Drybonz Posted June 25, 2016 Author Share Posted June 25, 2016 Great job to everyone who has been involved in getting the new LB games database up and running. You guys are doing a great job. One thing that I was thinking about is that with the BigBox themes the wheel logos are going to be pretty important, as a lot of themes are probably going to use them for the game selection. It looks like there are a lot of gaps in the database where there aren't available wheel logos for a game, and I was wondering if there were more available that haven't been uploaded yet, or if we had run out of sources? It's probably not a very big deal yet since the BB themes are so new, but I think people will be wanting, eventually, full sets of the wheel logos like they might have for their other frontends. I was just curious if they were readily available. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 We have had plans since we created the Wheels to start working on trying to find Clear Logo's ("Wheel art"). There are packs up on the HyperSpin forums that you can download, and they're perfectly usable, but we don't want to just specifically "take" those images and upload them to our Database, so we're kind of in a hard place regarding that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bedwyr Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 To clarify, the Hyperspin image sets are on FTP with a fair number of people having paid for access (including me). It's a good service and I agree that imagery should be handled honestly and openly. A sudden appearance of, say, logos from the full library of the NES that just happen to match the checksum of images on the HS FTP site would not be good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 You only need to pay for FTP access, but the images are free on the forums outside of the FTP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmc Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 I have a lot of wheels i made for my HS setup, i don´t mind sharing them but uploading one by one to the database is a bit time consuming. Is there a way to upload everything at once to the LB database? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 Not specifically, but if you upload a rar of them, properly named and separated in to console, to Mediafire, GoogleDrive or DropBox we can download them and Jason can upload them to the database. I know we would really appreciate it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmc Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 I´ll do that with all the artwork i created and will be made, and most of the hs wheels in their website for some systems are only cleaned logos grabbed from the internet or cropped from covers and cleaned over ps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromlostdays Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 Many many many of the wheels over at HyperSpin are community generated and freely available on the site. Many more are available on the artist's personal sites, the hyperspin FTP, and via HyperSync (HyperSpin's soon to be defunct media downloader). I respect that no one here tried to pull a snatch and grab immensely. A lot of the people that do the wheels however are awesome folks and wouldn't mind sharing if asked. But I do agree LaunchBox shouldn't share that content on their own database unless the actual artist uploads it there, or gives express permission to someone else to do it. I actually thought long and hard about it as I have the wheels on my own LB setup, but then I'm a premium member of both sites. The issue in this case really has less to do with front ends, and more to do with respecting and crediting the people who took the time to design the images. Nor is that particularly easy as there is so much media available over there that it would be hard to find the actual persons responsible for a given set. It may be simpler for LaunchBox to encourage it's own artists to fill in the gaps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 More than likely, but there is generally a lot of noticeable... disdain from site to site when it comes to users uploading something "someone else did". If the creators of those images signed off on us using their art here, then I don't think we would have any issues with that, but I think they would if we went to their site, downloaded it then uploaded it to ours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmc Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 Don´t get me wrong i would never share some other artists creation, what is theirs is theirs i agree with you. It´s about time to get a media creation team over LB to fill up the gaps you mention Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted June 25, 2016 Author Share Posted June 25, 2016 So, being that people are probably going to want full sets of the wheel logos for Big Box themes, and there are huge gaps in the logos on the LB games database... the reason that I brought this up is so that we can think about a solution. If our solution is to, as individuals, go download a set from another source like the Hyperspin forums, etc, which is easily done... then the LB games database seems to have a lot less value. Would another possible solution be finding a author who has made these and getting the ok to upload them to the games db? Another obvious solution would be make an entire new set for the LB games db, which would take as long as it took to make the existing ones floating around out there... literally, years probably. I don't know what the best solution is... just throwing this out there for discussion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 Since the clear logos are replicas of the text on the boxes even if you made your own wouldn't they be basically the same. I don't know much about HS but I'm assuming there are wheels that are just more than the clear logos. So would uploading ones that match the text on the box not really be stealing from anyone but the artist that designed the box? