Can you have the same game in multiple platforms?

[angelobodetti]

Hi All,

I'm wondering the best way to have the same game in multiple platforms.

I'm asking because I am putting together custom platforms. I am currently doing a TMNT platform with all of the ninja turtle games. There are 2 arcade games a few NES, a few GameCube, etc..

What is the best way to set it up so these games exist in their original platform AND the custom one?

If I manually add each one, is there a way to scrape a single ROM with a specific platform? if not, i will need to find every single piece of media for the individual games as well and move them over one by one.

Any tips are appreciated!

[SentaiBrad]

You would have to do that all manually. The easiest route would be to set up each game with the "Series" tag identifier. So what you can do is click on all, search "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (Hero Turtles as well), and that should show you most of the games. Click on one, Ctrl + A to highlight them all, right click a game, go to edit, select series from the Drop Down Menu, and input what ever you want to call it. Once you have that set, in the left pane on LaunchBox, at the top, where it says Platform or Platform Category, select Series from the drop down menu. If you go the other route, you would have to literally set up all of it manually.

[angelobodetti]

Thank you, would the series show up in BigBox like a platform? That is my ultimate goal is to have these separate wheels and platforms in BigBox

[Lordmonkus]

It would show up as it's own platform.

This is something I have been trying to get Jason to implement for a while and hopefully it will make an appearance soon. I really want to make custom platforms and then be able to have games from other platforms appear in the custom platform as well as the custom one.

So using the TMNT example: Have a TMNT platform then go through each system and for each game go to each TMNT game, then in each games edit window have a tab with a way to have that game show up in chosen custom platforms. You could have the arcade, NES, SNES and Genesis games show up in the TMNT platform without the need to re-add and scrape those games and they would use the emulator they are assigned in their "home" platform.

 

[SentaiBrad]

Sure, but the Series tag is much more powerful, you theoretically don't have to add anything, and nested filters would also go a long way towards this as well. You can also view a lot of different things and ways in Big Box, series being one of them. Just back up in to the menu:

[angelobodetti]

This is kindof messy. I set up a ninja turtle series and there was already 100 random series. That's definitely not manageable if i am trying to create custom platforms and wheels. Also would the series show up along side the platforms or is it an either/or situation?

LaunchBox / BigBox is the most versatile front end out there and I think an easy way to tag roms to a custom platform would really go a long way to "steal" people from other front ends. I left Hyperspin because of the complication, but I do miss how easy it was to use XML files to create whatever you wanted or use other people's XML files as well.

[SentaiBrad]

There is a ton of customization on offer here, but it's going to be different than what most may be used to. Jason does know too that stuff is always changing, Nested Filters comes to mind as the next bigger update in that regard. Custom Filters still technically works, but it's having issues keeping up. Earlier when I said the Series field is the way to go and ideally you would never need to edit it, it's because of the Database. It's being populated already because of the Database. At this point in time, you'd have to make sure all your games were added, hence my other post as well. The screenshot also shows off the menu for how you'd get to your series, that's how you'd view them currently. So it's the series being listed off by it's self. So there are certainly plans in place to continue to upgrade the filtering experience, nested filters (which should enhance and replace custom filters), a tag's system has been talked about, and many other enhancements. There just happens to be a list a mile long of a ton of great things that need to get added, let alone tweaks and bug fixes.

If you want to completely clear out the Series field and start fresh, so that way only what you add gets shown (until you start scraping empty fields or new games in to LB), then follow the same process above to Bulk Edit the Series field, but instead, do it for all of your games at once and leave the field blank. Then, you can search "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" in the search box and Bulk Edit just their series fields to TMNT, or what ever you want to call it. That, I think, is the path of least resistance right now, and gets the job done a lot more easily than manually adding games 1 by 1 or trying to use an XML list that wont cooperate.