Kjetter

Might not be the right place to ask, but worth a shot I guess.. Anyone know if there is a reason why there is a dedicated Sega SC-3000 and Othello Multivision category? The SC-3000 is more or less a SG-1000 with a keyboard, and has no games of its own afaik (every SG-1000 game is SC-3000 compatible and most (if not all) are marked "for SG-1000 and SC-3000" on the box). As far as I can tell the entire game database for SC-3000 are only less fleshed out duplicates of the SG-1000 entries. As for the Othello Multivision, that is just a licensed SG-1000 clone. Again, doesn't really have any games of it's own. There were roughly 5-10 games published by the same company that manufactured the console but they are also marked "SG-1000 and SC-3000", and every SG-1000 game would run on an OM (and vice versa). Currently only one game is entered in the game database for Othello Multivision (although without any information or images attached), but every single one of them is entered in the SG-1000 database. Just wondering if there really is a purpose in maintaining three databases that, if completed, will consist entirely of three sets of the exact same games. Is there not a better way to set it up, where all three variations of the console could share a database?

I'm still experiencing the "pending" issue. In my case some of my submissions have 3 pro / 0 con but still stick at pending, and one is stuck at 10 pro / 1 con. Others go through without problem. I assume it will sort itself out eventually, just figured it was worth mentioning that it's happening.

Excellent. Thank you. And just to preempt further endless discussion, can you confirm if this applies to all the games with full regional overhauls, like major graphical changes and/or vastly different story and presentation? In other words, those games that _present themselves as seperate entities_ and which saw more than a title change and some minor regional tweaks (ie. hamburgers in alex kidd or swastikas in bionic commando).

I've been skipping them as well since this all kicked off, to the point where I can't really be bothered doing much moderation at all. Between this, the guy who wanted all his disc-fanart removed and the "get your dang fanart out of my normal catemagories"-crusade it's been practically unworkable. I suppose we could make an attempt at this point to clean things up as far as the Brazilian entries goes, as per instructions to just go with the majority ruling - which does seem to lean towards separation by a decent margin (ignoring the actual majority vote of "oh please, have mercy, no more Brazilian frogs, anything but that, let's just torch the entire rain-forest already"). But if the decision isn't respected anyway it would only be making things messier - not to mention that it would be a lot easier working from a clean slate, rather than engaging with the extant reports - so I'm not really sure if it's a good idea. Here's hoping Jason clears the queue asap so the month of the smelly frog can end already.

It's hard to be certain, since I can only view the queue linearly, and since several entries have their names and alt names changed making searching difficult. But definitively anything to do with Sapo Xule (Psycho Fox / Kung Fu Kid / Astro Warrior) and Chapolim X Drácula: Um Duelo Assustador (Ghost House), and to a lesser extent I believe I still see As Aventuras da TV Colosso (Asterix and the Secret Mission) occasionally - though, again, a lot of them are probably in the queue with titles such as "DUPE DELETE" etc., as well as several half-finished entries that are halfway between Sapo Xule and some Genesis romhack under who-knows-what name. Might just be easier to track down the active ones based on the submitting user. In these upcoming changes you are working on, would you please consider including a submission and change history? It would massively cut down on unintended edit wars and repeat work, and it would make it a lot easier to restore errors and vandalism. If you want to I can give you an example of a website that has a reasonably robust system implemented.

I'm happy to hear that, there is nothing I'd rather be wrong about, and I am happy you are chiming in. But the problem here isn't that we can't find a majority agreement, the problem is that there seems to be no reason for reaching one if a singular moderator can just declare discussion pointless and enact his own standard. The idea of three approvals might be in place to prevent this, but I just the other day had an image replacement suggestion which was a visible and obvious downgrade being accepted 12 to 8, so as far as I can tell it would only be a matter of tenacity to get any change enacted. And as a result the queue is absolutely chock full of requests related to these entries, so even trying to untangle it to achieve _any_ uniform result can be tricky. The same entry might have someone trying to delete, change and re-add the same information at the same time, leaving behind entries looking like this (where in the Ouya game "DELETE DUPE" Joel Green is now a Brazilian toad battling cancer with the power of smelly shoes). The actual quarreling has been far less about what to do than it has been about whats been done while a discourse was attempted. Most people here have not been saying they are angry about what might happen to Sapo Xule, they are saying they are angry about how much of a mess this has made, how tiresome and difficult it's making moderating, and how long it's been going on. I don't think it's fair calling that silly, especially considering the sheer amount of work some people put in on the database. Anyways, "have a vote" was not exactly the executive decision I hoped for, but it was one nevertheless. And as I've said earlier, my vote is for separation. For just the Tectoy games, or for all games with graphical overhauls - I don't care. I vote for separation in either case.

