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CriticalCid

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Posts posted by CriticalCid

    Changes dispute process and a few concerns

    in Contributions

    Posted

    10 hours ago, Z3R0B4NG said:

    I would suggest, just like the alternate names field to let us add hash values to database entries.  
    Instead of regions you could have a drop down menu with No-Intro / Redump / TOSEC / GOOD / other.  
    There are roms that of course do not come from the common sources or are scene rips (C64 scene for example, the stuff used in C64 Dreams).  
     

    Another thing i recently learned is that Dat-o-Matic has Parent/Clone sets for No-Intro, those exist so you can make "1G1R" (1 game 1 release) sets with it, with that data i think it could be possible to make it a bit easier because you should be able to extract every hash for a specific game and group them together right from the .dat file.  

    The filenames should match for the largest part with the LBDB already, if you can apply the same algorithms when importing roms into launchbox to add these hash values to DB entries then a good chunk of it should happen automagically, anything that doesn't get matched you could put in a list and post it so we moderators can edit it in. 

    I completely agree with that.

     

    42 minutes ago, SiriusVI said:

    If you ask me, as a start Launchbox should add the option to import complete No-Intro sets through a separate importer while still giving the option to import roms from other collections.

    There are multiple problems I see with this. MAME is only updated once a month and offered in a neat complete package so it’s easy to keep track of your ROM versions. No-Intro, Redump, etc. on the other hand update their sets daily (sometimes even multiple times a day) and on top of that has every system its own .dat file. You would need the exact ROMset based on the .dat versions Jason includes in the importer which isn’t easy to get for the average LaunchBox user as you won’t find full No-Intro sets for every .dat version out there. You also can’t expect the users to rebuild their ROMs with tools like CLRmamepro, ROMcenter, etc. to make it match with the one from LaunchBox. Same thing applies if the users provide their own .dat files because most full set downloads don’t have the .dat files included and then you are back at having the users to need to rebuild their sets by themselves.

    While I personally would be really thankful for this feature and have no problem rebuilding my sets, I know that Jason is very hesitant when it comes to spending a lot of development time on features that will only be useful for handful of power users.

    This also wouldn’t solve the issue of associating the games 100% correctly with the LaunchBox database entries.

    10.15-beta-1 Released

    in Beta Testing

    Posted

    30 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

    Thanks! This fixed it for me! :)

    Unfortunately I found another issue while I was testing this. If you have a GOG and Origin version merged and the GOG version is set as parent than you can't start the Origin version. It won't even open up the Origin launcher. It works fine as a single entry though when you expand them again.

    • Like 1

    10.15-beta-1 Released

    in Beta Testing

    Posted

    23 hours ago, C-Beats said:

    @CriticalCid

    I was able to track down an issue that would cause problems similar to what you were talking about. Fix has been put in place and will be corrected on next push.

    I've now tested it with Beta 6 and the Origin version gets now properly launched when it's added as Additional App. So that issue seems to fixed!

    BUT the following issue is still there:

    When I edit the merged game (doesn't matter if I change something as long as I close it with the OK button) the game loses its Origin badge and the Origin version can't be launched anymore. Once the Origin version has lost its Origin badge it stays broken even when you expand the games into their individual entries.

    • Like 1

    Donkey Kong Pauline Edition Theme

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    If you download media from within LaunchBox it will always be named after the game title. For your existing HS media you should check this thread:

    As you can prioritze the region of your parent ROMs in the LaunchBox MAME importer you could probably have different parents inside LaunchBox compared to what you have in your HS database. You should double check if a game which you are missing artwork for really has the same ROM name as your media.

    Edit: Also check your image priorities in your LaunchBox settings if the folders are activated in which you have copied your HS stuff.

    10.15-beta-1 Released

    in Beta Testing

    Posted

    I have an issue with some imported Origin games.

    I can't start the Origin version anymore when a game from Origin gets merged with another version of the same game (in my case the Steam or GOG versions). Origin opens up but nothing happens.

    When I edit the merged game (doesn't matter if I change a field as long as I close it with the OK button) the game also loses its Origin badge. Once the Origin version has lost its Origin badge it stays broken even when you expand the games into their individual entries. In this case the only fix right now is to delete the broken Origin entry and re-import it.

