Tom Drake
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Posts posted by Tom Drake
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1 hour ago, C-Beats said:
If you run the standard ROM import on the same folder again it should only list new files. Scan for removed can be used to find games who's files are no longer there.
It doesn't seem to work for games where a new version is adding to one already there. So if I have a new Rev # or want to add a fan translation, it doesn't pick it up. If I do force duplicate, it'll add it and the original as a new entity, but that's a mess that then needs to be combined back to the original. Import new roms (or scan for new roms) seems to really be new GAMES, it isn't adding addition versions for me.
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4 hours ago, C-Beats said:
If you turn on the cloud sync feature LaunchBox does this for you already with any game that has a DB ID attached to it.
Oh my god, I missed this feature update! This is great, and probably what @Lordmonkus was talking about.
I still think it would be great to have a scan/update option to get all the roms added (and removed) from the directory. But for now, I'll happily delete all the games in a platform and then re-add for major rom changes that I might do every year or two!
Thanks to both of you!
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I tried, but no luck. Once the games are deleted in LB, the platform XML is gone until reimporting.
It's so odd that you can't simply update based on your folder.
Maybe @JoeViking245 could open up his Copy Metadata plugin to include things like: Favorite, LastPlayedDate, Completed, CompletedDateTime, PlayCount, PlayTime
Then people could do a fresh import and catch all their roms, then be able to patch the personal stuff like above back in. Plus, we could share favourites as a way to highlight top games.
Or even better, come up with a solution to batch import all roms like it was an initial import, but match the duplicates up to games already in the DB! 😉
I see the Tools > File Management > Combine Roms that basically combines all duplicates, but maybe it's as simple as needing the ability to have it default to the oldest "DateAdded"?
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Thanks, that works!
What if I had an entire set of games, can I just drag in all of them to force it this way, then use the consolidate option?
Just trying to make sure I'm including all the games without having to lose play count, favourites, etc.
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For a new platform, I can import roms and it'll group different versions together as one game. That works great.
But what if I want to run a new import that has another version of that game? It seems that both "import roms" and "scan for new rooms" will ignore that new rom when the game already exists.
Is there a process to make sure all games in a folder are included on a future import or scan?
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If you have Fujitsu FM-Towns Marty working fine otherwise, the only thing you'll need to do is Manage > Platforms, and change its parent to Consoles.
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I've never heard of IGDB, but this sounds like a great addition to improve game data in Launchbox!
I see they have an API https://api-docs.igdb.com/#getting-started Maybe it could be added to the import step like EmuMovies, or a plug-in that can be run, or even directly importing into the LaunchBox DB? I guess to keep it non-commercial, the plugin idea might be best, where people could set up their own API? -
Oops! Yes, I meant Visual Pinball and have edited the title to help others find this in the future.
Thanks for your help @JoeViking245. The WaitClose didn't seem to be working, but with full path and quotes, it's working now! Also, Sleep 10000 is a good idea, I tried 5000 and it didn't work, so the extra delay should help others.
While paths might be different for others, below is my exact code that worked...
Run, "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinMAME\curl.exe" "http://localhost:8080/quit" , "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinMAME\", Hide Sleep, 10000 Process, WaitClose, "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinballX.exe" Run, "C:\Pixelcade\pixelweb.exe", "C:\Pixelcade\", Hide-
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Pixelcade's pixelweb.exe monitors Launchbox and displays the marquee for the selected game. However, to use Pixelcade with Virtual Pinball, pixelweb.exe needs to be closed before playing a pinball table. Then, when exiting the game, we need to launch pixelweb.exe to work again with Launchbox.
The code below is from the Pixelcade site, and that first quit line works great as is in the Running AutoHotkey Script. What I'm not sure is how to run that start line when closing the emulator. What is the best way to do this?
QuoteCommand to stop pixelweb.exe. Be sure and update for your correct path.
Run, "d:\arcade\Pixelcade\curl.exe" "http://localhost:8080/quit" , d:\arcade\Pixelcade\, HideCommand to start pixelweb.exe
Run, d:\arcade\Pixelcade\pixelweb.exe, d:\arcade\Pixelcade\, Hide-
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@Jason Carr Sounds good, going forward we'll go max 1000 and less if that's what the source is (no benefit to upsizing it).
We did a few at 400px that I've submitted, some real deep cuts like these Saturn games...
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@kurzih Great point, I noticed that too. I plan to have no extra space, so it's truly just the logo. Is there a certain width you aim for in your logos, or just keep it the same as the source material it came from?
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@Jason Carr I have a question as I'm about to give my graphic designer a lot of clear logo tasks. He works for my blog but I have extra time for him to fill, so I'm having him cut clear logos from all the games where my audit shows a box front but no clear logo.
What is your preferred resolution for clear logos? While there are many much bigger, I see a lot are 400px wide and whatever height is required, depending on the logo? Is that the best rule or is there a good case for larger? I'm thinking 400px might be the goal for faster loading and less space requirements?
