SentaiBrad

Yea being able to check on item's we've approved and have added I think Jason has planned actually. I think I brought that one up to him too... we talk so much I seriously forget these things. xD That is great though. It can't work for games previously added before moderation and additions, but users being attributed for adding games, adding images and editing entries would be nice to. Maybe a Badge or Achievement system in the long run to encourage additions. Potentially even the ability to have other users "approve" or Thumbs up the current metadata. That could encourage correct data being attained. Badges or Achievements can be rolled in to all aspects of this for more encouragement.

What we discussed previously, and what I am aiming for with the guidelines: What the box says is what the box says. Accuracy and historical accuracy above all else. Obviously Aliens 3 is a unique case, and in that case I think we should allow that to be a regular 3 for scraping purposes. If it's going to throw of the scraping process and make the user have to jump through extra hoops I would say I would rather that be a regular 3 personally. Subtitles I think should be include though.

Jason Carr said One example of a change in moderation is changing the title for "Arctic Active Rail Playing Game" to "Arctic". It's been moderated 11 times by 11 different people (lol). However, we can't agree on whether to accept the change or not, because some people prefer to keep subtitles like that while others don't want them. So it's been approved by 6 people and rejected by 4 people. Changes are only ever approved or rejected once the approvals are three greater than the rejections, or the rejections are three greater than the approvals at any one time. So that change in particular brings to light our need for some standards and rules. ;) I'm fairly certain we talked about it, and those who chimed in had agreed. We had easily a dozen or so replies on this. However, I will go ahead and draft up something now.

Mines empty too, but I may have approved or rejected all I can.

CADScott said Would it be possible to add a way to see at a glance what images are missing from items in the database? I would love a way to generate a list of games missing, for example, back of box art so I can then go and find those images to complete a whole lot of games at once. At the moment it is very much a touch a game to see the issues with it process, which can be very slow, and it is easy to miss items. I would think that might be easier to do in LaunchBox, but Jason would have to really chime in there.

Yea we spent some time recently and came up with a list of images that would be best to separate out. An added bonus will be the option for Image Ordering to show certain images first then go down the list to fill in holes. I was looking at MAME, and a lot are missing flyers, which I prefer, but I would want screenshots of the title screen to fill in the holes, but there were 14 Screenshots of various parts and not all related. So it might be a bit more confusing but we hope in the long run it will be more beneficial.

There are a lot of emulators out there that are accurate but still a better package. I do think it is on them to put their software in the best possible light and almost 2 decade old mechanics does not do that. MAME is old for anyone that didn't know, and sure I greatly respect the dedication they put in regardless and I know of the accuracy. However, I think it's the entire package that matters. It's part of why LaunchBox exists, to try and group everything together to make it all look as best as we possible can make it to make it one great package. PPSSPP's developers though do both. First it started out with "just get it working", which is where I think most developers for emulators start. Let's just get it working for now. Then over time as things progress 1 speed hack after the other is removed until you are left with bsnes balanced or bsnes accuracy, which are both arguably the best emulation for SNES hands down. It's been since moved in to Higan, but that also had user usability issues with Higan himself ended up making better in the end. If you are going to start to develop something, maybe your specialty is in one area, but I think it's foolish to ignore entire swaths of a community who just want to enjoy their games. Granted, in this case obviously that's where we've stepped in (and you too with Lightspeed), but I think we need to question why they've completely let usability go. If we don't question people or make them reach farther then are we just accepting the fate we get with it? More or less I think what I am getting at is, isn't there a responsibility on the part of the developers for every aspect of the software they are making? Edit: I hope no one takes our conversation as mean spirited, we're just having a friendly debate. At least I think we are. :P

Personally I don't buy it, because even MAME is still a pain. Otherwise why need software to parse everything like we do? Don't get me wrong, I love the dedicated from both sides, but RetroArch (I believe) is seriously a lot better at doing the job. MESS emulates more systems, technically speaking, but a majority of those don't really work well or at all. I guess that is more a fault of the emulation scene in generally though not working on less popular systems. With your software MESS might be obtainable for the few systems I would need it for, but that is very few. I hope you don't think I am coming after you or anything with my post, on the contrary. Like I said, I love the dedication you put in to making it workable, I just think there is a problem inherently if that work has to be done.

