 of the 16 games above are not part of the LB database. Others are either wrong game names or the need to solve the issue how to name multi-side games (not multi-disk, but multi-side):

* Not in LB database (2) - Nothing can be done as homebrew et al not well covered. From above, this is Flapple Bird and Space Subtraction

* Dual-side games (7) - LB doesn't pick up "side A", so need to change naming to be better picked up and work with [] for original info to be ignored by LB

* Spelling of the game incorrect (7)

Ok thanks. I'll see what I can do during the month.

I noticed there are some files that don't have a SHA1 hash (only have a CRC32 file. I am not sure whether I have these files, so not sure whether this is related?

For example, galaga.zip (Arcade): I have 14 files, but miss 4. These 4 don't have a SHA1 info.

Same for some other roms in Arcade.

Also, 

ArduRogue (World).zip

doesn't

seem to match the no-intro file?

7 hours ago, steve1977 said:

Also, 

ArduRogue (World).zip

doesn't

seem to match the no-intro file?

The current nointro version doesn't support cheevos.

Are these missing in the DAT? https://retroachievements.org/game/32797 https://retroachievements.org/viewtopic.php?t=29328 https://retroachievements.org/game/14477/hashes

Edited January 26 by steve1977

And these two seem outdated in the DAT? Not sure though...

https://retroachievements.org/game/29847

https://retroachievements.org/game/29863

https://retroachievements.org/game/31184/hashes

https://retroachievements.org/game/29752/hashes

https://retroachievements.org/game/15169/hashes

Edited January 29 by steve1977