Luckspeare

Okay, yeah, it's crystal clear some asshole is spamming dumb submissions to be disruptive. Multiple versions of the cover replacement, as well as recommending deletion or name change. Example below in case it's helpful for isolating.

Someone keeps proposing that the box cover for Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! for Sony Playstation be changed to a thumbnail of the cover for Creature Shock for Philips CD-i. I'm guessing this person is one of those trolls I've heard about? If so, can these be tracked? Do screenshots help, or what exactly do you need? In case it helps here, providing screenshot.

And another question. I've noticed someone start to initiate removals of ESRB ratings for games where there is no entry in the ESRB ratings lookup on the official ESRB website. Is this policy? Because I've *definitely* noticed that the ESRB database is very, very incomplete. And it subjects publishers and storefronts to legal liability for misrepresentation to falsely display an ESRB rating. I'd say Steam is a fairly authoritative source for this sort of information, publishers/developers provide that info to a storefront with their own interests in mind, and with legal liability always possible. I suspect we are going to be deleting a LOT of ESRB ratings unnecessarily if we keep going by this method, and I don't think it's a good idea. I've actually e-mailed ESRB directly to ask them about this, and I'll share the answer here when I get it. For now, unless we get a bombshell that there is a huge scandal of publishers and developers getting away with falsely displaying ESRB ratings on the world's foremost digital storefront, I'd suggest holding off on create a bunch of moderations for this. The most recent example I saw was "The Adventures of: Tree", which the Steam store page shows is E rated, but which doesn't come up on the ESRB's web site ratings lookup. https://store.steampowered.com/app/354860/The_Adventures_of_Tree/ https://www.esrb.org/

Another logos question for anyone who wants to pipe up. Quality is great, right? How big is too big. Obviously I'd rather have a 1600x400 logo than a 400x100, but is a 5400x1600 one good when it weighs in at 4.6MB? Or is there some reasonable middle-ground that's a good balance between size and quality. I've been downsampling logos to 2000 x whatever. Is that good, or should I just submit the biggest logos possible? I did once see a 50000 x something logo... was 1.1GB memory loaded into GIMP.

For GIMP users, just press CTRL-A to select the whole image, and go to Image -> Crop to Content. If it doesn't have any extra space, it will tell you there was none. If it tells you there is no content to crop to, and is acting like it's a blank image, it's because some of these high-transparency logos are saved in a way that GIMP doesn't like. It acts like it's a blank, empty image. What I do to fix it is open the logo in Krita (a different free image editing app), re-save it, then re-open it in GIMP, and it then works fine.

That was my understanding. It's a bit of a downer, as I'm watching perfectly good alternate logos (sometimes from spline art, sometimes from ads, sometimes from other boxes/releases, sometimes fanart) being deleted one after another, casually called "dupes" and "doesn't match box art". But I do realize I'm the new guy here, so I wanted to get a sense of whether this is LB policy or one moderator's opinion. I'll be submitting these for re-addition where not it's one of those clear situations you lay out.

Sorry, I know I'm Mr. Questions lately. I'm seeing someone submit many variant and/or fanart clear logos for deletion as "duplicates" and/or "not matching box art" (in most cases, they're not duplicates, having massive or at least substantial differences from others, and in a couple of cases even when they matched some part of publisher-issued art -- for example, the variant logo used on an arcade marquee or on a different box cover published for the same game and platform). I just wanted to clarify, since I haven't been able to find specific guidance on this (maybe it's obvious, please point it out if I totally missed it) -- but, is this the DB policy? Is there no room for variant or fanart logos? Is there a strict requirement that there be only one style of a logo and that it match the box art? (By variant I mean, say, shading, outlining, texture/color gradation changes beyond mere hue shifts, alternate spacing/arrangement, etc.) TIA.

That's what I thought, though I obviously wasn't so sure about whether they're actually implemented for non-arcade games (I don't use Big Box). They're pretty cool I think, even if they don't have identifying logos or text.