Well, Freestate has tagged some (presumably) staff/admin early on in the discussion with zero response, and made a separate topic in the troubleshooting section that also got exactly zero replies. I recently posted the thread in the database section of the discord and asked if any staff or admin could have a look at it or at the very least clear the queue-clog. Guess what, zero response. I am rapidly forming the opinion that nobody on the staff-end of this cares at all. It seems to me that the database is in fact maintained, with little to no oversight, solely by users who only need to submit a minute amount of data to achieve moderation rights. For reference it took me a few days from signing up at all. And I can't believe I have to say this, but that is a really really terrible idea, especially when the system has so little accountability and transparency. The fact that it works at all is a miracle. And while it works, it certainly doesn't work well - and this situation is only one of many examples of why. Edit: Just to further illustrate the perceived lack of interest from staff - this is currently the fourth most discussed topic in "Contributions", second if you discount the stickies.

Yeah, basically exactly that. What it's labeled as becomes somewhat inconsequential, especially when the format is only playable on a PSP anyway.. Put it this way - if it was marked neither as game nor video, what would you consider it to be? I'm sure there are some tricky examples of interactive video out there, but this one seems pretty clear cut.

Said nobody. If anything it has been suggested that they may be entirely separate releases. Just because the changes are graphical in nature doesn't mean that the changes are not significant. What is the value of examples when there is no record of when that was merged, by who, or if any discussion was had prior to doing so? You could have done that a week ago and there would be no way to differentiate it from a change that was made 5 years ago. It's particularly hard to attribute your examples any value when it's been shown that when given examples of unmerged entries you promptly change them. Do examples from the database only count when they align with your opinion? But all of this is inconsequential, because what does the examples prove anyway? Nobody has claimed that there are not merged examples in the database. And just because there are examples of something does not mean that it is necessarily the ideal state of things, and definitively doesn't mean that a conversation can't be had about it. A conversation, by the way, does not usually consist of one participant just saying that he has had conversations before, and thus the other participant does not need to have one. If you projected any more you could be showing movies and charging ticket money. Just because people disagree with you does not mean that they are lying, and resorting to painting those who disagree with you as lying saboteurs is absolutely disgusting rhetoric. Anyone who is halfway literate can see the multiple instances in the thread of suggestions to leave this well enough alone precisely because it's causing damage.

So, does this mean that if, just for the sake of argument, 5 versions (subsets) of some 4gb PS2 game existed, and you wanted to have them all in your collection, then you'd have to store the full game five times for a total of 20gb? Or are these patches stackable, exchangeable, or anything like that? This question isn't really relevant to the database or anything, I'm just wondering. But to briefly touch on what you said about "how much should be hacked". I see your point here, and I definitively don't have a neat answer for the entire question, nor any interest in trying to discuss it - as you said, that would take forever. But I don't think it's unfair to suggest that if you need a tertiary program/service in addition to console/emulator and game to even detect that a change has been made then for all intents and purposes no change has actually been made to the game. I mean, nobody has tried separating out all the old romdumps that changed data for emulation compatibility from the unaltered good dumps? They are technically hacked, and in very much the same sense as these subsets as far as I understand; the data that has been altered is inconsequential to the actual game. And as an extension to that point, you also have all the cracked C64 games, I don't think they get thier own entries either - especially since in some cases those are the only archived versions available. But they often contain additional music, changes to the dataloading, additional menus and credits, integrated cheats, etc. All easily detectable with your eyes and ears, and clearly different than the official release. But yeah, regardless of all of that, I don't think it's always sensible to judge everything on the same standard. Old romdumps and cracked C64 games not being separated from their "parent entry" clearly doesn't cause any issue, but - as you outlined - it does cause an issue for the subsets. So hopefully some practical solution can be found that everyone is happy with.

I've been seeing these in the queue, and I am so confused about what this is. I understand that they are linked to achievements at RA... so these subsets or whatever, they are modified to trigger a separate set of achievements different to those linked to the unedited game? But functionally they are the same game, no actual changes has been made to the gameplay or graphics? I've just been ignoring them in the queue, but I'd still like to understand.

