New User - A couple of questions

[hellxpress]

Hi I'm verrrry happy to have found Launchbox. I've been searching for about 2 years for a way to manage my collection and I wasn't satisfied with any of them (And there are a lot! Collectorz, Backloggery, GCStar, Grouvee, the list goes on) In the end I built one in Excel to manage my 537 games because i could make them do what I wanted! Launchbox is the closest to my feature set and has a premium price i can deal with. Upgraded! I have some suggestions/requests that i'd love to bounce around, but first i wanted to ask you, Jason, if you envision Launchbox to be a launcher as the title suggests, or a collection manager as recent developments like Steam import would imply. I ask because if you prefer it be a Launcher, some of my suggestions are moot and can be ignored :) 1) Any chance you could support other games DBs like Giantbomb? TheGamesDB seems like a great start, but I think there are DBs out there with more mature data that are fairly accessible. (I used Giantbomb's API for my excel version and it worked great - very little missing data) TheGamesDB has missing games, information and inconsistent formatting, which isn't the end of the world, but if you have options you may want to support more. (I see some people discussing Mobygames integration. That's good too) 2) I was very happy you have Steam import. Any way you could provide an option to automatically check a steam account for updates when starting Launchbox? 3) What's the recommended way to catalog duplicates? Example: I have 3 copies of one game because I got it on CDRom when it came out, again on Steam through a bundle and then on Android when it was released there. Is that what the Version field is for? If so, how are the 3 versions of the same game associated in the application? Anyway, thanks for this great tool. I'm excited to try to start cataloging my floppy disk collection next! -H

[CliveBarker]

Hi man, welcome aboard! I remember when I first discovered LaunchBox at Reddit, I was amazed. I like your Steam account checking suggestion, an automated process to add your new Steam games to LaunchBox, very nice. As for the other DBs I think Jason is very interested in many APIs out there and I think he will add many cool databases in the future, there are suggestions for this if you want to vote it here https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues?status=new&status=open&sort=-created_on If you ever want to show your configuration and library at the collections sub forum, I will be happy to see it. Cheers

[Jason Carr]

Thank you @hellxpress. LaunchBox is admittedly more focused on the launcher aspects, but obviously cataloging and databasing is also an import aspect of it. We are looking at adding additional scrapers. First off, MobyGames is working with us to create an API that we can use; I'm hoping that happens relatively soon. In the future we'll look at others as well. I do have automatic adding of ROMs and stuff on the list, but I don't think I have that for Steam. Feel free to add a ticket for it here: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox For duplicates, this is admittedly something that needs improved in a number of ways. You can use versions, or you can use one game and add additional applications to launch multiple versions, but there's currently no way to associate two games together.

[Jason Carr]

Hehehe, you beat me to it, Clive. :)

[hellxpress]

Thanks Jason and Clive! I'll clean up my collection and post a screenshot shortly. I ended up with quite a few duplicates over the years. I'll see if I can figure something out! thanks again