7.7-beta-6 Released

[lones710]

I think the ultimate solution for romsets would be support for parent/child dat files. How the hell should launchbox know that Dragonball: La Legende Saien is the same game as Dragonball: Super Butouden 2 but in France... I personally won't use this feature at all and import games after sorting them out with a rom organizer via Parent/Child .dat's. For this to work the Launchbox DB would need to be perfect concerning alternative game titles.

[Feez]

1 minute ago, lones710 said:

I think the ultimate solution for romsets would be support for parent/child dat files. How the hell should launchbox know that Dragonball: La Legende Saien is the same game as Dragonball: Super Butouden 2 but in France... I personally won't use this feature at all and import games after sorting them out with a rom organizer via Parent/Child .dat's. For this to work the Launchbox DB would need to be perfect concerning alternative game titles.

That's kindof what i was getting at with the "launchbox gamesDB" portion of my post - on the online gamesDB that LB draws its' info from there's fields for "different title in another region"....if LB could draw on that info then it could automatically do the matching (provided that the community gets those fields filled in).

[FistyDollars]

Yeah, that's why we were pushing so hard to get alternate names implemented in the GamesDB, so that they could be used when a feature like this was implemented. Now that alternate names are implemented, it would make sense for LaunchBox to scrape those as well when matching regional versions of roms.

[Feez]

Now that i'm thinking about it, it would be really cool (although would probably require some database reworking) to extend this to other platforms as well.  For example, games that had versions on the psx, ps2, gamecube, wii, etc.  Might go a ways to clearing up the "all games" view, since for large collections it can get clogged up with a lot of different versions of each game across regions and platforms.  

[Kevin_Flynn]

9 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Hmm. In theory, the folders shouldn't be using that format; where are you seeing that?

This may be a result on Region being a single value ( separated by coma) whereas Genre is a list (separated by semi-colon) and it will create those folders per the region in the game details.

From my knowledge every game that was in Canada used the United States version. I'm not sure why we need all of "North America", "United States", and "Canada".

https://imgur.com/a/HyzhS

Edited February 4, 2017 by Kevin_Flynn

[ALIE]

would it not be easiest for the importer to see the alternative database names. 

i was just trying to figure out why no data was downloaded for  Blazing skies.

but apparently  that was called Wings 2: Aces High, in the stats.

 

also a small issue. now that i in LB i renamed Blazing skies to its USA name.  they dont merge anyway of making LB merge games outside the first import.

[DOS76]

@ALIEif it is just that particular game add it as an additional app as that is all the rom combining is.

[Lmagnus87]

Are hacked/prototype versions considered as other region?

[ALIE]

7 hours ago, DOS76 said:

@ALIEif it is just that particular game add it as an additional app as that is all the rom combining is.

It's a few games.  And this works if they are already Imported?  Never used the additional app feature. 

[DOS76]

yeah if the game is imported already you can open the  the edit window and there is an additional apps tab click that and make a new app with the ROM you want to attach.Then when you right click the game in LB or go to the game details view you can open your additional app

[Jason Carr]

Hey all, for v1, there will be no automatic way to merge games with different titles, though that is planned for the future. We will probably use alternate titles on the DB when we implement it.

Also, I am hoping to add a way to merge your existing collection before the official release is out.

 

[Jason Carr]

On 2/4/2017 at 11:26 AM, Feez said:

Now that i'm thinking about it, it would be really cool (although would probably require some database reworking) to extend this to other platforms as well.  For example, games that had versions on the psx, ps2, gamecube, wii, etc.  Might go a ways to clearing up the "all games" view, since for large collections it can get clogged up with a lot of different versions of each game across regions and platforms.  

We're quite a ways off from this, but I agree that it might be a good option. It would still be a royal pain to implement though as it would require big changes across the LaunchBox Games Database as well as LaunchBox and Big Box. The main issue with this approach is that it's impossible to systematically identify whether games should be lumped together or not; there are games that play the same but have different titles, games that have the same titles but play completely differently, and of course games that have the same title and play similarly. So it's a mess just trying to decide whether to lump just one particular game together, and for that reason, I'm largely still torn on going that direction.

[Jason Carr]

On 2/4/2017 at 9:40 AM, FistyDollars said:

Yeah, that's why we were pushing so hard to get alternate names implemented in the GamesDB, so that they could be used when a feature like this was implemented. Now that alternate names are implemented, it would make sense for LaunchBox to scrape those as well when matching regional versions of roms.

I do have it on my list to tweak imports and metadata downloads to use the alternate titles as well. I'm not sure if it will make it into the next official release or not, but it is a high priority.

[Jason Carr]

On 2/4/2017 at 11:50 AM, Kevin_Flynn said:

This may be a result on Region being a single value ( separated by coma) whereas Genre is a list (separated by semi-colon) and it will create those folders per the region in the game details.

From my knowledge every game that was in Canada used the United States version. I'm not sure why we need all of "North America", "United States", and "Canada".

https://imgur.com/a/HyzhS

Hmm, I see. I think I had originally intended that to be a multiple selection thing, but somehow I guess that fell through the cracks.

