Jason Carr

Hello everyone; I am often asked to add MobyGames.com support to LaunchBox, and to be honest, I'd love to be able to add it (for my own use as well). However, I really can't, and I wanted to detail why. D-Fend Reloaded has had support for MobyGames.com for a long time. However, recently it's been often broken. Looking through the D-Fend Reloaded thread at Vogons, you'll notice that Alexander, the developer for D-Fend Reloaded, has been playing somewhat of a cat and mouse game with MobyGames.com in order to keep their import working. It goes like this: D-Fend Reloaded makes their import work with the site, MobyGames.com changes their site which breaks the D-Fend Reloaded import, Alexander fixes the import, MobyGames.com changes their site, and back and forth. It's questionable whether MobyGames.com is purposefully changing their site to break the import processes for D-Fend Reloaded and other applications, but generally the impression that I get from MobyGames.com is that they do not want to support third party applications using their data. MobyGames.com is a for-profit site that is anything but "open". In addition, they have no desire to create an API or any kind of a stable way for third party applications to retrieve the data. D-Fend Reloaded simply resorts to downloading entire web pages and searching the HTML code for the required content. But that way, if the site changes, the import breaks. Therefore, there are a number of key issues here. For one, if MobyGames.com doesn't want me using their data, I'd rather not use it. I would much rather encourage people to use TheGamesDB.net, as they make it easy for everyone to contribute, have an easily accessible API, and have done as much as they can to make the site fully accessible to everyone. They recognize that this is the community's data, not theirs (as all the data is provided by the community); they are simply providing a service to host it. Furthermore, I have no desire to play a cat and mouse game with MobyGames.com. Doing so would take up precious development time that could be used to implement useful features. LaunchBox does plenty already, but there's always so much more good functionality to add. If I were to have to sacrifice time to keep an import from MobyGames.com working, I wouldn't be able to put out nearly as many new features. Not to mention I would likely end up with 10,000 "the search is broken" emails. I like feedback, because I want to fix the problem if something is broken. But if something constantly breaks faster than I can fix it, communication will fall through the cracks and development will become frustrating. So, like I said, it disappoints me not to be able to add support for MobyGames.com, but under the circumstances, I can't see it happening. If MobyGames.com changes their position on the matter, and/or provides an API, I will certainly look into it again. Also, if anyone has any useful information on the matter, please chime in. Or, if I've misspoken on anything, please do let me know. I looked into it a while ago, but haven't done any recent extensive research. Thanks everyone for using LaunchBox; do keep giving me feedback. Jason

Lol...aha! So apparently the imports don't set the descriptions. That makes sense. I (and everyone else) were testing it with Add/Edit. That should be easy to fix for the next version. Thanks for helping finally figure this one out.

Alright, 3.0 is released! I changed it to 3.0 because it seemed like a major release and I was tired of double-digit 2.0 releases. Thanks to all of you for all your help with this. I still don't get why bd is having issues with the game descriptions, but that's not really a deal breaker I guess. If it's still an issue, we'll get it fixed in the next release. Bd, can you walk me through the exact steps you're taking? I love your ideas, too, bd. All are great. Some notes on them: #1 - That's a great idea; I'm thinking I'll put another icon on the game details next to Edit, probably for the next release. #2 - That sounds like great fun; adding it to my list for when I feel like adding something fun. #3 - Yeah, that'd take a little bit, but I can definitely see the need for it. Added to the list. #4 - That would be a nice option. I have (sort of) already addressed this, though, but it does take a bit more work. There's a "sort title" field on each game that can be used to customize the sort, but you have to manually fill it out for each game. #5 - This has also sort of been addressed by allowing emulation for additional applications (so you can right-click and select which disc you want to run). However, I recognize that's not the cleanest solution. So it'll be pretty far off, but I do have it on my list for proper support. #6 - Yes, trailers (videos) are coming eventually. #7 - Yeah, that's a big one indeed. I'd have to do some serious research before deciding on an approach for that. I'll add this to my list of "when everything else is done" items. Thanks a ton for all the great ideas, bd. Everyone's ideas have been a tremendous help.

Wow, yeah, I can see that being pretty great. It does complicate things quite a bit, but I can see it being worthwhile. We'll come back to that after I make them collapsible. Thanks, bd.

