Help with Side 1, Side 2, etc

[shufflemoomin]

I've just started using this program and I've imported a bunch of C64 roms files. When it adds many of my games, it splits them up into two such as "game side 1" and "game side 2". These are also not getting any box art it. Is there a way to combine them both into one "game" and have the box art display?

[SentaiBrad]

Make sure the Side 1 and Side 2 are in brackets so that they're ignored when imported (I assume that's what you mean when they're not getting box art). Also, the Commodore 64 doesn't have much in the way of box art on the Database, there is still a lot missing. It's being added to, but it's still lacking sadly. You can use the Addition Apps feature when editing a game to combine them, but you have to do it manually. Side 1, Side 2 etc verbiage hasn't been added to the auto-combine rules when importing.

[shufflemoomin]

Ah, I see. I'll add the brackets and give it another go. Thanks for the quick response.

[Zombeaver]

In most cases for C64, having additional sides/disks in the additional apps section is unnecessary because you're rarely ever going to start the game with anything other than Disk 1 / Side A. It's not like a Playstation game where you can throw in whatever disc you want and it'll take you to a main menu where you can load a save file. Saves, in and of themselves, are fairly rare for C64 games.

Generally speaking if you're dealing with multi-disk/side games you're just going to want to import Disk 1 / Side A into your library and switch to others as prompted in-emulator.

[SentaiBrad]

Well, save stating and then save state loading works well in this situation still too. I tested it during a tutorial to show it off, so having those Disk's ready to go at a right click's notice is still a good idea. In this case though, I think @shufflemoomin was having issues scraping the database because Disk 1, Side 1 etc wasn't in brackets, and thus in the name and not ignored.

 

[Zombeaver]

What does save states/save state loading have to do with having other C64 disks in additional apps? If you save/load a save state it's going to load the associated disk data (that was in use at the time) anyway. In which case the disk inserted at launch is completely irrelevant. This is true for both CCS64 and Hoxs64; and in both cases you can have literally nothing inserted at the time, load the save state file, and it'll continue right on where you left off (regardless of what disk/side that may be) because that data is getting dumped into the save state. In both cases you can even set the save state file as the "rom" in LB and direct it at the emulator and it'll start right from the save state.

People are welcome to add them in if the wish, but my point is that it's a somewhat time-consuming endeavor for no practical purpose or benefit. If you're starting the game "properly" you're going to do it with Disk 1 / Side A. If you're using a save state, the disk at launch doesn't matter.

[SentaiBrad]

To be honest, I just misread what you said. I read about swapping and just got off on a tangent in my head. I also wasn't trying to say you were wrong, I just misread the conversation, I'm sorry.

[Zombeaver]

It's fine. It's just that whenever the specific question of "What should I be doing with all these?" in relation to C64 disk importing comes up I always try to stress that all people need to be importing for C64 disks is the first disk/side. Anything else is going to be done in-emulator during play after that. And unlike say the PSX, if you try to start a game with anything other than that, most of them aren't going to work because they're designed to be loaded in a specific order.

Some way to streamline this for the importing process would be nice but until then probably the easiest thing is just going through the final screen of the import wizard and just removing disks that aren't 1/A. Luckily the C64 doesn't have a huge number of multi-disk games. Not like the Amiga or something.