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmc Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 I´m creating my psp wheels or logos from game screenshots. Here´s an example: Needs some cleaning, but you get the picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 That's more of a philosophical question Derek. All I know is that people get really prideful and possessive when it comes to this stuff and we'd rather not piss anyone off. For example, the reason we don't offer Video is because we happen to like the guys over at EmuMovies a lot and we have a good relationship with them. The best solution is to fill our Database up, that's the entire point! At a certain level too, unless the artist embed something in to the image so they could specifically tell, no there would be no visible difference other than a users method to obtain the clear logo's. Truthfully, a completely different random site could have a "clear logo pack", regardless of where it came from and it's just a user "sharing their art with the world", and that could be from HyperSpin and we would never know. We really can't ever know, unless Hash's or CRC's were checked but those can be changed easily. Short answer, yes we do want to fill up our database, and unless the person who gave them the art of some HyperSpin admin said we can upload the art to our Database, we have to attempt to take an extra step in not just downloading them from HS and directly uploading them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 This brings up an important discussion point. One thing I'm sort of worried about currently is contributions from within LaunchBox, which is likely to happen very soon. At that point it will be very easy for users to download images from any source (including the Hyperspin forums) and batch upload the missing ones to the LaunchBox Games Database. This is meant to be extremely easy on purpose, as obviously it's the best approach to filling in the database. And I truly believe with this approach that we can quickly become the most populated database out there. But of course, that said, I'm worried about the implications of stealing other people's images. To be completely honest, I agree with Derek that these images are really *only* owned by the original artists that created them for the games themselves. That said, I do recognize the significant work that goes into creating the images (especially clear logo images), so I understand why some people might get upset. So from that front, we are sort of between a rock and a hard place. Once we open up easy community contributions from within LaunchBox, there won't be any good way to determine where an image comes from, so there's no way to identify if an image has been stolen or where it came from. Not to mention that the majority of the images originally came from TheGamesDB.net, which in itself has images stolen from all over the place (including Hyperspin, EmuMovies, and many other places). So this is a pretty hairy issue that we need to somehow come up with a solution for, and/or take a stance on. Any thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 I don't see anything trumping us building the ability for the community to share our metadata and images with each other over the DB if people are upset that's messed up anyway as we are just passing on and sharing there works not claiming credit for them. Also I don't know much about this but do the files they host on their paid service pay money to the creators or do they just go to covering the FTP cost because if not at that point we aren't using any of their bandwidth. Now if it is different and they pay money to the creators then that would be different but I'm guessing its like EmuMovies and goes to cover the cost of bandwidth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bedwyr Posted June 26, 2016 Share Posted June 26, 2016 Jason Carr said So this is a pretty hairy issue that we need to somehow come up with a solution for, and/or take a stance on. Any thoughts? Be gracious, modest, and upfront about this as you go forward just like you've been doing so far? Make sure you cultivate collegial relationships with the other frontends and communities? Mostly just regular good 'ol professionalism. I mean you're already on a good footing worrying about it. That's a good sign. For specifics: - I'd think about when you need to consider a formal policy. Like writing up what the plan will be when someone issues a grievance of some kind. - Open up lines of communication with the other communities and frontends. You're competitors, yes, but there ought to be a way to keep misunderstandings turning into worse. - Be open about other communities' cultures. If a group has a problem with you replicating particular art sets, maybe that needs to be ironed out. You could comply with their wishes or maybe even negotiate a third way (like some kind of partnership regarding the database?). Dunno. I'm just opening up possibilities that allow you to stay ahead of potential issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spektor56 Posted June 26, 2016 Share Posted June 26, 2016 I think most people wont care as long as the database remains free and there's no profit from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 26, 2016 Share Posted June 26, 2016 Regardless of what we do, someone will be mad. As long as we try then that is really all we can do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 26, 2016 Share Posted June 26, 2016 Yeah, I'll be working on the games database site this coming week to clean up some of the final pieces, so I'll make sure I add some controls for reporting images and such. I'm very much in talks with both Circo from EmuMovies and the Hyperspin community, so hopefully that will continue to go smoothly. Circo is great to work with, but of course it's much harder to work with an entire community. We shall see how it goes. I know the Hyperspin guys would like us to implement their new API (which requires a paid donation/subscription), but I don't think that's a good solution since all the images are already freely available to download on the Hyperspin forums, and I don't think very many people would pay for access to the API when you can just go download and extract the zips. I have offered to make donations, though, so I'm hoping something like that ends up working out. We shall see. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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