Moderator Guidelines and Contributor Rules

[FistyDollars]

I've been rejecting any change of platform requests from Arcade to Naomi for the same reasons. I don't think the Naomi platform is necessary in the database (among a couple of redundant ones), and just causes confusion by being there.

[Jason Carr]

Yes, we absolutely do not want to change the platform for arcade games, because it will mess up a whole load of stuff in LaunchBox itself. We're thinking through a better solution for arcade platform groups, but yeah, that's only going to break things. Thanks guys.

[SentaiBrad]

Those extra platforms should have been removed already, so I'll see if @Vlansix can move that up a bit. This will eliminate the problem all together and not require a guideline alteration.

The only system that is an oddity is the Sega Model 3. It's not tied to MAME, has nothing to do with it, but it's still Arcade technically. With Scrape As anyways, it doesn't necessarily matter what our default platforms are, someone can break out different sets all they want.

[DOS76]

@SentaiBradthe only game for Model 3 that doesn't work directly from the MAME 179 set is one of the virtual Fighter games which has 1 different file so it definitely does use MAME ROMs.I recently download the set from there and tested it I have a bat in the download section that will copy the roms from your MAME set and put them in their own folder if you want to test.

[SentaiBrad]

I could have sworn that the Supermodel set is completely different, completely separate.

[DOS76]

I use the EmuCR builds maybe they changed something in the code to use newer MAME ROMs at some point and the last stable build (which I believe is old) didn't. I'm not sure just know the EmuCR versions do.

[Jason Carr]

Hold up...what platforms are we looking to remove @SentaiBrad?

[SentaiBrad]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Hold up...what platforms are we looking to remove @SentaiBrad?

The ones that we already talked about, and merging the few we talked about. Actually, when all is said and done, there will be more platforms than we currently have.

[SentaiBrad]

I just updated the guidelines, I apparently forgot to add Rom Hack stuff. So check it out, moderators and submitters need to be up to date. If you have any questions or have any points of discussion about the new rule, let me know!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wB80CH3zecXccfQ4Et8NxYa-G1bQuo7eo1YHvkYQ728/edit

[fraganator]

How strict is section 4 of the guidelines (the facing name should always be NTSC-U)?

The reason I ask is I was moderating a dupe for deletion (Roll Away (NTSC-U) is a dupe of Kula World (PAL)). I rejected the change citing section 4, but it appears that Roll Away was deleted anyway (and the region specific artwork with it). I had anticipated this so saved the artwork and have since resubmitted it under Kula World.

Should Kula World now be renamed to Roll Away, and the appropriate alternate titles set?

[SentaiBrad]

Yes. the NTSC-U is just preferred as the top as that's been the focus for quite some time. When alternate names are finally scraped from within LB, then the facing name should still probably be NTSC-U related, but it won't be as big of a deal. It's also hard to say that the entry should have been removed at all. Since the names were different, I would have been ok leaving the PAL version there, so someone with the PAL version could get metadata and media. Once LB reads alternate names, then it should have been merged. I would say at this point just go ahead and change the name, add the alternate name, add the artwork under the proper regions and edit the existing artwork to the proper region and submit that. For the most part it's been ok, but there have been odd instances of people just not paying attention, and I know it's annoying. X_X

Edit: I don't mean that we should start adding multiple versions of each game, the alternate name form should be used going forward period, but if both entries were already there and the ability isn't quite there (it seems like it might soon be though), then leaving the entry alone for a few more days / weeks would have been fine.

[8Phantasm]

On 12/9/2016 at 11:12 PM, SentaiBrad said:

The ones that we already talked about, and merging the few we talked about. Actually, when all is said and done, there will be more platforms than we currently have.

So NAOMI 1 and 2... CPS 1, 2, and 3 will all be removed? If so, what about Neo Geo AES?

[Freestate]

3 hours ago, 8Phantasm said:

So NAOMI 1 and 2... CPS 1, 2, and 3 will all be removed? If so, what about Neo Geo AES?

NEOGEO AES NO! It's a different machine than NeoGeo MVS, not the same catalog. It's the same with typex (a typical windows pc) and windows. Diferent platform. You could add flyers and full mvs catalog in arcade and keep the neogeo aes diferent catalog.

[8Phantasm]

7 minutes ago, Freestate said:

NEOGEO AES NO! It's a different machine than NeoGeo MVS, not the same catalog. It's the same with typex (a typical windows pc) and windows. Diferent platform. You could add flyers and full mvs catalog in arcade and keep the neogeo aes diferent catalog.

I'd rather keep all of them but I'm asking what they plan on doing because I started updating NEO GEO AES and was planning on doing the others too... but not if they are going to delete the platforms.

[SentaiBrad]

AES Was an actual console so I don't think that's going anywhere, but we had discussed all of those separate Arcade boards being merged. The games are generally the same, and you can still have any number of custom platforms with the Scrape As feature.

[8Phantasm]

Alright, I'll update the ARCADE section for NAOMI and CAPCOM games if anything needs improved... and stick to improving the AES section for NeoGeo.

[Freestate]

8 hours ago, 8Phantasm said:

Alright, I'll update the ARCADE section for NAOMI and CAPCOM games if anything needs improved... and stick to improving the AES section for NeoGeo.

In past times i update the neogeo aes with all the japanese boxart available in the best quality i could find, at least in japanes boxfront is complete, you have work with the western art, many custom cover and very difficult to find the real ones in good quality. Be careful with tgas is really hard to find the real covers and not customized ones for shock boxes and others.

[8Phantasm]

On 2/25/2017 at 8:34 PM, Freestate said:

In past times i update the neogeo aes with all the japanese boxart available in the best quality i could find, at least in japanes boxfront is complete, you have work with the western art, many custom cover and very difficult to find the real ones in good quality. Be careful with tgas is really hard to find the real covers and not customized ones for shock boxes and others.

Yeah I noticed. I'll mostly just be adding "reconstructed" western box art, screenshots, and fixing/creating any missing clear logos. As well as updating missing information. I doubt there are many original cover scans, if any at all other than what is already on the database.

Quick question regarding NAOMI. There are games missing in Arcade that are in the NAOMI sections. Should I add them to arcade or should I just wait until they will be merged into it? I just don't want to waste a bunch of time.

Edited February 27, 2017 by 8Phantasm

[Jason Carr]

Hey all, first off, my apologies for the delays in maintaining the games database website. There have been a few issues for a while and I should have gotten to them a lot sooner than I did. That said, I just did a bunch:

- Moderation statistics should now be correct again, including the archived data

- Moderation is slightly more user-friendly (more loading notifiers in places that were previously awkward)

- Fixed a couple of items that were stuck in moderation

- The My Collection issues have been fixed

- Everything should be much faster

The next thing I'd like to do is clean up the platforms list; especially now that we have playlists implemented in LaunchBox, we no longer need the fake Arcade divisions. Officially, going forward they should all be under Arcade as one platform.

[Evil_Orko]

can we add prototypes and homebrew yet?  I really need that function and also the ability to add more genres like pinball, strategy, rts, etc.  thanks for the DB work, I have been adding to it on and off for months now.