Well apparently it wont. You can convert CSO's back to ISO's, but apparently MaxCSO wont do it. Which I swear the article on the site said you could do it... Either way, I am confident my games will be just fine compressed. All of my PSP games but 3 are just fine being in CSO's.

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/361/being-able-to-jump-game-title-letters-in It's one of our biggest tickets.

DOS76 said I could have sworn that I read that somewhere but it didn't work when I tried it. It should have, the developers said it would.

It should come with 2 exe's if I recall (I kind of don't) but yea, just drag the ISO on to maxcso. I recommend editing 'maxcso.exe' to 'maxcso iso .exe". The in your Windows Search type iso, then sort by size. MaxCSO should be at the top, and you can drag and drop. Remember a few things (which we've posted across the two threads now), it takes a lot of CPU power (most compression / decompression does), so make sure you're not doing much when you want to compress a few at a time. If the game doesn't run properly you should also be able to drag the cso back on to maxcso and it will decompress the game back to an iso. Only iso files will be converted, nothing else. I converted my others files to iso files with MagicISO. It's free, and all I did was open the non-iso image in MagicISO, then used the 'Save As' Feature, pointed to the games folder (where ever the non-iso was) and saved the file as an iso.

The RacketBoy article you found is several years old at this point, and it was in the period before ePSXe was really getting updates again. It's awesome you shared this with people though, I just wanted to let random people who come across this to know ePSXe has been severely updated.

I don't know if there is going to be a solution for that, it might require an update to the decompression to make it work. Does your GDI come with extra files?

Yea I am stumped too... Command line is proper, then names of the systems (in Associated Platforms and on the left in LB match), and you have the BIOS in two locations for coverage. Maybe also try updating the core in RA or updating your RA to the latest Stable or Nightly and see if that fixes things?

If you're double clicking the game in LB and a different file opens, edit the LB entry to point towards the proper file. Unless I am missing something that should work. I am unsure why the command is giving you an error.

Why not edit the game entry to just look at the proper rom file?

I'm heading out, but if you haven't already seen the tutorial's if you need help, check out the link in my signature.

I'll have to take a look at that after D&D tonight.

I still think there are others that can do the job better though, so if you're going for Neo Geo next you might want to check out the Standalone emulators or the RetroArch cores, along side the MAME emulator. Merging was also probably the best thing they could have done too.

Re-reading the tutorial, it seems like MAME / MESS is really not that much more unintuitive then RetroArch, except for that the ways to do things are more archaic or obtuse to the point of confusion. MAME has lot's of documentation though, and so does RetroArch so I think that is also a key difference. MESS has very little from my past experience (I don't know if it's gotten better). The only thing I think MESS has going for it is that it emulates some systems that have 0 workable emulators for, and the ones that already do have great coverage or RetroArch coverage, MESS emulates poorly compared to the competition. I don't write this as an attack on you, so please don't think I am trying to say anything negative about your post, I actually mean the exact opposite. It is great you wrote this for the exact reason I said in the previous paragraph, stuff like this only helps.

RetroArch is pretty fantastic in my honest opinion, and I hated it when I first started using it. I do suggest watching our Tutorials on our channel, which you can find the link to in my signature. Even if you're not completely interested in some of the systems I cover, at least when it comes to RetroArch, there is something that can be learned and applied to every other system. I can also say that as time goes on, as I make them, I get in to a better rhythm and they flow a bit better.

There is currently nothing at all recommended for playing Jaguar CD: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Atari_Jaguar_emulators

Thank you for posting that, I am certainly not going to cover MESS so I appreciate the time that you put in to this.

Thanks for sharing, but these might be a little out dated, or have changed a bit since the article was written. ePSXe and Pete's has severely changed just recently, so anyone interested please note that it might be a bit different to get up and running.