Per "North America" vs. "United States", etc., we distinguish between them simply because the ROMs do. Various No-Intro sets use various region formats, and I have no idea whether there's any proper logic behind the differences or not.

[Jason Carr]

3 hours ago, Lmagnus87 said:

Are hacked/prototype versions considered as other region?

Combined ROMs do not only work with regions; they work with all of the different versions of a ROM for a particular game. The different versions may or may not be for different regions, hacks, prototypes, etc.

[Feez]

One other quick thing i noticed - if i import a directory that has subfolders for regions using the top level directory, eg:

TG16
--------Japan
--------northamerica

and i just point it at "TG16", the title that gets listed as the "main" title is almost always the japanese one - i.e. "taito chase HQ (Japan)" is the one that gets listed in launchbox, regardless of the fact that my region preferences have NA/USA at the top.

My uneducated guess is that the scanner is taking the folders in alphabetical order, seeing the japan folder first, then seeing the rom in the northamerica folder after it's already scanned the japan folder and adding the USA version as a duplicate.

It's a minor quibble, but it ends up with the japanese version with the japanese art as the one getting featured, which isn't my preference.

[Jason Carr]

Just now, Feez said:

One other quick thing i noticed - if i import a directory that has subfolders for regions using the top level directory, eg:

TG16
--------Japan
--------northamerica

and i just point it at "TG16", the title that gets listed as the "main" title is almost always the japanese one - i.e. "taito chase HQ (Japan)" is the one that gets listed in launchbox, regardless of the fact that my region preferences have NA/USA at the top.

My uneducated guess is that the scanner is taking the folders in alphabetical order, seeing the japan folder first, then seeing the rom in the northamerica folder after it's already scanned the japan folder and adding the USA version as a duplicate.

It's a minor quibble, but it ends up with the japanese version with the japanese art as the one getting featured, which isn't my preference.

Thank you @Feez, I remember seeing that now but forgot to do something about it. I'll take a look at that soon.

Beta 7 is out now guys that just fixes a few bugs, including the annoying errors that some people were seeing with the import wizard. I'll be back to work on this stuff tomorrow.

[Pacman56]

@Jason Carr

I just tested the new import feature with 7.7-beta-7 this morning and noticed that ROM names using the following pattern (Disc ? Side ?) are not imported. Please note that the "?" is simply used as a place holder.

In my testing, only the 3rd file (221B Baker Street (USA) (Disk 2) (Case).rar) below was imported and could be found under the "Additional Apps" tab when editing the game. The same was true for every game set using that pattern. Additionally, the "ROM file" textbox under the "Launcher" tab is left blank when this naming conversion is used.

1. 221B Baker Street (USA) (Disk 1 Side A).rar  <-Not Imported
2. 221B Baker Street (USA) (Disk 1 Side B).rar <-Not Imported
3. 221B Baker Street (USA) (Disk 2) (Case).rar <- Imported

 

1. Adventure Construction Set (USA) (Disk 1 Side A).rar <-Not Imported
2. Adventure Construction Set (USA) (Disk 1 Side B).rar <-Not Imported
3. Adventure Construction Set (USA) (Disk 2 Side A) (Data).rar <-Not Imported
4. Adventure Construction Set (USA) (Disk 2 Side B) (Data).rar <-Not Imported
5. Adventure Construction Set (USA) (Disk 3) (Escape From Reality).rar  <- Imported
6. Adventure Construction Set (USA) (Disk 4) (Land Of Adventuria).rar  <- Imported
7. Adventure Construction Set (USA) (Disk 5) (QuickDeath).rar  <- Imported
8. Adventure Construction Set (USA) (Disk 6) (Rivers of Light).rar  <- Imported

File using the following pattern (Side ?) such as (Side A) and (Side B) were both imported as I had hoped but the Side checkbox in the metadata sections were unchecked for both Additional Apps. Not a big deal here but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Please note that the naming conventions of these rom sets were based on HyperSpin's xml.

I'm always using the No-Intro naming convention when the dats are available but as you know, No-Intro does not cover every platforms.

Edited February 6, 2017 by Pacman56

[Pacman56]

@Jason Carr I just noticed that when the same disk pattern is used for all games within a set such as the game below, all disk numbers are imported correctly. The problem only appear to exist when you have a mix of patterns for the same game as in my previous post. With the game "Alter Ego" , all 6 disks/sides were imported successfully. 

1. Alter Ego (USA) (Disk 1 Side A).rar <- Imported
2. Alter Ego (USA) (Disk 1 Side B).rar<- Imported
3. Alter Ego (USA) (Disk 2 Side A).rar<- Imported
4. Alter Ego (USA) (Disk 2 Side B).rar<- Imported
5. Alter Ego (USA) (Disk 3 Side A).rar<- Imported
6. Alter Ego (USA) (Disk 3 Side B).rar<- Imported

[Jason Carr]

Thank you @Pacman56; good to know. I'll take a look at that soon.

Beta 8 is out now guys; here's the thread:

Closing this one out.