Freestate

Romhacks are not official. That one was a licensed release. It's crystal clear. And you're cherrypicking with sapo xulé, street combat has the full sprite sheet changed and shaterhand have one extra stage in one version (i don't remember if it is the same one.

You need to take into account that normally we see the boxes downscaled of their native resolution, AI filters make a really good job in restoring images with strong degradation due to JPG compresion loss, the effect could be visible if you make zoom but in their frontend presentation (downscaled they look clearer and better. I've restored thousands of covers on the database (at least half of the snes boxes are restored by me) and I always look for scans of the highest quality and when possible I use the same textures and elements of the cover so that it is practically not noticeable when I remove scratches or specks of dust on the surfaces, but you should have seen the sources that I had at hand. time to add covers of extremely rare japanese pachinko games, a terrible job where the AI tools and a lot of manual labor make it at least not eye-bleeding in contrast to the available high-quality scans. In an ideal world we would have the digital scans of all the games provided by the same companies, but the reality is that as soon as we get out of the most popular games and sometimes not even with those we mostly have very deteriorated sources. And I think that between choosing deterioration and retouched images, the experience improves with the latter. For example, I was very fond of AI filters and sometimes I restored textures with flat color and I no longer do it because it looks artificial and I prefer that a certain texture typical of the paper be noticed. And shiny metallic boxes that I restored badly before, I made them again adding gold or silver textures and shine. I understand what you're saying about fidelity, and in recent years I've been much more careful when it comes to restoring images where the original source is very good, but when it's bad, it touches heavy manipulation. And I commented a long time ago that giving priority to almost untouched images by default, led us to a database with a handful of good scans and tons of horrible garbage. I think things are much better now. Precisely in new scrappings I saw that someone had replaced one of my hard restorations with a very good scan and I worked with him to simply clean it, without extreme filters.

I'm freaked out that this story has generated so much quarrel when it was very clear that it was a common case of regional version. No, the xapo xule versions are neither complex rebuilds nor games based on, not hacks neither (tectoy had the official license rights of the original games an they simply made regional versions for their market). In all 3 games the only change is the sprite of the main character, the title and a simple title screen at most. It is something very common in regional adaptations, the European super protector for example is Contra III with cyborgs, Shatterhand from nes is the Japanese Solbrain with the robotic character changed by a Swarzenegger wannabe and more changes, Ranma ½ Chounai Gekitōhen was brutally mutilated in its edition USA as Street Combat changing all the characters, in short, there are many examples... and they have always been merged into a single entry. The example of decap attack is not valid, because there the changes are not only cosmetic, it is a game that has used the base or engine of the other but the gameplay and the levels are different and they keep their entries separate, it has not been approved to join them by that.

Let's see how I can get this to the administrators. There are 3 master system games that had reissues adapted to the Brazilian market. First they were edited normally and then they were rebranded, changing the main character to a Brazilian cartoon character called sapo xule, with no further changes. These games are astro warrior, kung fu kid and Psycho Fox, which respectively were re-released with these minor changes as Sapo Xulé: S.O.S. Lagoa Poluida, Sapo Xulé O Mestre do Kung Fu and Sapo Xulé Vs Os Invasores do Brejo. In no case have we created extra entries for regional adaptations of any game, we know that this has been common in western adaptations of Japanese games based on manga and anime, such as hokuto no ken, ranma 1/2, dragon ball, etc.. even The snes jetson game was released in Japan with a total change in the sprites to adapt to the Japanese public as Youkai Buster, and the European change of the contras as a protector is also well known, transforming the stocky marines of the original into cyborgs style masamune shirow. I strongly request that a warning be given to that user who is insistently creating extra entries for Sapo xule and deleting their data from the correct entries created for master system. His attitude is one of trolling and total disrespect. @faeran@C-Beats @Jason Carr

