Search Box is buggy?

[Imgema]

Are there any news regarding this?

[Maelstrom]

I'm surprised this still hasn't been fixed.

Why would the search function go look in the description or any other field of a game instead of just the title? That should be the default, since you can use the filters to look for a specific publisher or anything else.

[Retro808]

43 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I'm surprised this still hasn't been fixed.

Why would the search function go look in the description or any other field of a game instead of just the title? That should be the default, since you can use the filters to look for a specific publisher or anything else.

I'm not. There really has not been a big push about this. Additionally, up until last year there was only 1 dev working on LaunchBox. As it stands now there are only 2. This item did not make the last poll and currently the 2 are working on implementing the items that did make the cut. So things have to be prioritized even more so when there is not a big team.

[Maelstrom]

You could also argue that this is a basic feature that should work correctly before moving on to something else.

[Jason Carr]

4 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

You could also argue that this is a basic feature that should work correctly before moving on to something else.

The feature does indeed work correctly. It is exactly how it was designed, and it's a matter of opinion whether searching only the title would be an improvement or a detriment.

That said, when we do tackle this, we'll provide options for users to choose how it works.

[Retro808]

53 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

You could also argue that this is a basic feature that should work correctly before moving on to something else.

My response was not about arguing what is what. I was simply providing some insight many users are not aware of. Since some like to assume how things should be. Hopefully since the dev himself responded you can have even more insight. 

[Maelstrom]

I also wanted to ask why the Bitbucket issue was marked as "resolved". I don't understand Jason's comment there: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/530/advanced-search-options

[Imgema]

On 1/14/2021 at 10:18 PM, Jason Carr said:

The feature does indeed work correctly. It is exactly how it was designed, and it's a matter of opinion whether searching only the title would be an improvement or a detriment.

I would argue it's not functioning correctly.

Searching for NBA games brings up Pinball games. Searching for Sonic games brings up games made by Panasonic. There is no filter/option to avoid things like that.

Also i agree that, when you want to search for a game title, it shouldn't bring unrelated results like publishers. This should be an option.

All the search does if finding the letters you typed. Doesn't take into account any context at all. The only time it works properly is if the titles have enough complexity to rule out anything unrelated. For instance, searching for "Earthworm Jim" or "Golden Axe" won't bring any unrelated results because such titles are complex enough and the chances something else has those exact words in the same sequence are slim. But good luck separating "DOOM" or "Sonic" or anything with a short name, from any other unrelated result.

Basically that makes finding all ports from a certain game more difficult than it should (depending on the game name). Let's not forget that Launchbox is used by people who might have huge collections of games. And it's the only desktop front-end that lets you show all games, from all systems, in one big list, which would be AMAZING if a proper search function would exist. It would be a very powerful tool no other frontend has so i always thought this was a missed opportunity (i know i'm repeating myself at this point).

But that's just me. If the intention was for the search to be so barebones then i suppose it works correctly.

 

On 1/14/2021 at 11:10 PM, Maelstrom said:

I also wanted to ask why the Bitbucket issue was marked as "resolved". I don't understand Jason's comment there: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/530/advanced-search-options

This bitbucket issue was created by me and i also never understood why it was deemed as resolved. I mean, if the developer doesn't want or need to tackle it, for whatever reason, that's fine. It's just a request. But changing the status to resolved without even touching it? I don't get it.

It also had plenty of votes (it was 4th place of unresolved issues at some point) but since there wasn't a big push as the developer said, votes didn't matter either.

 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Imgema

[Jason Carr]

On 1/14/2021 at 1:10 PM, Maelstrom said:

I also wanted to ask why the Bitbucket issue was marked as "resolved". I don't understand Jason's comment there: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/530/advanced-search-options

What this means is that you can custom-search any fields for pretty much anything using auto-populate playlists. The only issue is that you have to create and then delete the playlist when you're done.

On 1/20/2021 at 1:08 AM, Imgema said:

I would argue it's not functioning correctly.

