Ritchardo

I just popped on to say that I agree with this in full. I personally haven't moderated in an ice age and, while I've started contributing again recently, I cut back on it because it was like pouring water into a raging inferno - the straw that broke the camel's back for me was a seemingly never ending battle to add some Brazilian Master System games that were re-skins of existing MS games. There ended up with two battling camps clogging up the feed and due to the system there was no way to have an actual debate about it. I think it ended up spilling into the forums and quite a lot of people, myself included just gave up at that point because my spare time is limited - the constant wading through people adding alternate regional titles, removing them, adding separate entries, trying to delete them again became utterly soul destroying. From what I can see, while that particular situation has, presumably, been resolved the underlying issue hasn't and Freestate sums up a lot of the issues extremely well. For me, these are some of the key issues: * There really has to be an updaed rule-set and some kind of standardisation set that moderators should be signing up to - this would cover topics such as naming conventions, adding alternate names to assist with scraping, the use of individual programmers' names etc. * The feedback system - moderators already need to give reasons when they reject a change - this rarely flows through to the user (only when the change is rejected outright) and never to the other moderators - if someone has noticed something that you might otherwise overlook, this could be invaluable information, likewise you should be able to respond to and provide feedback to the moderator via an appeal - this way everyone learns and the quality of submissions, and how they are managed, is improved. Ideally some sort of forum where moderators can ask questions of each other would be ideal, if they're on the fence about something or would like a second opinion. * Housekeeping - I do think there should be housekeeping conducted a mass edit of, in particular, company names - there are so many variants in the database of companies out there (e.g. Codemasters, Codemasters Ltd, The Codemasters Software Company, Code Masters etc, etc.) - it makes searching and filtering by companies a complete waste of time, again, personally, I think companies should match the box art the same way that the game titles should. And while I'm at it, I have a few suggested additions... * Official On-Screen Languages - why this isn't already in the database is beyond me - a field where we can input what the actual language of the game is. Again, a simple and easy way for people to filter out games that are potentially understandable would be a huge timesaver for people building thier collections and trying to understand, at a glance whether this is a game they should be adding/keeping/filtering out or getting rid of to make room for something else. * Unofficial Translations- following on from the above, a field that lets you input whether there's a fan translation out there and available and what language it's in - that can, again, help users start to track down other versions of games. * Additional Fanart categories - if I've made a rather neat Box Front and posted as Fanart, I might like to add whatever logo I've created or a spine image or 3D box - having all of these available to upload will stop the main art categories being cluttered up (a little) and help people, in theory, really craft their own collections. * Some kind of Kudos system - every successful change you propose awards you a little kudos, every rejection loses you a little - drop below a certain level and you're frozen out from making changes for a while. Drop further and you're kicked from being able to make the changes. It doesn't stop wanton sabotage completely, but it would slow it down. Likewise moderation should be by application and approved by a group of existing moderators based on the number of contributions made, the feedback they've received and any adjustments they've made etc - again reasons for rejection would have to be clearly articulated with feedback provided as to what someone has to do to reach the standard required. This has gone on far longer than I anticipated when I started... I hope it's taken in the spirit that it's intended, a general air of just wanting things to reach the potential that they can.

Hi guys, I've been uploading a lot of box spines of late for the Amstrad CPC and I've had a spurt of rejections for box spines that are 'upside down' and the wrong alignment because it "Won't work with the DB" - fact is, they're not and it will! Particularly with the old 8-bit home computers you would occasionally have games released with a horizontal rather than vertical box front alignment. The way Launchbox is coded, it will automatically detect if the box spine runs vertically or horizontally and it will add the spine accordingly to the 3D image. For most systems (and most games), this will add a vertical spine on the left and right sides of the 3D box. However, if the spine is running horizontally, it will add the spine to the top and bottom of the 3D image. Therefore, for the box to look the way it did 'back in the day' the box spine has to be in the database as a horizontal spine rather than a vertical one. Lots of times this will also mean that it is 'upside down' so that the text reads correctly when flipping the box around. Before rejecting spines on the basis that it's the wrong way round etc, have a look at the game box front and ask yourself if it makes sense that the spine is running in that direction. I will attempt to add more detail to the reasons for upload box to try and reduce the risk of this in future (and probably should've done so in the first place as it does look odd particularly if you've no experience of these systems) but this is more of a general information piece in case anyone reading didn't know.

I can't believe this is still going on... three weeks of utter madness. I'm sick to the back teeth of seeing these games coming up again and again and again. For those who are fanatically deleting and merging these games can I ask, because I don't understand, WHY DO YOU CARE?! Like seriously, what difference does it make to you or your life if there are two separate entries AIR QUOTES "For the same game" - there are enough people with enough doubts that it should be a separate entry. So let them have it! Don't have it i your collection, I couldn't care less but stop telling enforcing your opinion on others. ENOUGH ALREADY!!! And I agree wholeheartedly with kurzih - there is so much valuable work still to be done to improve the overall quality of the database and instead we're wasting time going round and round on some obscure Brazilian releases of Master System games because of zealotism.