I don't see why you think you need to inform me that my list of unaddressed cases in the database are mostly "just unaddressed cases". I thought that was made perfectly clear when I said it was a "brief illustration of how well this "one game, one entry" rule is currently implemented". And I thought I solidified it pretty well when I followed up with "The list was not meant as proof of anything beyond that the database is currently inconsistent and that the issue extends beyond Sapo Xule". And it annoys me that you reply as if you have answered a question when nobody actually posed the question you are answering. Meanwhile you are ignoring anything that would have any substance - like why the practice is what it is, and to what extent it applies, and what the ramifications of continuing or changing the practice might be. I have been trying to have a conversation, not a dick measuring contest. It's exactly why my suggestion was to leave these entries well enough alone until the dust settled. Have you had a look at the current state of some of the entries related to these Brazilian versions? NOTHING has been improved by this crusade. If anything, fourteen days of this has made it objectively worse and significantly less functional. When scraping for Sapo Xule I am currently only getting two results results; "Kung Fu Kid" and "Sapo Xulé: S.O.S. Lagoa Poluída". What happened to "Psycho Fox" / "(..)Os Invasores do Brejo"?

Mhmm. And I hafta say; regardless of who is right or wrong, I don't think it's even remotely conducive to either the integrity of the data or the morale and patience of the moderators to just carpet-bomb the queue with deletion reports and dictatorial "THIS IS BEING DELETED!" messages when the games are clearly just being immediately reentered. And, you know, given the choice between having a superfluous entry or having a superfluous entry currently containing nothing but "This is being baleeted" in every datafield I know what I prefer. Why not leave this well enough alone, try to bring the discussion up in a wider fora - maybe drop a message and a link to the thread on the discord server or something - and then work on a solution when everyone is on the same page? Because this is getting ridiculous. And, seriously, I've made an attempt to have a sensible discussion about this, and the only counterarguments I have seen amounts to just "no, because the game runs on the same code". And yeah, that seems to be true if you limit the meaning of code to that which dictates gameplay mechanics and level design, but then nobody has really been claiming otherwise. Not even the original post tried to say anything else, yet the counterargument returns to that alone. And when I try posing some questions regarding the scope and ramifications of this practice the chief proponent just goes silent - yet the mod queue is still filling up with more requests for the very games we are discussing. Can't help but feel it's a bit of a childish way to resolve this. And I will acknowledge that, yes, allisongamer made a reply, and I am happy he or she did, but in that reply there is very scant information beyond the conclusion - no real counterpoints and little insight to the thought process beyond, again, "there are not many changes". Which was never up for debate to begin with. So yeah. On a sidenote; although I understand why you would keep romhacks separate, I find it a bit funny to see "because it's unofficial" being used as a reason - does this mean Sapo Xule would have retained a separate entry if TecToy hadn't bothered licensing Psycho Fox to modify?

In fairness, those were released on different platforms. Doki Doki was on Famicom Disc System, and Super Mario USA was on Famicom/NES.

The list was not meant as proof of anything beyond that the database is currently inconsistent and that the issue extends beyond Sapo Xule. Don't take the list as gospel either, there are definitively some that need looking into. Punch-out! for example might have more differences than I am aware of, and in the case of the Ninjabread Man clones I am fairly sure that some of them have iterative changes. But how much, and between which games, I don't know. I'm also aware of two games that are identical for the first two or three levels and then diverges. So an "audit" would have to include actually playing a significant bit of some of these games. And I still don't think the whole issue is as plain and simple as you want it to be, and that a discussion should be had about the specifics. For many of these it goes beyond a few sprites being swapped, having instead a complete graphic overhaul, music and story. And I understand the point about them playing identically, don't get me wrong. But by contrast Resident Evil patently doesn't have any graphics changed at all and definitively "plays the same", but some of the versions has an entire new gameplay mode added. Some would probably argue that warrants separate entries, but then how about the PS1 games that exists in versions including and excluding playable demos of other games? And would games be separate if they are practically identical beyond graphics, BUT a bonus level has been added or removed? And does intent matter? Because surely the intent of the changes made to Probotector and Sapo Xule is quite different. Then there is the argument of functionality. In discussions about image uploads I have seen it mentioned multiple times that the database is not a historical archive, but instead exists to supply eyecandy for emulated collections. Having all of these games saddled with release dates and descriptions belonging to what is in reality an entirely different release is neither practical nor pretty. Like Ritchardo above, if this was up for a vote I'd put mine for "seperate entries". I can see plenty of issues with that solution as well, but I see more issues with the merged system. However, as this is not currently up for a vote I still maintain that any solution is better than none.