Open - Considering contributing to the cause - seeking guidance - Issue #341

[JaysArcade]

I'm seeking guidance on how to begin, or to see whether its even worth my time. I have set up about 450 Future Pinball tables and have screenshots of gameplay for all of them, screenshots of the backglass (marquee) for most, as well as screenshots of the whole table (cabinet) for a lot of them. I also have front and back flyers for several tables. EmuMovies provided movies for about half of the tables I have set up so we know other players in the greater emulation community have an interest in this stuff. The problem I foresee after reading the Database Guidelines, is that art for re-created and original pinball tables in Future Pinball and Visual Pinball will have a hard time being excepted for inclusion in the database.

Reasons I believe this include -

Guideline #2. Only officially licensed games should currently be added to the database. These tables are far from official. Are tables even being considered for inclusion at this point? I only see one entry between FP and VP currently.  A lot of tables are originals. Would these be considered "Homebrew" and not considered for inclusion? This would also make me question guideline #1 about checking sources. What would be appropriate websites for checking sources on tables?

Guideline #3. Game names should reflect the box of the game. Tables have no box or box art.

Guideline #11 No Watermarks. Future Pinball has a watermark embedded as you play. Will screengrabs of this preclude them from being allowed on the database? Would this stuff need to be cropped out for gameplay images since it is actually part of the gameplay? (See image below) 

 

Am I overthinking this or should I just test the waters by submitting some stuff and see what happens? I have had some others express interest to me in having pinball art available and hoped I could add to the database.

[SentaiBrad]

I think you're over thinking this a little bit. I do get why there is some confusion, but sometimes the rules may not apply to a system because the system inherently doesn't follow the rules we've set up. There are no Pinball related guidelines because it's never been needed, it's never been discussed. I have questions about how this should be handled in the first place. To follow current convention, I think MAME is the closest analog. There are many different subsets of Arcade, but everything is housed under Arcade regardless. So, in the same token, it seems like a Future Pinball and Visual Pinball category doesn't make sense, but then also this is still different because these should be considered the platform, not just the emulator. In the case for Arcade, people want to split them up based on Emulator mainly (though there is some discussion as to if it should be split based on the arcade board specifically). In this case, obviously you're not playing the physical pinball table, it is being emulated in a unique platform, so should these be considered the platform?

So for now, I think FP and VP tables, all tables, should of course get added. This is just in terms of the Database, we're not talking about anything that may need to get changed for LB to make Pinball easier to deal with. In terms of the Database, I don't see why it shouldn't move forward. There may need to be new image categories though, unless the images currently fit. So MAME uses "Flyers", and in terms of verbiage related to the Guidelines, you would consider these Front Box Art. Does there need to be anything added to clarify Pinball specific stuff past that? What ever would be considered front box art should be treated as box art, original, re-created etc. These would share the image categories with the Arcade images, like Marquee and Table images, but they're not labeled for Pinball currently. So some stuff would need to be added to the Database, but these are things that can get edited later if you wanted to proceed. As for the watermark, if there are watermarks as you actually play the table... then there is nothing we can do about that. Ignoring the conversation about how crappy that is, if it's included then we can't get around that, and that might be the only rule I need to add-on to. When related to Visual and Virtual Pinaball, if watermarks are built in to Gameplay, then they can be included in any related media. If the media has a version without Watermarks, this is preferred though. 

[JaysArcade]

Thanks for the explanation Brad. I do think for tables there should be some kind of way to tell if its a re-creation of a physical table or an original. Also a place to name the author since someone put a lot of work into each individual table. Should the developer fields be filled with the author name or would the developer be the physical table developer like Bally? But if the table is an original (homebrew), who would be the developer then? What about genres? Should pinball be it's own genre in the grand scheme of things? I'm still a little bit hung up on the source for these. There is a thing called the Internet Pinball Database that is great for physical hardware but probably won't be much help for original tables. SIgh.... I guess I'l just need to play around with it some and start adding some stuff. See what happens.

As for images, The way I have them set up in my Launchbox is the playfield is screenshot gameplay. The backglass is the marquee. Flyer is flyer front and flyer back. If I have an image of the table I add that as the cabinet image. There is also logos for a lot of them. Some of tables came packaged with logos and some I think I got from Hyperspin or emumovies. Not real sure what the protocol is for sharing those...

[SentaiBrad]

If HS made them, then it's murky. If they are hosted on EmuMovies, then LaunchBox would automatically download them during import if it matches the names of any other boards. To be honest, all of your questions are 100% valid, especially with crediting, so I honestly think that it would be best if we tabled the discussion right now. I was ok going forward and making the edits later, but there are too many that would need to be done, and there are too many new fields that would need to be added in the first place that now makes me uncomfortable going forward. The team knows that Pinball is heavily requested though, so we're not ignoring it, we just need time.

[JaysArcade]

Yep. Lots to sort out. That's why I was hesitant. Not sure where I picked up a lot of the clear logos. I know some of the tables come with the logos but I got the rest of them from elsewhere. I'll hold off until we get some clearer idea about the possible inclusion of additional pinball related fields in the future.

[JaysArcade]

Added ticket just now. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/2287/request-for-additional-fields-for-pinball

[Vlansix]

Hi @JaysArcade,

Transferred your ticket to the DB tracker. I'll be looking into this once I've ironed out the bugs in the DB. Check the tracker for more info!