Ah, cool. Yeah, might be more feasible than I thought. I'll come back to it here soon.

Hey GordonX, thanks for the feedback. That is a good idea, but would be difficult. LaunchBox works well with Steam games that aren't installed, bd, it just makes Steam prompt you to install them when you try to launch them. Unfortunately, though, trying to read your Steam account to figure out which games you own is difficult (if it's even possible). Originally I tried to implement it this way using some Steam APIs but ran into a number of issues. The current solution just reads the SteamApps folder to determine your games (which works well, but only for installed games). I'll add it to my to do list again though to see if I can give it another shot.

Ah, thanks! Good find. Assuming this works, I may drop my to do item to support it, since it's such an odd situation. Great to see an immediate solution to this. Also, good to know about Project64 versions; disappointing that they've loaded it up with malware. Welcome to the forums, QuotePilgrim.

bd, not sure what might be going on with the game descriptions. The descriptions won't download if there's anything currently in the field, whether or not it's attached to TheGamesDB. I didn't want to overwrite anyone's notes. So that could be it. Other than that, I don't really know what it could be. We absolutely do need to determine if it's a real issue though. Can you give me an example of a game you have that's connected to TheGamesDB and doesn't have any notes that isn't downloading notes? Also check TheGamesDB to make sure notes are available for that game. The overview *should* download when you perform a search from TheGamesDB. However, if you open up an existing game to edit, and save it, it won't automatically download it. You'd have to disconnect from TheGamesDB, search for the game again, and reconnect it. Which is a pain, and is why I created the batch update tool. Do feel free to keep sending me ideas guys, input is always appreciated, whether we can get them into the next release or not. Thanks again.

Oh, bd, yes, the file filter only supports one wildcard. I thought about allowing multiples, but I think I'd rather just keep it as simple as possible (I already don't like the fact that most users will have no idea how to even use that field). So, yeah, I figured you could just run the import more than once. Also, I forgot to mention that I did add a new in-app picture viewer, in place of using the Windows default. It's extremely simple, but it does allow you to close it with the controller. For a future release I'd like to turn it into a manual slideshow of sorts, so that you could arrow through all of the images for a game.

Ha, nmc, one issue was that the games details weren't being updated after the batch notes download from TheGamesDB. I've resolved that here and I believe I've wrapped up all of the other loose ends as well. Here's one final beta before we release; I'll probably release sometime Saturday morning (PST). Nmc, I'm not aware of any issues with the notes placement; let me know if you can reproduce any with the latest release. And as always, guys, thanks for testing and let me know if you run into any glitches.

Alright, here's beta 5. I'm hoping this will be the last beta before I finally release 2.17. I've made a bunch of changes, but most notably I've added the game notes (overview) to the details, changed the search to download the notes from TheGamesDB.net, added a feature under the tools menu to download the notes for all games, and I've added the ROM import file filter that bd00 requested. Please do give it a good test as this will be close to the final release. Nmc, that's a good point about the windows viewer for the images; I've added a todo item to fix it, but it probably won't make it into this release. I also played around with the icons on the sides instead, but I didn't really like the feel of it, especially since it feels like they should be on the right, which pushes the game details over. I could put them on the left, but being right-handed it just didn't feel right. I reduced the issue by only showing the icons if the cursor is more than half-way up on the box art, which I think helps. I also added an option to turn off the icons on hover. I do have to say, it is really nice being able to read all of the game overviews in the game details. I have a few minor things to fix before I release it; we'll see if anyone discovers them. I'll give everyone a few days to test, and plan on a weekend release. Thanks again to everyone in this thread for all your help.

Now I'm starting to see something I can be proud of. I ran with bd's latest suggestions, and I'm really liking it. I still kind of wish it wasn't obstructing the view of the box art, but I think the added functionality benefits well outweigh that disadvantage. I can provide an option to turn it off anyways, if the user is so inclined. Anyways, this version now has icons for zoom, flip, details, and play music. All should be functional. Please give it a test (with both the mouse and a controller if possible) and let me know if you run into any issues. If not, I'll go and wrap up a few remaining things and we should finally be close to an actual release. Do let me know if you have any more suggestions, of course, as well. I do plan to expand significantly on the game details view (with description, screenshots, etc.), but that probably won't be in this next release. Thanks, Jason

Thanks for detailing this, bd. Yes, I do think it would be easier to implement than multiple layers, and I agree that it would be a good solution. I worry a bit about being able to do any animation to open and close them, but animation or not it'd still be useful. I'll look to add it after we get the game details squared away and squash the outstanding bugs. Thanks again.