    If the Origin version gets imported as its own entry (or gets expanded before you change something in the Edit window) it launches perfectly fine and editing the game details doesn't seem to do any harm as well. But it breaks again when you merge it.

    I've tested this with multiple games and they all had the same issues.

    Translating a theme.

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    The Theme Creator is definitely your best bet. I highly recommend to watch @faeran's theme streams where he shows and explains how he creates Big Box themes. So far he has done 3 streams where he basically ported whole themes from EmulationStation to Big Box within a few hours.

    • Thanks 1

    Unified

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    You should check if your background priorities are correct.

    Open up LaunchBox -> Tools -> Options -> Legacy -> General -> Images -> Background Priorities.

    Make sure that only "Fanart - Backgrounds" is checked.

    How does LaunchBox decide what media to use?

    in Noobs

    Posted

    You should take a look at this thread to get a basic undestanding of valid file names within LaunchBox.

    Besides that you should check the Region Priorities and Image Priorities in the LaunchBox options, you can find them in the Legacy section.

    LaunchBox always downloads all media the database has for each game and shows them in order of your priorities. If multiple images fit the same criteria than LB will randomly cycle through them everytime you refresh the image cache, all other images which are ranked lower in your priorities will be ignored.

    For example:

    - In your LB settings you have set 'North America' at top of your region priorities and 'Box - Front' at the top of your Box Front Images priorites.

    - As media you have in your 'Box - Front' folder two other folders with images, 'North America' and 'Europe'. In 'North America' you have the normal and greatest hits covers and in 'Europe' the PAL cover.

    - Additionally you have another cover in your 'Fanart - Box - Front' folder.

    In this case LB will only consider the two images in the 'Box - Front\North America' folder as covers and randomly decide which one of them both it will use. Unfortunately I'm not sure how LB prioritzes images that are not in any region folders, that's something you'll need to test.

    Anyway, in case you never want the greatest hits cover to show up you have to manually delete it or move it into another folder.

     

    The good news is: You can also use your media from HyperSpin as long as it's in .png or .jpg file format. Just copy your files into the right folders inside LB and you're good to go. What the right folders are is completely up to you based on your image priorites settings. You may also want to deselect the image types on your games imports for which you already have the media for. Or just delete the images inside the folders if you already have imported everything.

    • Like 1

    Who has the largest collection currently standing in Launchbox?

    in Collections and Builds

    Posted

    5 hours ago, fromlostdays said:

    Oh my word. This stings after all the time I put in! haha. But I'm glad there's an easier way! Let me ask, when you build the merged set and prioritize USA, will it automatically rename other regional roms according to the USA name? The other stuff takes about 10 minutes but doing that renaming by hand can take a whole evening unless you're fluent in Japanese which I am not. I did start picking up a few words after all that renaming haha.

    Nope, the file names will be named like they are supposed to in a No-Intro set. All what the parent setting does is to determine the file names of the archives and therefore also the name of the folders in which you are extracting them. But with this method there shouldn't be any reason for you to have to rename them anyway as you have the option in LaunchBox to import the ROMs by folder name and not file name.

    If you really want to rename them for whatever reason it would be fairly easy to write a batch script which renames all files according to the folder name.

    • Like 1

    Who has the largest collection currently standing in Launchbox?

    in Collections and Builds

    Posted

    1 hour ago, fromlostdays said:

    I took it a step even further than that and manually changed all of the Japanese and European games to the USA title (obviously excluding the exclusives). Be warned, if you skip this step, when you start merging these folders you can wind up with a different folder for Castlevania and Akumajo Dracula which are regionals of the same game. You can solve this in two ways.

    what I did was I manually changed the latter to just be Castlevania (Japan), and then by the end of it it was in a folder called Castlevania and it merged fine with the Castlevania folder that held the USA game.

