Freestate

I think it's more important to add fanart categories for box 3d and clear logo in addition to creating a reconstructed category for the carts. Many users insist on adding fan creations in the two mentioned categories, which causes that when any user assigns region priorities the downloaded media is unpredictable, mixing fan creations with authentic media. On the other hand, presenting good looking carts for the cart categories is very difficult, so it's usual to reconstruct them using templates, but since there is no category for reconstructed there is always the possibility that some user will reassign them, and having real photos mixed with reconstructed cartridges is not optimal. The fanart cart category can be used but that also ends up mixing reconstructions with fan creations. Please add those three categories. Fanart Box 3D, Fanart Clear Logo, Cart front Reconstructed. The lack of them has created many problems in moderation for years and a lot of extra work.

I think I have explained in detail that the problems of competition between criteria when moderating and contributing content is because the criteria have not been updated or expanded since the initial lax draft, and the database still needs features that have been requested for years. I can perfectly understand the challenge that this represents at the programming level or that the developer simply does not care or like to get involved. What I do not find acceptable is that at this point moderation and contribution continues to be a wild field where the troll actions of a newcomer matter as much as the work of hundreds of hours of people who really take the community seriously to keep everything in order. I do not know how to ask for it now without it falling on deaf ears that it would be appropriate for the most veteran users and those with more participation to be able to share their proposals for improvement and the problems they have encountered, to be able to agree on criteria and to expand reforms to the rules to add media moderation. For my part, it's not that I want any medals or to be the freak guardian of any dungeon, but I think it's very frustrating to continually see these battles of criteria, ambiguities, and that any dispute or difference of criteria is resolved by seeing who is more stubborn or when the moderators are more distracted to sneak in your stuff.

Personally, I don't know what to do or say anymore. Without taking credit, I have to say that I've worked my ass off offering thousands of hours of work searching for and restoring covers and moderating, trying to make the launchbox database something minimally organized and of quality despite its shortcomings. But it has been proven over the years that the database and the quality of the media that is uploaded is something that either due to personal tastes or laziness is something that the developers barely touch or are interested in to the extent that would be necessary, in my opinion. Both the contributions and the moderation always end up being a war between rigorous users who make an effort and dozens of capricious or lazy users who upload and/or approve anything thinking only of their personal whim. There is no meritocracy, there is no dialogue or improvements... the database lacks adequate categories to upload the tons of fanmedia that many users insist on uploading when it is not even complete in terms of real media. I have already opened multiple tickets, I have made requests for dialogue and improvements in the forums and it is always preaching in the desert. And when you really get angry because you see that the free work you do in favor of the entire community is not respected and you raise the tone, what you get is either a sanction or the matter being closed falsely. If there were no rigorous users, the database would end up 100% invaded by custom fanmedia boxes with USA style and their logos on practically all platforms, even if they are digital platforms that did not come from Japan, arcade or whatever... there are users who do not care that the media available is real, they only want their custom box with an American design and they push again and again without any regulation... the latest has already been to start adding steamgrid style covers... which I think would be great... if we had some way to separate them and there were no "smart guys" who insisted on labeling them as real boxes or from real regions. It really kills me to try to download a custom box that's consistent with the real ones and see poster-style boxes that have nothing to do with them. The latest disaster? A user uploading custom boxes that look like real ones in the arcade section. The fanart section? He doesn't give a damn, he does his thing, with a bit of luck lazy users will approve it and he'll get away with having boxes and not having to worry about changing the import options in the app.