Thanks bd. On top of all that, we have to worry about the icons being large enough to be easily clicked with a controller (as accuracy is much less with that approach). So it does become quite a bit of a pain. That said, I really like your zoom and flip icon concepts. That'd be really great to add. The transparent bar at the top might work, but of course the challenge is being able to use it easily with the controller. All great input, thanks!

SEK, glad to hear you got the platform figured out. Thanks Dexter. A wiki would certainly be nice, agreed. As for the moment though I need to focus on the development, so unless someone volunteers to create the wiki, we'll shelve it for the time being. It's not obvious, but you actually can enter in the game's ID in the title field, hit search, and it will find the game. There are a number of issues with that search, but there's little I can do to fix them because the issues are unfortunately with TheGamesDB's search engine. I've contacted them (and even donated) asking for them to fix it but I haven't yet received a response. I do have plans to add the ability to customize the DOSBox and ScummVM versions (and ideally allow different versions for different games). It's not exactly priority for the moment, but I'll bump it up a little. I agree that emulators make a bit more sense to be in the options window, that's a good point. I do want to keep them accessible from the game editor, but I'll add a todo item to put them in Options as well. Please do let me know what else you have. Thanks for the feedback.

Dexter, yes, I do plan to somehow scale the icon (whatever it ends up being) with the box art if I can, depending on whatever solution we end up with. I had tried just a number of different images on top of the box art, but I wasn't liking much of anything. Thanks for your input as well.

nmc, good point on disabling the icon. Thinking about the possibility of putting icons above the box art; that's not a bad idea. I'll do some experimentation with that. And I do plan on adding the game notes to the game details (and also importing the description from TheGamesDB into the game notes). I agree that it would be nice to show a platform icon of sorts, but I'm not sure that that should be the game details button, as I think it'd be confusing to click on the platform to show the game details. Still, if the icons above the box art work out, that'd be a good thing to add. Thanks for the great feedback.

Nice, Dexter. Looks like that worked out pretty well.

Ha, yeah, "less than a week." Sorry for that. I guess I got carried away with the game details. I should get it into the next official version, though.

Alright guys, been a long time coming, admittedly, but I have a new version for testing. I've fixed a lot of the various issues with the game details popup (many of them involving game controllers). I've also implemented the promised "click the icon to show the game details" feature. Automatically showing the game details on selection or on hover are no longer the defaults, though they are still available to select under the View menu. If you can, please do test all modes, starting with both "Show on Hover" and "Show on Selection" unchecked, then test with the options checked. I did also add a close button to the popup, and fixed the star ratings click issue. I do, of course, have a lot more to do to add more features to the popup, but the goal of this beta version was just to get the concept down, mostly without flaws. Please let me know if you run into any issues, and how you like the default mode. Lastly, I'm not overly happy with the graphics/placement/whatever of the little "i" icon that shows the game details. I experimented with a bunch of things and just haven't yet found anything that I really like. So please do provide feedback on what I have and any suggestions as to the visual representation of the icon that shows the game details. Or, if anyone wants to take a stab at coming up with a graphic, I'd gladly take a look at it and credit you if we end up using it. Thanks again everyone, Jason

Hey miles, in fact, I have a working version in development with this feature. Check out the beta testing thread. Let me know if you want in on the beta testing and I'll add you to the group.

So, after toying around with things for a while and taking in other people's suggestions and such, my current plan is to change things up to just show a little tiny icon in the corner of the games, only when you hover. Then you can click on the icon to show the game details. I'm finding it just too annoying to have it always showing up everywhere. That should allow for more stuff to be added to the box as well, without being too intrusive. Hopefully I'll have a new beta with this implemented, out soon. I need to put out a new version shortly though to address a few minor bugs, so might not get everything (like game images on the details) into the next official version. Thanks guys.

Great idea RZenith. I'll look to see if I can get that added. And welcome to the forums.

Ah, yeah, wasn't letting you edit it after they had been replies. Try it now; it should work.

nmc, I've added you to the trusted members list, so you should have access to the beta downloads now.