Hippyshake Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 As an update: I tend to be pretty organized with my games, so I'm installing several DRM-free Windows games (from the 1990s to the present) across different drives and directories in order to give LB a better workout. Is there no edit button on posts, or am I just missing it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 It's reading games from a hard drive that doesn't exist. These are actually on drive I: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Hippyshake said Jason Carr said Take note though that you can just use a separate LaunchBox install, so there's no need to wipe your collection. I'm mostly interested in the games that it doesn't find, but the non-games could certainly prove useful as well. Much appreciated. Thanks for the tip on the separate install! I forgot about LB's portability. I have several thousand games installed, so this will be a few hours. I also have to babysit my grandson at 1pm, so if I'm not done by then there will be some time I won't be able to work on it. The biggest problem so far that I've noticed is that LB tends to grab the DOSBox executable instead of the "Launch [Game Title].lnk" when importing Gog Galaxy games. (Just to satisfy my own curiosity because I can see an argument for both ways: Do you want LB to consider games from Gog as Windows or MS-DOS games?) Personally I prefer them labeled from what Service they came from. For the most part I know what system everything belongs to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Hippyshake said It's reading games from a hard drive that doesn't exist. These are actually on drive I: I really want that edit button. :) Ok, so a correction: Most of those games no longer exist, but I believe I did have a drive G at one time, years ago, and these were on there, so it's picking up a Windoze directory listing somewhere that still thinks it's 2010? :) Also, I've noticed LB is recognizing some games and missing others within the same parent (for example, C:/Program Files (x86) ). I'll get you a full list, but I wanted to let you know about the drive issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 It's cataloged games on the proper drive that simply don't exist. For example, I:\Installed Games\Demon Stone\demonlaunch.exe (I:\Installed Games exists, but the rest does not, and hasn't for months). I'm not quite sure where to start. During the Windows import 111 games were found, far less than what actually exists. That includes MS-DOS games (such as I:\GalaxyClient\GalaxyClient\Games\Star Wars - Dark Forces\DOSBOX\dosbox.exe although that's the incorrect launch file). I guess I can go through them one at a time and see which ones will actually launch, for starters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Correction: I'm going to delete the catalog, reindex Windows, and start again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted April 30, 2015 Author Share Posted April 30, 2015 Hi Hippyshake, unfortunately I think the Windows search will have to just assume that everything it finds is a Windows game. Obviously GOG's collection is split between both. That's a good point about GOG; I'll see if I can address that, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Jason Carr said Hi Hippyshake, unfortunately I think the Windows search will have to just assume that everything it finds is a Windows game. Obviously GOG's collection is split between both. That's a good point about GOG; I'll see if I can address that, thanks. If you mean about having LB import the .link instead if the .exe then I'd definitely try it. I think there will be fewer dead links. A potential problem could be a performance hit, depending on much much LB uses...but swapping out as Anarchy Arcade does might be the answer to that (potential issue). Windoze is still indexing. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Jason Carr said Hi Hippyshake, unfortunately I think the Windows search will have to just assume that everything it finds is a Windows game. Obviously GOG's collection is split between both. That's a good point about GOG; I'll see if I can address that, thanks. Can we have a list of excluded .exe names and extensions like when we import DOS games? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 1, 2015 Author Share Posted May 1, 2015 Hippyshake, for some reason I just caught the stuff about the different drive; missed it the first time. The search uses your Start menu, so I'm guessing you have a bunch of old, bad links either in your Start menu, or in the Windows Games Explorer. Still, that's a good point, I should check to make sure that the files actually exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 1, 2015 Author Share Posted May 1, 2015 SentaiBrad said Can we have a list of excluded .exe names and extensions like when we import DOS games? We certainly could, but it would be much less effective in this scenario. For example, there are games called "Steam", so we probably wouldn't want to exclude "Steam". The only reason non-games are showing up is because there are legitimate games with that name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 1, 2015 Author Share Posted May 1, 2015 That's not to say we can't make it smarter though, like checking to see if it's legitimately Steam or not via other measures. So we'll massage it as best we can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 1, 2015 Author Share Posted May 1, 2015 Hippyshake said Is there no edit button on posts, or am I just missing it? There should be an Edit button in the top right hand corner of the posts, next to Quote and Report. Is it not there for you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 1, 2015 Author Share Posted May 1, 2015 Alright, I have a new beta out. I've improved the Windows search a bit; it should no longer show duplicates, and favors using links instead of direct EXEs. I still have some more testing to do with GOG games, but hopefully that is working well enough. All my Origin games were found, so that's good. Let me know of any other findings. