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ability to relocate game directories yet?


retropwned

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the only reason i do not use launchbox is that when i very first installed it months back, it took forever to add all of my games and download the art etc.. then when i wanted to relocate my game directories.. i couldn't. after contacting admin here and verifying that i in fact could not do this, i never tried again. has this been fixed/appended or are relocating game directories from within the launchbox application still not supported.. thank you! 8D
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Using the find and replace features in Notepd++ make it very easy to change your directories. You just open the LaunchBox.xml file with NP++ put in your old path in the find are then click the replace tab and punch in your new path hit replace all save and everything should be set up where ever you want it.
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It depends, if you keep the file structure the same and just change the Drive, then it should be really easy. For example you want to go from D:/Emulators/.../.../ to F:/Emulators/.../.../ I would open the XML in Notepad++, Ctrl + F, Find and Replace All D:/ with F:/ enter. This should work. If you want to go from D:/Emulator/Game/.../ to F:/Emulators/Games/.../ You would need to find D:/Emulator/Game/ and replace all with F:/Emulators/Games/. If you want to move each individual emulator in to a new file structure you'll need to change an emulator set one at a time. This isn't technically supported, so you should certainly make a backup of your XML before doing this. I came up with this a while back and it works flawlessly. I could have sworn I told you about this... did you ever ask about this in the forums?
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not me no but i remember a couple of us were asking about it being implemented so perhaps i missed your reply to us (me)? i'm familiar with editing cfg/ini/xml files and such just didn't recall a response. i think i can twerk it this way until (or if) it is ever implemented.. would be a wonderful featuer for guys like us that have 6 hard drives and constantly moving things around to make room.. etc.. 6 tbs and counting.. but a great help you've been. i will just set up my drives/folders so that i shouldn't have to move them around in the first place and reinstall launchbox. if i ever do need to move folders around i'll just do it this way...
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You can change the path completely even past just the drive the only part you can't change is the file folder for the game (if it is in its own folder) and the name of the game file/files. If you have say D:\Emulators\Sega\Sega Saturn\ROMs you can change it to easily E:\Emulators\Sega Saturn\ROMs as long as the same files are in the ROMs folder and the games have the same folder name and the same .cue and .bin name as the original directory then this will work. I've done it multiple times (kudos to Brad for this because he did turn me on to this method I'm just second hand relaying his knowledge)
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Quick question mostly for Brad (because I know you know how to do it) but anyone who knows feel free to answer. How would I set up a relative path to say E:\Emulators\Sega Saturn\ROMs\Clockwork Knights\Clockwork Knights.cue I tried searching for this but found stuff that applies to setting it in development scenarios not for end users so much.
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I'm not sure why all I know is that since I am not a programmer I have to take what is offered and do the best I can to get it to work how I want so I'm glad to have a work around that is so easy and as effective as this one is. Here is a link to where you can add feature request and people can up vote them if others are interested in this and vote for it it may receive attention quicker.
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Not being a programmer myself my default answer is "it is fucking hard". That said, I know more than most when it comes to computers, code, what makes them tick etc etc, but that's because I love it. Adding one feature in its self is not actually necessarily hard. Granted, some will be harder to implement than others based on complexity but the really difficult part is when you have an entire code base, thousands of lines of code and 50 other modules that need to operate in sync. Adding in or taking away something can have massive issues that you just don't think about. In this case, a completely new system would need to be written up and new menu's added, guides so that users know what to do with it and the list can go on. I don't think it would be hard, but it could utterly break something, then you have to backtrack. Not to mention he is a single person and that bit bucket list is LOOOOOOONG. Derek, that link was broken for some reason so here it is again. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox
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Thanks guys. It would actually be a fairly simple feature to add, but I'm afraid misuse and confusion surrounding it would be rampant. "Why didn't LaunchBox move all my games for me?" "Why didn't it automatically find them when I moved them over here?" "Why did LaunchBox not find my ROM when I renamed the file?" "Do I move the files first, and then change them in LaunchBox, or the other way around?" "Why didn't my images move with my games?" "Where did the game manual files go?" It's certainly feasible, but a good, clear solution needs thought about and designed before jumping in. Relative paths can also be a challenge, because we have emulators, ROMs, videos, music files, manuals, and images all using relative paths. So the solution unfortunately isn't as simple as "so yeah, I moved my game files over here instead."
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Along these lines, is there some way I can make LaunchBox search for the file/folder across a number of drives instead of one specific drive? I ask because, well, I keep pretty much everything downloaded at all times and on various hard drives... I'm up to about ten external devices now, and it's getting a little unwieldy assigning them all distinct numbers. It would be nice if I could tell LaunchBox: "Hey, look in drive D:, E:, and F: for this file." That way I wouldn't have to worry about assigned letters or plugging in multiple drives at one time.
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That's getting a bit in the weeds honestly, its just easier to keep the files on one drive. Even if you need to split platforms on drives. I.e. Half of PS2 will be on D: the other half on F:. You can tell LB multiple locations to scan and import and there for LB will just know the location they're all in regardless of location but LB knowing the file name and just automatically finding it based on 3 or 4 different locations is... too much. That would be a pain to code and probably bog down performance significantly.
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Nathan have you ever heard of StableBit DrivePool if you have 10 externals it maybe a good solution for you. It creates a folder on each drive that is part of a pooled virtual drive all files placed in the folder on any of the drives will become part of the pool and the pool is assigned its own drive letter one of my pools is 18 drives. The good thing about it is the program doesn't do anything weird to your files they are all left in NTFS form and drives can be removed and added to another machine though nothing can be written to your pool if a drive is missing. The software allows you to set up multiple levels of duplicates so if one drive goes down your files will be safe (not so much if two drives go down) If this happens when you add a new drive DrivePool will populate the new drive with the files whose duplicates are missing.
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I would personally be afraid of that software when something crashes... though when It comes to my drives, I am always afraid of something bad happening. Another alternative would be to get an External Hard Drive Bay. They can get a bit expensive, but you put 3-8 Hard drives in it with one power source etc.
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I use DrivePool on my server, and it has been fantastic! Like DOS76 said, the data is not altered in any way and is just stored in a hidden folder in standard NTFS format, so even if the software crashes, or you need to move the data to another machine, then you can read it no problems on any other PC. You can even tell DrivePool not to move files around, but just combine them into a single pool, so you might have a drive for PSX games and another for NES games, and you can combine them into a single drive letter, but the data will not be moved from the physical drives. Well worth a look at, it is paid software, but it is pretty cheap, and so far it has been very reliable.
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