Searching for NBA games brings up Pinball games. Searching for Sonic games brings up games made by Panasonic. There is no filter/option to avoid things like that.

Also i agree that, when you want to search for a game title, it shouldn't bring unrelated results like publishers. This should be an option.

All the search does if finding the letters you typed. Doesn't take into account any context at all. The only time it works properly is if the titles have enough complexity to rule out anything unrelated. For instance, searching for "Earthworm Jim" or "Golden Axe" won't bring any unrelated results because such titles are complex enough and the chances something else has those exact words in the same sequence are slim. But good luck separating "DOOM" or "Sonic" or anything with a short name, from any other unrelated result.

Basically that makes finding all ports from a certain game more difficult than it should (depending on the game name). Let's not forget that Launchbox is used by people who might have huge collections of games. And it's the only desktop front-end that lets you show all games, from all systems, in one big list, which would be AMAZING if a proper search function would exist. It would be a very powerful tool no other frontend has so i always thought this was a missed opportunity (i know i'm repeating myself at this point).

But that's just me. If the intention was for the search to be so barebones then i suppose it works correctly.

Whole-word searches like what you're looking for here are incredibly complicated, and often broken. Unfortunately all you have to do is try to use the search algorithm on the forums here (which we didn't write) to understand how terrible most of them are, and how difficult it is to do well. For example, when a user searches for "blame", ideally the search algorithm would also search for "blaming", "blames", "blamed", etc. That may be a bad example, but it should be good enough to demonstrate how deep of a knowledge of the English language would be required to do a proper whole-word search. It's not likely to be done well without serious performance issues and a ton of development time. If we simply searched for whole words instead, users wouldn't find what they were looking for half the time.

Whether or not to search fields other than title of course is just user preference.

On 1/20/2021 at 1:08 AM, Imgema said:

This bitbucket issue was created by me and i also never understood why it was deemed as resolved. I mean, if the developer doesn't want or need to tackle it, for whatever reason, that's fine. It's just a request. But changing the status to resolved without even touching it? I don't get it.

It also had plenty of votes (it was 4th place of unresolved issues at some point) but since there wasn't a big push as the developer said, votes didn't matter either.

I hope I've explained my thought process here.

[Imgema]

On 1/25/2021 at 10:30 PM, Jason Carr said:

What this means is that you can custom-search any fields for pretty much anything using auto-populate playlists. The only issue is that you have to create and then delete the playlist when you're done.

Could you explain the process a bit more? Like a step by step or a tutorial?

Thanks in advance.

[Jason Carr]

On 1/29/2021 at 1:37 PM, Imgema said:

Could you explain the process a bit more? Like a step by step or a tutorial?

Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately I need to focus on dev, so I can't create a detailed tutorial for you, but just right-click on something in the platform categories sidebar and select Add > New Playlist. Then go to the Auto-Populate tab, check the box, and put in your filters.

[Imgema]

6 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Unfortunately I need to focus on dev, so I can't create a detailed tutorial for you, but just right-click on something in the platform categories sidebar and select Add > New Playlist. Then go to the Auto-Populate tab, check the box, and put in your filters.

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately it's not for me since it says this feature is for premium users only.

[arcademode]

I started a thread to discuss this same issue before I found this thread.  It's been 3 years since the last posts here, the issue still remains.  The search function in Hyperspin returns much more expected results because it defaults to game title search.  In addition the results are separated by platform so it's really pleasant to use.  Searching in Bigbox (I'm using an arcade cabinet, thus I'm not searching in Launchbox as much) yields an unsorted, long list of unexpected results, meaning I can't really find what I'm looking for most of the time.

It seems @Jason Carr disagrees fundamentally with whole word or game title search based on his reply above. That's such a bummer because when you have a large library the search is really crucial.  It seems many people, myself included, have raised this concern either on forum posts or officially through bitbucket.  That indicates enough demand I think to work on this. It seems like it would be easy to add a simple option to "search game title only" or something like that and default to whole word search in that mode.  That way you can search up NBA games without Pinball showing up or Sonic games without Panasonic showing up.