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted May 1, 2015 Share Posted May 1, 2015 Jason Carr said Hippyshake, for some reason I just caught the stuff about the different drive; missed it the first time. The search uses your Start menu, so I'm guessing you have a bunch of old, bad links either in your Start menu, or in the Windows Games Explorer. Still, that's a good point, I should check to make sure that the files actually exist. No worries. Start menua was clean, but I'd been neglecting the Windoze Games Explorer. I deleted the cache and reindexed the whole computer, so I'm having LB scan right now. Sorry it took so long! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted May 1, 2015 Share Posted May 1, 2015 Jason Carr said The only reason non-games are showing up is because there are legitimate games with that name. I hadn't realized that, but it's good to know. Jason Carr said There should be an Edit button in the top right hand corner of the posts, next to Quote and Report. Is it not there for you? The only post it appears on (I missed it yesterday) is the one from April 29, 2015 at 7:50 am; the rest of my posts only have Quote and Report. Odd. Jason Carr said Alright, I have a new beta out. I've improved the Windows search a bit; it should no longer show duplicates, and favors using links instead of direct EXEs. I still have some more testing to do with GOG games, but hopefully that is working well enough. All my Origin games were found, so that's good. Let me know of any other findings. :) Scan completed. I started with the latest clean update of LB, with nothing in it. This time, it only shows 50 imports, but there are quite a few errors. It's also found things like DOSShell (MS-DOS 4.01). I think it only showed two imports from I://, which is my main gaming drive (and LB found much more yesterday). I want to make sure the indexing was completed properly on my end before calling it LB's error. I'm creating a database of what I have vs what LB finds, and whether or not it's correct. Do you have a gmail address? I'd like to throw a shared spreadsheet on to Google Drive to make things easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted May 1, 2015 Share Posted May 1, 2015 Hippyshake said It's also found things like DOSShell (MS-DOS 4.01). This is what I meant earlier by having a list of items that LB doesn't scan for. It may be more direct or crude... but it will potentially completely help to eliminate inproper exe's being pick up by games. At least as it stands now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted May 1, 2015 Share Posted May 1, 2015 Another observation as I go through the games LB has found: It appears that, as long as a game is in a subdirectory of Windows, it will be identified as a Windows game. I've found some old installs of games from Gog (prior to my purchasing an external HD a few years ago), and the default directory is apparently ..\..\..\..\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\GOG.com\[GAME]. For example, it's identified Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold as a Windows game (it's MS-DOS). The good news: It's picked up the .lnk instead of DOSBox. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted May 1, 2015 Share Posted May 1, 2015 Hippyshake said Another observation as I go through the games LB has found: It appears that, as long as a game is in a subdirectory of Windows, it will be identified as a Windows game. I've found some old installs of games from Gog (prior to my purchasing an external HD a few years ago), and the default directory is apparently ..\..\..\..\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\GOG.com\[GAME]. For example, it's identified Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold as a Windows game (it's MS-DOS). The good news: It's picked up the .lnk instead of DOSBox. :) So GOG specifically does something interesting. Some of their games, especially with the old installer, didn't want you to launch game the from inside of the install folder. They put a desktop icon and a start menu folder with some stuff in it. They wanted you to start the game from those two locations pretty much at all times. The only solution would be to reinstall the game in the same directory. You don't lose saves, but its sad. Most of the games got away from it, but some DOS based games still do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hippyshake Posted May 1, 2015 Share Posted May 1, 2015 Ok, I have attached a pdf that sorts the games that are found & correct, the games that are found & incorrect, and notes. I still have to go through games that are missing, but there are a lot, so it will take a while. A few general comments: -- All games installed under Windows are assumed by LB to be Windows games (which makes sense) -- In the initial scan, while I had checked the options for import duplicates, LB only found the GOG version of Legend of Grimrock. I have at least two other copies installed on different drives and directories that it didn't find. -- After finishing, I re-scanned, and ensured the import duplicates button was checked. It found only the exact same list it had initially imported (I had incorrectly assumed it would check those against the games it had already found and not include them; although I believe this worked correctly when importing MS-DOS games in the previous version)). It did find a MS-DOS game I had installed via Origin after the first scan, though. -- Even though 21 out of 50 games are considered incorrect, 14 of those are actually through Gog (almost all are in the Windows directory), so that only leaves 7 true mistakes, which is pretty good for a new feature, I'd say. :) I'll work on finding the games it missed. Let me know if I can be of any other help, please. Cheers! [EDIT: Apparently the 130k pdf is too large, so I've uploaded it here. ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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