7.7-beta-8 Released

[Jason Carr]

Hey guys, beta 8 is available now with a new "Consolidate ROMs" option under the Tools menu. This will allow you to consolidate existing collections just like the imports. Also:

- Improvement: When importing individual ROMs (and choose not to combine them), the Version field will now be populated properly based on the ROM file name

And in the live stream this morning we fixed a number of issues with MAME imports combining (prioritization and names and such). We're getting close to having this ready for an official release, but I'm going to focus the rest of this week on making it bulletproof and fixing any other bugs that come up. I'm also hoping to add a feature to manually combine/expand a particular set of games, and I need to adapt audits, deleting ROMs, etc. to work properly with the changes. Thanks all.

[ALIE]

Cool   just one question what does Consolidate mean?.  I Google translated and the Danish word makes no sense to me 

[Kevin_Flynn]

Join together, merge.

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, ALIE said:

Cool   just one question what does Consolidate mean?.  I Google translated and the Danish word makes no sense to me 

It's the same as "combine".

[ALIE]

2 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

It's the same as "combine".

Oh yes!  I had the the stream running in the background today and I thought I heard something about it.   but never got around to asking if that was being done.  Very Nice ?

Edited February 7, 2017 by ALIE

[Kevin_Flynn]

Any chance to make Region a multi-value list?

[Jason Carr]

10 minutes ago, Kevin_Flynn said:

Any chance to make Region a multi-value list?

Probably not likely for 7.7, @Kevin_Flynn.

[DR9]

Can you add a pop text window show what games were consolidated? is there a special marking on game in LB?

[Dazz]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Hey guys, beta 8 is available now with a new "Consolidate ROMs" option under the Tools menu. This will allow you to consolidate existing collections just like the imports. Also:

- Improvement: When importing individual ROMs (and choose not to combine them), the Version field will now be populated properly based on the ROM file name

And in the live stream this morning we fixed a number of issues with MAME imports combining (prioritization and names and such). We're getting close to having this ready for an official release, but I'm going to focus the rest of this week on making it bulletproof and fixing any other bugs that come up. I'm also hoping to add a feature to manually combine/expand a particular set of games, and I need to adapt audits, deleting ROMs, etc. to work properly with the changes. Thanks all.

I'm just starting to look at Launchbox/BigBox....  Does this feature allow for a single game wheel image to appear on the wheel/list, then user can select which version to play?  Right now I'm just looking into setting up MAME to see how LaunchBox/BigBox performs.  I'd love to see a front end show a single game image on the wheel, but then allow the user to select what rom version to run.  For example, Galaga has multiple images on the wheel.  I don't see anything that differentiates what version of the rom that wheel is selecting.  I'd love to be able to select the primary game and then select the version of the rom to play, IE: fastshoot, speedhack, etc.  

Is that what this feature allows?

[Jason Carr]

2 hours ago, DR9 said:

Can you add a pop text window show what games were consolidated? is there a special marking on game in LB?

We can do something like that if enough users are interested in it, but the feature is mainly just meant as a transition to the new format. You can just right-click on a game to see the different versions associated with that game.

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, Dazz said:

I'm just starting to look at Launchbox/BigBox....  Does this feature allow for a single game wheel image to appear on the wheel/list, then user can select which version to play?  Right now I'm just looking into setting up MAME to see how LaunchBox/BigBox performs.  I'd love to see a front end show a single game image on the wheel, but then allow the user to select what rom version to run.  For example, Galaga has multiple images on the wheel.  I don't see anything that differentiates what version of the rom that wheel is selecting.  I'd love to be able to select the primary game and then select the version of the rom to play, IE: fastshoot, speedhack, etc.  

Is that what this feature allows?

Hi @Dazz, welcome. Yes, the feature does indeed allow you to view the game as a single entry on the wheel, and then choose which version you'd like to play from the list. That's exactly why we implemented it. This is of course only available in the latest beta though currently (though the official version is likely to be out in less than a week).

[DOS76]

Just tested consolidate ROMs and it didn't work quiet like I thought it would I used it on my arcade collection and it consolidated what I had already there but if you already imported MAME and used the checkbox to not get clones than the consolidation doesn't do anything for your you still will need to delete your Arcade platform and reimport to get it to function properly.

[Gowayn]

At this point I am adding some alternative names in Japanese in the database to help with that and I have seen that there is only one space for alternative names.
So what happens when there is more than one alternate name?

[DOS76]

Okay I tried to import all my MAME games and without removing them and just let it import all clones the results weren't what I was hoping so I'm now importing all my MAME games again if that doesn't go how I want I'll just put my original Arcade.xml back into the folder

[Dazz]

8 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Hi @Dazz, welcome. Yes, the feature does indeed allow you to view the game as a single entry on the wheel, and then choose which version you'd like to play from the list. That's exactly why we implemented it. This is of course only available in the latest beta though currently (though the official version is likely to be out in less than a week).

Most Excellent. I installed the beta last night and was about to try it this morning.  Let my ROM's backup to another drive last night and going to do a new import today.

[Feez]

10 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

We can do something like that if enough users are interested in it, but the feature is mainly just meant as a transition to the new format. You can just right-click on a game to see the different versions associated with that game.

An easy workaround for this potentially could be to be able to optionally show the "additional apps" fields as a column in the games list view.  Just a thought!

[ALIE]

@Jason Carr could more alternative names be added to the database and maybe with the ability to tag where the name is from? 

So a game could have a No Intro name and other sets in the database. 

Then when a games Metadata isn't found we wouldn't have to put "The"  in front when it's usually in the back. 

[Dazz]

11 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Hi @Dazz, welcome. Yes, the feature does indeed allow you to view the game as a single entry on the wheel, and then choose which version you'd like to play from the list. That's exactly why we implemented it. This is of course only available in the latest beta though currently (though the official version is likely to be out in less than a week).

Another question... Does this combine Clones with their parent or can clones still be listed on the menu separately?  Personally, I want to see clones, but just don't want to see different ROM versions on the main menu.

[Jason Carr]

9 hours ago, DOS76 said:

Just tested consolidate ROMs and it didn't work quiet like I thought it would I used it on my arcade collection and it consolidated what I had already there but if you already imported MAME and used the checkbox to not get clones than the consolidation doesn't do anything for your you still will need to delete your Arcade platform and reimport to get it to function properly.

Yes, consolidate ROMs certainly won't import any new ROMs; it will only combine together what you already have. If you don't currently have any duplicate titles, then it's not going to end up doing anything.

8 hours ago, Sir BLaDE said:

At this point I am adding some alternative names in Japanese in the database to help with that and I have seen that there is only one space for alternative names.
So what happens when there is more than one alternate name?

There is space for more alternate names. You just have to click the link to add another one.

[Jason Carr]

2 hours ago, ALIE said:

@Jason Carr could more alternative names be added to the database and maybe with the ability to tag where the name is from? 

So a game could have a No Intro name and other sets in the database. 

Then when a games Metadata isn't found we wouldn't have to put "The"  in front when it's usually in the back. 

Stuff like the misplaced "The" words should automatically be handled by LaunchBox as-is, so that should be unnecessary. The only time when this is sometimes a problem is when searching EmuMovies, and unfortunately that's out of our control for the most part.