Sadly, some notifications in moderation that seem like trolling, end up being counter-trolling due to abuses of the database by other users. As I have told you, there are users who selfishly fill and approve the fanmedia database in all categories, driven by a personal need for all their media to be in North American format, making it impossible and unpredictable to know what type of data and of what quality you download. It is normal that some users get fed up and request deletions without giving reasons because they are tired of seeing the same things. In my opinion there are too many botched jobs in the database and very little effort to provide consistent, real and restored art by many users. For example currently the majority of SNES carts are located in the fanart cart category only because a user had a personal crusade to remove the restorations that I mostly made using a generic template. Since there is no RECONSTRUCTED category for carts I had to move them to fanart cart but other users there are really busy uploading fudges from USA cartridges and you have to upload them regionless if you don't want to have unpredictable downloads when you select regional priorities. It's infuriating. There should have been separate categories for all types of fanmedia years ago because there are users who want to customize their experience 100% and their insistence on forcing their art entry without having the proper categories in the database and some shortcomings in the download configuration turn everything into chaos.

The only available categories for fan art boxes are fanart box front and fanart box back. Many users are stuffing normal categories with tons of fanmedia, and the problem is that downloading fanmedia must be transparent and optional to the users not a mixed chaos. That user is right when he says that just picking a regional priority you can't know if you're downloading real art or fanmedia if some users insist on stuffing non legit media in normal categories. Please use the categories with acuracy. And yeah, it's not necesary to have fanboxes with a flattened and distorted image or poor quality. Fanmedia is optional not something mandatory, some entries are ridiculous with 5, 6 or 7 fanboxes with slight diferences and not overall quality.

There's no point of keeping separate. Launchbox itself gives the oportunity of keep merged the different regional versions or keep separated, and all the data was added, included extra alternate naming, clear logos of the brazilian versions to avoid overlapping. IIt is disheartening that at this point, after so many years and thousands of hours contributed to the community, despite having given solid reasons, the final decision depends on 3 users who click ok just because potatoe, because they are fed up or because another external page does not any relationship now turns out to be the maximum criterion. I myself have been a user of mobygames and gamefaqs and they had duplicate entries and I was the one who corrected them, they are not the holy grail. And there's enought proof looking at videos that thery are the same games with minor changes. What annoys me is that we had the same ridiculous discussion years ago over a more extreme case. The first snes fighting ranma that in its American version changed all the graphics, in the end people were convinced that it was the same game, but I had to listen to everything, and it was not pretty.

We must respect the correct fields to make the media download transparent to the user and predictable. i understand that some users twist the rules by personal interest or as woraround to solve tha lacks of database (we need extra fields) or the app ( option to download fanmedia if nothing legit is available an only in that scenario). My choice is to be orthodox and if it is fanmedia only accept it if is located in the correct field. I understand waht are you saying about the size of logos, again is a workaround due to lacking of options in database and app, maybe we must promote a build in image compression method inside launchbox to just addthe highest quality available and make the size compression an option for the users or create new fields like clear logo HD, because some themes or pause/start themes use logos at full screen size. Jason is asking for suggestions is up to you

That`s why i´ve mentioned Ranma ½ Chōnai Gekitōhen and Street Combat or The German/Spanish regionalization of We're back called Hugo. The original games were made by NCS and Kaneko respectively. Irem distributed the ranma game in USA changing all the graphics into something horrible and took credit of the full game when esentially it's just a regionalization without more alterations. The same happens with Hugo of Gameboy, Kaneko isn't mentioned in the box. But that does not mean that they are exclusive developments, what happens is that the respect to appear as the creator of the original work and respect its integrity decades ago was light at best to put it mildly. It happened with games and it happened with movies or anime, where the person who bought the rights was thought to be acquiring rights not only for distribution but also for the complete work, finding all kinds of aberrations in terms of changes, editions, names, etc. I have even mentioned anime productions such as Macross and I can also mention some of the first studio ghibli films such as Nausicaa where the distributor, in addition to cutting parts, changed names and even removed it as A PRODUCTION OF... erasing any trace of its Japanese origin and the actual study. If we have even discovered the work of some game development studios many years later through interviews because the producer or publisher did not allow their name to appear. The Brazilian versions of known master system games as if they were games entirely produced by tectoy is an example of the abuses of that time and of a market as peculiar and closed as the Brazilian one.