I have already warned and apologized in advance for the tone, do not take it as something literal. But it is that restoring old and damaged images is extremely hard, many hours of free work to get images that are worthy of appearing on a frontend where other artists also put a lot of effort into creating themes, vector graphics, etc. It is very frustrating that you have spent several hours cleaning all the traces of dust and scratches in a box where the color black predominates, that you have cleaned the damage from the corners, all so that the image is of the highest quality and as close as possible. to something undamaged for someone to come and replace it again with a raw scan full of defects. Yes, there are tastes of all kinds, but we have already had this debate many times in previous years, and it is obvious that the cleaned and restored images have won the game. It is the best way to offer a consistent and homogeneous experience that resembles having the games in an official service. In the successive mini consoles that have been released in recent years, the cover images also have cleaning and restoration work, it is impossible to offer a consistent and homogeneous experience when we work with games from decades ago with cardboard boxes.

Missing categories that we need in the database to stop feuds and workarounds. Fanart - Box - 3D (to include fanmedia and avoid mixing with retail based ones) Fanart - Clear Logo (exactly the same, people use region priorities some times to download their region retail art but they must have fan creations as something transparent to them not something mixed) Cart - Front - Reconstructed (some users prefer just legit pictures of carts and others restored images that use templates, due to the lack of reconstructed option, sometimes they were moved to fancart category triggering similar issues). With the options currently available, the moderators and contributors who work in the database have to be constantly looking for alternatives and generating stupid fights for the particular tastes of each one. There are users who prefer only official art and others insist on uploading art created by them to standardize the visual aspect of their collections even though there are no suitable options for their creations. This causes media downloads to be unpredictable, and a simple prioritization of regions (something as simple as prioritizing usa or europe to have the images of the releases you remember from your childhood) causes a chaotic mix of mixed fanmedia to be downloaded. with official art. We do nothing but receive app updates and the database hasn't changed for YEARS. Personally, not having dedicated time to something that makes the job of moderating and contributing to the database much more unpleasant is something that in my humble opinion cannot be delayed any longer. On the other hand, an option in the launchbox would be desirable where we can choose to only download FAN MEDIA ART when there is no official art available. For those users who only want boxes and extra art created by users in those digital or homebrew games that lack it. Thanks for your interest and please, adress this issue.

no, quality gets over fidelity. Launchbox database is not a strict place for preservation, it's a database to provide art for an eye candy game frontent, that's why we provide fanmedia and also allow romhacks and homebrew. The ortodox way of keeping raw scans in main category falls into having tons of (apologies for the gross word) s***y and dirty LQ quality images as main ones, with heavy degradation, scratches, misplaced, etc. That was an old debate in the database years ago and looking at the results.... quality of cleaned and restored images got priority. Reconstructed category was used in the last years to add this images that are using plastic box templates to provide homogeneus look or for that reconstructions that are less precise and abuse of some misplacing in ratio, elements.. etc. Please there's a lot of places for strict scan preservation, don't scalate this debate again. We are working with media from decades ago, there's a lot of heavy work of many contributors to provide clean images to see replaced by some conservative guy that spits on their free 3 hours of cleaning dust, scratchers, ratio, etc to see a non adressed scan with marks of heavy use on it. No, dust, sunfading, twinkie stains and scratches are not cool....

Fanart - Box - 3D (to include fanmedia and avoid mixing with retail based ones) Fanart - Clear Logo (exactly the same, people use region priorities some times to download their region retail art but they must have fan creations as something transparent to them not something mixed) Cart - Front - Reconstructed (some users prefer just legit pictures of carts and others restored images that use templates, due to the lack of reconstructed option, sometimes they were moved to fancart category triggering similar issues). With the options currently available, the moderators and contributors who work in the database have to be constantly looking for alternatives and generating stupid fights for the particular tastes of each one. There are users who prefer only official art and others insist on uploading art created by them to standardize the visual aspect of their collections even though there are no suitable options for their creations. This causes media downloads to be unpredictable, and a simple prioritization of regions (something as simple as prioritizing usa or europe to have the images of the releases you remember from your childhood) causes a chaotic mix of mixed fanmedia to be downloaded. with official art. We do nothing but receive app updates and the database hasn't changed for YEARS. Personally, not having dedicated time to something that makes the job of moderating and contributing to the database much more unpleasant is something that in my humble opinion cannot be delayed any longer. On the other hand, an option in the launchbox would be desirable where we can choose to only download FAN MEDIA ART when there is no official art available. For those users who only want boxes and extra art created by users in those digital or homebrew games that lack it. Thanks for your interest and please, adress this issue.