Another in the 'Agree - can we just move past this' camp. I haven't done any moderation in a few days because I'm sick of being swamped by additions and deletions for the same few games and honestly have no idea where they are - it's gotten beyond confusing. So given we don't have the guidance 'from above' on how these games should be handled in the database, can we just reach a consensus ourselves and start to move on? Personally, I'll vote for separate entries in the database. It, doesn't matter to me, it really doesn't, but this feels like the path of least resistance...

Hi guys, Looking to open up a discussion to talk about primarily 8-bit cassette boxes that are a different size from their box front equivalents and how we treat them. In a lot of cases, the back cover would be a combination of a short blurb about the game, a bar-code or publisher information and the rest of the box back would be covered by an opaque hard plastic cover. Technically, when uploading to the games database we should only be uploading the cover scan and not taking into account the space that would've been used by the hard plastic. However, when it comes to the 3D modelling, this means that the Box Back image becomes highly stretched and is, frankly, terrible. This leaves us with a dilemma: do we upload the original box backs as is and live with it; or should we be uploading images that have some 'empty space' so as to avoid the stretching issue. If we do opt for the empty space should this be purely black (to emulate the majority of cassette boxes) or should it be a colour that best matches the image we're uploading? Or should these scaled versions be considered as Fanart? It's a minefield... I recently uploaded one as Fanart Box-Back as a 'compromise' here https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/images/98379 which might give better context to what I mean. Before I press on an upload any more, it would be good to get a feel for the general consensus as the best way forward. Thoughts are very much welcome.

Loving the new 3D modelling! Some platforms (particularly the old 8 bit computers) have a myriad of different art types and shapes and sizes - for the most part you can use the default box settings, however, some don't fit this template and are a different from the majority of the platform. For example games where the front box art is printed in landscape rather than vertical format - putting the spine art on the left hand size makes it quite squashed and doesn't look like the real box. In this instance the spine art work should be on the top of the box. To counter this, it would be good if you could select games on an individual basis (or in groups) to use different settings from the rest of the platform. Link to ticket: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/7377/option-to-change-the-3d-modelling-settings

Hi team, I've been learning how to use some 3D box art software and have accidentally uploaded some images to the database that I shouldn't have... there's one for Freddy Hardest and three for Codename Mat... any moderators reading - please reject and I'll redo! I've worked out how to do them properly now and will upload some other titles but will swing back and fix these up after they've gone through the modding process. Sincere and humble apologies!

Forgive me if I am doing / have done something wrong here but I'm a little confused by some new entries I've created over the past day or so. I'll take this one as an example. I created an entry for the game 'Robot Attack' on the Amstrad CPC (a somewhat forgettable lightgun shooter). Everything has gone through moderation and been approved so I decided to refresh the metadata and update the game in my own collection to reflect the database and found there was no available images to download - which seemed odd as I was sure I'd added a Box Front and Screenshot. Had a search on the database and found two entries for the same game - they are the exact same entry except the second one has images attached to it while the first doesn't: https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/164355 https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/164356 I figured user error somewhere and marked the first one for deletion but I also decided to check the database for the other approved entries and found that the same thing has happened with the other CPC game I've created and had approved. https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/164358 https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/164357 The issue is only on the CPC games I created, it hasn't cropped up on the Atari ST ones I made. Anyone seen this before or have any idea what went wrong - just so I can try to avoid doing it again?! EDIT: I've gone back through the Change Status log and one thing I have noted about these two titles is that they've received 4 approvals rather than the customary 3 is it something to do with that maybe - the last approval has been registered twice perhaps?

Thanks as always for the ongoing improvements guys - much appreciated! Hoping for a small quality of life tweak if it's possible! With the option to Download Bezels, is it possible to have the import wizard remember your previous choice like it does with the other images? As I'm not really interested in using bezels I need to manually untick the box every time I'm importing a game and as I'm still in muscle memory mode, I sometimes click through without changing it and then accidentally download them... it's a small thing for me to have to do each time but every click saved etc! EDIT: Okay, it's started doing this itself now... I'm possibly going mad but it absolutely wasn't working for me earlier! Never mind!!

Hi @maabus - I was literally just typing up the steps I was taking when your message came in. I've tried this, and you're right - you need to click out of the grid for it to register. Thanks for this, great help! @faeran - for reference, I had selected SuperGrafx in the drop down, ticked on default emulator and went straight to the 'Ok' button to add. It might be worthwhile updating the pop-up message to instruct users to click out of the line and trying again because I was genuinely bamboozled by it! Thank you both for helping out!

Hi guys, I've been having some trouble adding new emulators to Launchbox since the latest update or even changing the settings of existing emulators. When adding a new emulator, Launchbox doesn't seem to be recognising that there's data in the Associated Platforms tab so won't allow me to complete the set-up. Furthermore, when making changes to the Retroarch settings (including setting as a default emulator for an associated platform or adding a new one, the settings don't save). I've tried rebooting, I've tried renaming the platform, nothing seems to work or change within the GUI - you can still go in and edit the XML file manually to alter the settings for an emulator that's already in there (like Retroarch) but it does makes it difficult to add a new emulator. EDIT: Sorry, I've just realised this should probably be in the beta testing thread