Certain. Very interesting what you say. Regarding the resolutions, at least in screenshots it would be very interesting if they were locked to the native resolution of the console and to PNG format, I am very bored of seeing beastly and absurd upscalings. With the logos it depends, because there are themes that use full screen logos, perhaps the best thing to do would be to put a field for the basic logo and another for the hd logo as they do in screenscraper at least for the videos, where I also get bored of the emumovies and API detection failures despite having contributed thousands of alternate names with the intention of using them recursively. I hope that once and for all the database receives improvements that have been necessary for years, I'm tired of seeing how contributors and moderators have to do workarounds for the missing fields and continually fight for things that people want to add and don't have a place specific for it.

well, we are acepting tons of crappy romhacks in the database... if there's interactivity and was released as game, it's valid for me. The gameplay of some FMV games of the 90's it's not much more complex than just choose a path.

My choice is just keep separated the hacks. Aftermarket and homebrew most of the time are legit and good elaborated games, the overwhelming amount of hacks with minor alterations it's something that in my opinion drives me mad.

Let me see.... Tectoy graphical hacks = special editions. Minor regionalizations seen in multiple examples-not the same if the ones who made it are an brazilian company. Not having Brazilian hacks as independent jewels when the whole world has seen dozens of similar cases unify, something that respects the objectives of the launchbox??? Of course, your desire to defend the indefensible is exemplary. Let me finish with a perfect example https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/images/85376 the graphical changes in USA version where extensive, more than brazilian hacks, an IREM also takes credit of the main credit, when the real game was coded by NCS. The rest of the users have already read enough to draw their own conclusions, I'm already exhausted from talking to a wall of pride. And yes, the previous work done in the database has something to say, the decisions have not been made lightly, they are part of a previous consensus that a mixture of lies (saying that a game is totally different due to fanciful attributions of changes in history and gameplay due to small adjustments in collision boxes or some graphics, as well as a regional way of selling it again is) and tricky doubts relating special editions of current generations, they intend to sabotage. The database rules have not been updated a single line since it began, and it has been continuous work and collegiate decisions that prevent it from being a complete disaster because it still lacks some basic fields/tags for some media.

Well there's a good explanation of why are the same game, giving examples of other games, with notifications of videos on youtube when it's crystal clear that are simple and minor graphic alterations. But someones, and i'm still trying to know why, twisted the arguments by talking about examples that persisted in the database separated, when it was simply that they had not been detected so far, I had to read outright lies in the successive re-uploads, saying they were totally different games in gameplay, history, etc when anyone can examine gameplays on youtube to see that they have simple graphic changes and no alteration in the gameplay beyond the dirty shoe of toad xule. And the height of cherrypicking has been to appeal to the special or goty editions, which is something totally alien to the 8-16 bit generation where we have always proceeded by unifying them in merged entries. But there are those who have made it their personal crusade and many others have ended up fed up. All entries have been merged and the rest deleted, there are only 2 undeleted remnants of the Brazilians due to a bug in the database. Stop collaborating by ignoring the deletions and allowing those who have been headstrong to go against the policy followed for years to continue trolling.

The repeated deletion demands it's due to a delete bug present in the database, when a entry it's not deleted some users mark them with DELETE DUPLICATE in main title and clean up this entries with no image data. The entries are already deleted a dozen times, but due to the ad nauseam feeling of some moderators that are ignoring the deletion demands, the bug and some re-uploads and vanzalizing on the merged entries there's still a couple of remnant entries. Most of the examples of unadressed issues of regional versions given in this post were merged as well, the same with most of the tectoy reeditions-regionalizations of some games.

No need for new developer info. As we talked before, it's a regionalization of other games. The credits include the original sega copyright as it happens with other regionalizations translations. Minor alterations on graphics or gameplay doesn' mean we have a new development. We have a lot of examples in several platforms, games with story modes in one region and lacking of it in another, common main character alteration, missing or changed game elements. Adding Tectoy in the distributor list is enough.