Alrighty, thanks for the guidance. I'll hold off on uploading marquee-style artwork for non-arcade games, then. As for marquees being for arcade games only... eh, to be honest and no disrespect intended, as a relative newbie to all this, and looking at how things seem to work, but I take these category titles with a grain of salt. Officially publisher-released background art in the DB is "fanart backgrounds" for lack of an appropriate category, and, for example, Intellivision controller overlays are "arcade controls information", likewise for lack of appropriate category. Similarly, there is no way to distinguish official banners from fanart banners. So, it seems that we just fit things into the best possible existing category, and arcade marquees would be the least-wrong category for these sorts of images for the future if, say, there were any plans to implement marquee graphics in the LB or Big Box UI later on. But if there is other guidance, of course, I'll follow it. Just saying what intuitively suggests itself from working with the stuff for a year or so.

What's the position in the DB of textless marquee-style images like the one attached (obtained from steamgriddb, where they're called "heroes" for some odd reason)? They're not backgrounds, because they're 1920x620 and would make pretty poor backgrounds, and they're not banners, since they're way out of aspect ratio to make a good banner. The best fit, as far as I can see, is Arcade Marquee, since it would best fit that role. But when I've submitted as such, the response is that it should be a banner. Seems awkward as a banner, to me. So, should we even submit these? Do they have a place? If so, is the banner thing the consensus? TIA.

I've reported this before, but I have a bit more specific information now. A while back I added the game Starsector, but immediately afterward I was unable to edit or view it at its URL, https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/123944. It just says "Error occurred" on the web page, with nothing else displayed except the web site's general header. Months later, I find I'm still unable to view it -- unless I log out of the web site. Then I can view it, but as soon as I log back in, Error Occurs. I have tried resetting all site info. I have whitelisted launchbox-app to keep tracking blockers and the like from operating on it. I have tried in both Firefox and Opera browsers (the latter of which is in a default settings state, since I pretty much only use it for testing or getting through to sites that Firefox has trouble with for some reason or another), with the same result. No idea what it is, but something doesn't want *me* to view that game's URL. Or maybe it's when someone is logged in at all, can't test that since I only have my own account. I'd speculate about general network/internet/firewall settings, but they shouldn't interfere with just Starsector's page, right? I'm using standard Windows Defender on normal settings. There have been other games that did this, and I don't remember them off top of head, but here is this one as an example. It does seem there's something going on, but I can't find anything on my end that should do this.

I am trying to add games from multiple Epic Games accounts (accounts of other family members), but wherever/however it has stored my own personal login is so sticky and resilient I can't get it to give me the chance to log in using another accounts. Even if I delete the Epic Games authentication key in settings.xml, the login comes then disappears, satisfied, with no opportunity for me to change it, and it proceeds with me logged in. So I'm completely unable to log in on other accounts. Issue has survived reboots. So my question is, where is the login credential/status stored, and is it possible to clear it out so I can log in with my sons' accounts for game import?

Incidentally, on the FPS/TPS/Shooter issue, I forgot where I ran into it, but I saw them labeled on some site as "Perspective Shooters". A little awkward at first, but as I thought about it I saw the elegance of it -- it gets at the core of what makes an FPS or TPS different from all other shooters, and it does it in one word. Whenever genre expansion/rationalization gets around to getting gotten to, I'd suggest "Perspective Shooter" as the two-word catch all that avoids the even-more-awkward alphabet soup of trying to define them in existing terms slashed together.

Ah, thanks for the heads up guys.

Okay, new here, and I hope I'm not opening a can of conflict-worms here, but I couldn't find anything searching for several terms, but I'm sure this has *got* to have been discussed before, but I couldn't find it anyway, but, but but.... please slap me down if I'm out of line here, but... I've noticed there's a pretty narrow selection of genres available, missing what, at least to me, seem to be very key categories. Real-Time Strategy, Action-Adventure, Business, VR, Wargame, Interactive Fiction, etc. I'm sure half of them are subject to controvery/disagreement, so not at the moment advocating any particular ones, but I was wondering -- what's the general take on this issue? Did I just completely fail in my forum searching to find this issue heartily discussed and tabled/resolved? And if, by some strange magic, this is potentially a relatively fresh or openable/reopenable issue, is that something we can start? I know this means, of course, tipping over an apple cart full of tens or hundreds of thousands of games. But still curious and wondering. Let the slapdowns follow.