    When you have your full set that has been completely merged with all the revisions and regions etc. into one folder each, make sure its on a separate drive from the 1g1r set you made initially. Now drag the entire 1g1r set into the full set, but be very careful not to click anything afterward. Because they are on separate drives when they merge all of the items that merge will remain highlighted. Drag those highlighted items back into the first folder. You basically took the 1g1r set and merged it with anything in the full set folder that had the same name and then pulled it back out. You'll get A LOT of the revisions and regions this way, but you'll miss any game that has different titles in different regions, such as the above game Castlevania. These are mostly Japanese games, but also a surprising amount of European games have slightly different titles.

    Wow, that’s a really tedious amount of work you’ve been doing there. Here’s an advice to do that significantly faster:

    You‘ll need clrmamepro to rebuild your ROM set with a parent-clone .dat file, similiar like what you‘re already been doing with your 1G1R set. But instead of choosing 1G1R you‘ll have to build a 'merged‘ set. That will leave you with one archive per game with all versions of every game inside said archives. The rebuilder will also take your region priorities into account to determine the parent (the name of the archive file) just like it does when you build a 1G1R set.

    For the next step you’ll need to have WinRAR installed. It could possibly be done with 7-Zip as well but I can't tell you the exact menu steps for it right now.

    When the rebuild is done you’ll just have to select all archives -> right-click -> WinRAR "extract each archive to separate folder". And you basically get your 1G1F structure with almost non manual and time intensive work + all games with different titles across different regions are correctly combined together without you needing to research them by yourself.

    The only thing that still needs to be dragged into the folders manually are hacks and fan-translations.

    • Thanks 2

    How to update your MAME ROMset to a newer version with CLRmamepro

    in Emulation

    Posted

    You wouldn’t need to do the process 10 times, just add all update packs as Add-Paths and you’re good.

    As for your question: Yes, you could just copy everything to your MAME folder assuming your old and new set were built with the same merge mode (for example, when both sets are split sets). The cleanest way would be to delete your old sets first but if you just copy the new set over it and replace all old files you shouldn’t get any problems either way. In case the merge modes of your sets differ or if you’re not sure what kind of sets you have I would always delete your old stuff first, just to be safe.

    How to update your MAME ROMset to a newer version with CLRmamepro

    in Emulation

    Posted

    23 hours ago, drw4013 said:

    Is there any site that details the list of games added with each new ROMset version?  I'm not sure which version I have, so I imagine the only way to verify would be to check for the newest games I have and compare to that list (if it exists anywhere).

    You could check the wahtsnew.txt file of each release here:

    https://www.mamedev.org/releases/whatsnew_0219.txt

    Just replace the version number in the URL with the one you want to check. For example 0218.txt instead of 0219.txt.

    With that said, this could be very tedious and I would rather advice you to just grab the newest set on pleasuredome and keep better track of your version next time.

    55 minutes ago, Pixelpiper said:

    Is it possible (probable anyway) that the broken image links on the OP may be fixed?  This is a great resource and would be so much better if the original images were still showing up.

    I'm starting with a merged .219 set minus CHD so there's nothing yet to update today, but I'd like to expand out to unmerged and then do some cleanup and NEO GEO sequestering.

    I plan to rework this tutorial soon-ish as I wrote it a long time ago and I now know a lot more about clrmamepro and what it can do. Of course I’ll add new screenshots in the process.

    • Game On 1

    View DB System Games in Text List?

    in Contributions

    Posted

    That’s pretty simple as you already have the complete database as .xml file in your LaunchBox directory (Path: LaunchBox\Metadata\Metadata.xml).

    You have various options to choose from like simply open the metadata.xml file in a text editor or open it in a dedicated XML viewer/editor.

    Personally I would recommend to import the Data into Excel and use all the great filter and search functions it offers. If you search “import xml into excel” you’ll surely get a ton of good tutorials on how to do this.

    CriticalZone / CriticalZone - BlueBox

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    I’m not sure if anything can be done. At least it would be a pain to figure that one out as the workaround to fix the DPI issues is already implemented.  Actually, it behaves the complete opposite as I would expect it as the workaround tends to add more blank space on the right side of the text the higher your DPI settings are.

    Most likely, some recent BigBox changes broke the workaround as you are the first ones to mention this issue since V2 was released over 2 years ago.

    I’ll see what I can do once I get your feedback.

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