After we're done the nearly 1k files for my needs, happy to take suggestions of other ways we can help build the database.
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Thanks @DOS76 and @wallmachine, I've added it in "Request a feature"!
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I've searched everywhere and have tried all sorts of various rom import options to make it work, but I can't figure out how to make HBMAME display it's games in LanuchBox. I think the issue is if I use MAME metadata, it will only see the parent game because it doesn't know about the clones (even with skip unplayable/hacked/prototype/bootleg unchecked) as they're not in MAME. And if I don't use MAME metadata, I'll get a list of awkward rom filenames.
I guess if I had things my way, I'd love to have an Arcade Hacks platform that shows the parents (with images from MAME) and I could get to properly named clones within those? Is there a way to pull those names from HBMAME?
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Thanks, I'll check those out!
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I'm an old school emulator user, going back to around 1998-2000, but I haven't been too active the past decade (thanks to kids) other than a Hyperspin setup on my NVIDIA Shield. Now I'm looking at a home arcade cabinet and am really getting back into it.
To get caught up on all the new emulators and how well they're working on Windows, I spent a couple days trying to compile my picks for each system I want to add to LaunchBox. Most posts and videos had some outdated options so I've updated what I could here. In most cases, I'm trying to lean towards RetroArch and MAME for simplicity and to use the bezel project.
I'm sharing my list here because it might help others chose the emulators they want and I'm also hoping people will weigh in if they see a bad choice. I'm only a few days in on this so I haven't tried them all myself!
Platform Emulator 3DO Interactive Multiplayer RA opera Arcade MAME Atari 2600 RA stella Atari 5200 RA atari800 Atari 7800 RA prosystem Atari Jaguar RA virtual jaguar Atari Lynx RA bettle handy Colecovision RA bluemsx Commodore 64 RA vice x64 Emerson Arcadia 2001 MAME? GCE Vectrex RA vecx Laserdisc-Based Hardware Daphne Mattel Intellivision RA freeintv MSX RA bluemsx MSX 2 RA bluemsx NEC PC-FX RA beetle pc-fx NEC SuperGrafx RA beetle supergrafx NEC TurboGrafx-16 RA beetle pce fast NEC TurboGrafx-CD RA beetle pce fast Neo Geo Pocket RA beetle neopop Neo Geo Pocket Color RA beetle neopop Nintendo 3DS RA citra canary Nintendo 64 RA mupen64plus-next Nintendo DS RA melonds Nintendo Entertainment System RA mesen Nintendo Famicom Disk System ?? Nintendo Game & Watch MAME? Nintendo Game Boy RA gambatte Nintendo Game Boy Advance RA mgba Nintendo Game Boy Color RA gambatte Nintendo GameCube RA dolphin Nintendo Pokemon Mini RA pokemini Nintendo Satellaview RA bnes accuracy?? Nintendo Switch Yuzu Nintendo Virtual Boy RA bettle vb Nintendo Wii RA dolphin Nintendo Wii U Cemu Odyssey2 MAME? Othello Multivision MAME? Philips CD-i MAME? RCA Studio II MAME? Sammy Atomiswave RA flycast Sega 32x RA picodrive Sega CD RA genesis plus rx Sega Dreamcast RA flycast Sega Game Gear RA genesis plus rx Sega Genesis RA genesis plus rx Sega Master System RA genesis plus rx Sega Model 2 Model 2 Emulator Sega Model 3 Supermodel Sega Naomi RA flycast Sega Pico MAME? Sega Saturn RA beetle saturn Sega SG-1000 RA genesis plus rx Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 RA 81 SNK Neo Geo AES MAME? SNK Neo Geo CD MAME? Sony Playstation RA beetle psx hw Sony Playstation 2 PCSX2 Sony PlayStation Portable RA ppsspp Sony PocketStation MAME? Super Nintendo Entertainment System RA bnes accuracy SuperVision MAME? WonderSwan RA beetle wswan? Ares? WonderSwan Color RA beetle wswan? Ares? -
I just tried it out today, but this looks like a great way to thin down our rom collections to 1 Game, 1 Rom. Command lines scare me but it was actually pretty easy to follow. The process was much simpler than clrmamepro. I'll hold off doing all my roms since he's working on a GUI version, but wanted to share my find. LaunchBox combines them into multiple versions / additional apps, but running your roms through this can save some space and give you more control over which roms to keep.
Game submissions erroring out.
in Troubleshooting
Posted
I had this happen today for half the games I was adding.
Even worse, I see that resubmitting leads to two entires for new game (see screenshot below). This will lead to either duplicate games (if the moderator of the second game isn't paying attention) or me getting a bunch of rejections on my account and possibly that the less complete version is the one approved.
Is it possible for someone to go into my list and clean out the first (less complete) entry for each game where it happened? I'd guess there's maybe 10 games that had the issue.