Nope man. Regardless the game was released in multiple regions, launchbox only download images from the rom region if the rom is tagged with (USA) (JAPAN) etc, and blocks the scrapping of other region images, it ignores priorities with images. But with names works as intented. A simple example, if i set FRANCE in top priority my SNES LAWNMOVER MAN (USA) rom doesn't get the FRENCH COVER of database but is sorted as LE COBAYE (ALTERNATE FRANCE NAME WITH REGION TAG). This is something that needs to be adressed. Some users must want to download all region media or prioritize some region art over others despite the roms they use. I can prefer USA roms because of 60 FPS but prefer european art because it was the one i saw in myy childhood. Right now is imposible to automatize it.

bug Launchbox don't use region priorities in downloading data with images, it always picks the media from rom region included in romname https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/7350/bug-launchbox-dont-use-region-priorities It picks alternate regionalized names but not media.

@Jason Carr

I'm the one who spent thousands of hours to complete snes media database, and yes i use waifu 2x to restore somes images. With all respect, i think you are missing the point that we are dealing with material that is decades old, and in many situations untraceable. Not all platforms have as much premium art and preservation effords as the arcade flyer ones. Using filters and tweaks is a must when the only way a contributor has a source for box is something like this: and with a lot of work you can turn it into something like this Promoting absolute purity as a rule in the main media, we have seen that it ends up resulting in a lot of damaged and dirty material, without any type of restoration that hurts the eyes in a frontend environment that seeks to reproduce a satisfactory experience, not a place of archaeological analysis . Sometimes, as i said, the only way is heavily restored images. The use of filtering or waifu techniques is to avoid compression artifacts, they do a really good work when the image is downscaled and in a not massive presentation in bigbox. Yeah i know that in a 4k tv yu could see the restoration, but the alternative is compression artifacts, dust, scratches, ripped parts, That's what the users want in a frontend? Twink twice. I'm also getting sick as a huge contributor and moderator to spend thousands of hours to restore some rare images to find out, some of them replaced by others tha are heavily dirty & distorted, not cutted, full of damage and absolutely pure crap, because other users (that only borrow sources from heres and there) think are legit and pure. I totally agree with being the most acurate in restorations, and i did my best in my restorations and revise them every time i find a better source. But a well restored imaged without damage is always preferable if the alternative is having the main category full of crap and the good quality and cleaned images are all in reconstructed tag. We talk about this issue many years ago, And keeping in mind that almost any image needs reconstruction or cleaning, If their differences with the original are not excessively striking, position-ratio changes in some elements, lack of them or a very visible use of elements outside the original image, we consider them valid for the main category. I understand your frustration @kurzih, but the main problem is that there are too many users who should not have moderation power. Because they give ok status to any ultra-deteriorated garbage. If the main category were not such an unfortunate and unusable catch-all where almost anything is approved, it would not be so belligerent. You get frustrated because there is some slightly altered image and you prefer greater purity, and I am sure that some of those images have been the one that has restored them roughly because I or other user was tired that day and taking into account that when scaling it the native texture does not it was almost visible and that it was displayed clean in the frontend not giving it so much importance. In my case, for example, seeing some of my hard restorations replaced by a higher quality image but with some damage, when I restored it again I worked with that new image, but being more respectful of the original colors and textures. . What I will never tolerate is seeing images with cracks or visible damage or dirt. To finish, not all the images that have a bump in contrast are incorrectly altered, there are those that have clearly faded due to the sun, friction or chemical reaction after so many years. Also, increasing the contrast slightly is sometimes useful for disguising many fine-grained blemishes or dirt that require messy work.

Launchbox database is created to feed an emulator frontend. Not a place for preservation. I agree with the point of being acurate in cleaning or restoration. But in an eye candy environment, arranged images are better. It doesn't make any sense to value a scratch or damage in images. We are dealing with images from decades ago, all of them require som degree of restoration. This was an old debate quality is over strictly preservation. Not all of your examples are valid. Someones is true that are burned or altered in main textures, but others are simply colour corrected due to sunfading or damage in surfaces.

@Jason Carr region priority is a mess, and take regionalized alternate names as priority the same, many people are adding regional tags to secondary or optional names, some of them kanji. It is even worse than before. There are people who choose, for example, American roms just because they play them at 60fps without problems and because they have retroachievements, but they want to see European art downloaded and viewed in the display of their collection. Right now I am importing roms from super nintendo USA that easily with the old functioning of the priorities imported without problems with the art of all the regions or only the European one if I put it on the priority list. Now it is impossible, it is updated if or if the identification of the rom as USA, and it does not matter that you only select Europe in the art priority or that you change the region or the version of the roms, it continues to download only the art that corresponds to it to the region that they have assigned. Please fix it by adding a simple option that allows download art according to rom region or according to region preferences in order.

100% agree! I'm changing every snes-sfc screenshot using native 8:7 png screenshots.

I totally understand the points 2 and 3, but about the first one, we already have videos for platforms that include gameplay. What i'm missing? And also one more thing and a million of thanks for take a break to answer my questions. What's in your mind about changes in the database? There's a lot of room from improvements like adding some extra tags (reconstructed and fan tag to some media like 3d boxes or carts) to avoid moderation feuds and workarounds to dodge their limitations, a notification system to see rejection messages (now it's imposible to be aware of them if you don't check submissions one by one) and the always postponed game language information in every game (listing official and fantranslated).The last polls about new features didn't include database changes. As you can see in my profile i'm a heavy contributor and moderator for the database and sometimes is really frustrating that issues about correct scrapping of flaws triggers a lot of handmade work to curate collections. Please take in consideration to add some CRC use for scrapping, i've tried skrapper and it works like a charm, check the api, is really fast and acurate, we tried to solve the issues adding alternate naming but still is a problem. Do we could expect legal issues about allowing translation patches like romhacking.org? If you add CRC check could be perfect to detect fantranslations available and notify to the users if they want it or download byy demand. That's enough for today, apologies if i'm kinda tiresome with some issues. I'm a huge fan of your work. It opened a good path after crazy days of frontends like hyperspin or others and the real diference is the database in my opinion, just needs some love :).

Thanks for the fast response Jason. And what about including videosnaps in launchbox database? Our community is really big and work a lot for providing good media, i think is good to boost some competence in the video snaps media, emumovies was the only source for many years, maybe it could boost emumovies attitude (they laid being the only ones), i paid for a few years and in my opinion is so expensive and the last years they don't update so much.

@Jason Carr Jason, what do you think? The video scrape with emumovies fails a lot due to strict naming conventions or the lack of launchbox to make recursive calls when a game is not found. Also skraper using the screenscrapper source as an API uses CRC checks + naming returning in more acurate scrapping. What's your preference? Integrate screenscrapper as a source?, add CRC checks to improve scrapping in launchbox? Add video game clips as an extra to launchbox db?

I create custom boxes for all the games without retail boxes, most of the snes/superfamicom fanboxes for nintendo power, some satellaview and prototypes are designed by me, also the carts.

I'm not saying that. I'm not generally speaking, it's about lq media elaborated in a rush from many many years ago. It's not about personal preferences, it's about overall and objetive quality, good resolution, better sources, cleaning, no artifacts etc. Nobody is gonna be satisfied with a 200x150 resolution false usa 3d box with a bad cut of the japanese box when it's available the only real and released box for the japanese release perfectly clear and arranged due to some usa tagging in it as it was a real usa release. Everybody without a short fuse knows what i'm saying, there were a lot of media like that years ago and it was erased because wasn't good enough. It's not about rejecting art for personal preferences or some crazy megalomaniatic ideas, it's about a workaround till we have fan tag for 3d boxes, fan tag for clear logos, and other missing issues in the database, to avoid mixing. As you can see English isn't my native language and sometimes is difficult to explain some topics.

The database improvements to avoid this issues was demanded a lot of times for many years, but the devs aren't interested or is not their cup of tea after the left of viansix, that worked in that part. Untagging regionally 3d box fanart or clear logo fanart is less harmful in batch media downloads than having mixed sources (legit releases. fancreations) . Fan creations are still there but the people don't found them overlaped or taking priority of real restorations due to region priorities. It's was an accepted workaround by many moderators. I'm not only a moderator but a heavy creator and contributor to have an eye candy and comprehensive sources in database (mainly focused in snes, almost completed with thousands of my restorations of boxes, cards, fanart etc) and many others. And it piss me off a lot to destinate many hours, months and years to provide a bulk download with only legit and real art, with the best posible quality to see this effort destroyed with some creepy creations mixed with heavy work (we don't have an standard for fanart and many creations are fast, just shabby cuts of the original japanese boxes and with poor resolutions or care. I'm promoting this criteria thinking on the best outcome for new users or people who don't want to spend a lot of time arranging their collections and having to manually clean their media downloads to erase LQ art or inconsistencies. One of the best quirk of launchbox is not having to add media by hand, and the database, and the tons of work of many contributors to upload clean and HQ quality art. Not everybody has time to arrange their collections, and priorityze released art over fan workarounds is a way to demostrate love and respect for the kind of experience launchbox can provide. To download unadressed scans there's a lot of places in the internet, and heavy manual arrangement is mandatory in other frontends and there's a lot of media packs out of the database. I think that working hard to make a difference isn't a bad thing.

AH Ok, maybe they are previous to region tags, and sometimes that games where stuffed in the first place only with usa box art, the european and japanese where added after. This issue is common to see it as USA cover not regionalized and japanese and european with correct tagging or japanese exclusives without region.

You're totally missing about the issue, is more important to tag diferently legit art and fan created art, due to the explained lacks in database that's not posible in 3d boxes or clear logos and triggers mixed downloads. It's preferable to lower the need of arrange things manually after. And no, not all art is mandatory to tag it regionally, backgrounds as an extra decoration is not mandatory (common sense), fanart is an extra (to complete missing media or personal appeals) i thing that keeping it as i explain regionally untagged to avoid mixed downloads is common sense.

@Jason Carr Database needs more love to reward all the tons of work of the contributors and moderators. We suffer a lot of misanderstandings due to the lack of some tags and options. No fanart for 3D boxes, it triggers mixing between fan creations and real box 3d adaptations. People want to know exactly what are downloading, legit boxes or fancreations. We are regionally untagging the fan creations but is a workaround and some people tag them again as legit regional 3d boxes. No fan tag for clear logos, same issue, some people upload westernized titles as regional ones and you end with a bunch of non real logos due to region prioritys. No reconstructed tag for carts. A big problem because usable carts and eye candy are always reconstructed using standarized templates due to the curves of many cartridges, we tried ago to clasify reconstructed ones just as cards keeping the fancarts as something optional but some users instist on preservate dirty borrowed cards from diferent sources, without cleaning, lots of shadows, light dots, etc, we moved to fan tag but it also triggers the issue mentioned before, miixing bewteen real reconstructions and fan creations. And adding game languages and translations was asked YEARS ago... and still unadressed. I know that coding databases could be a pain in the ass and maybe not your cup of tea, but think a little in all the hours expended correcting things manually or managing contribution work to provide the cleanest media batch without adressing it manually and the frustration that moderators and contributors are dealing with for years. Please, i beg you, focus on the database for a few weeks or months.

If they are FAN CREATIONS, not created using real box releases, they must remain without region tag. We don't have fan tag for 3d boxes, many people only want fan creations as a workaround when nothing else is available (digital only games, homebrew, etc), if you regionally tag 3d fanboxes they overlap due to region priority when you download data. Is disgusting to see a lot of westernized fanboxes instead the real japanese ones for example. Until we have fan tag for 3d boxes or clear logos, any non official media must remain regionally untagged to be available as an option but not taking priority over the real ones.