Feature Request: Discover Mode

[Coldain]

Hey guys I'm pretty new to the scene moving most of my things over from Hyperspin. I thought I might share some ideas/feature requests i had. This is kind of a group of features that work towards one big feature. What inspired this thought is going through my collection and fondly remembering games and realizing there were other similar great games I had never played or even games in the same series that I hadn't ever realized were there. I wouldn't expect this feature to be implemented all at once but to maybe be an aim as the other features get implemented that eventually they'll converge to create this. Anyway without further ado...

Discover Mode (specifically in Big Box but also in LaunchBox): A intuitive and quick way to both rediscover old favorites and create new ones. Through a combination of player data, community rating/suggestions, and series/genre information.

I'll start with what I think may be the easiest implementations and would also help clean up the look.

1. Sub-genres and Sub-Series (AKA Nested Lists): I really like having the option to sort via genre or series however sometimes that can still leave me with a huge list of games and still not the easiest to discover this way. I'd really like to continue to narrow down the games. Instead of having 50 genres or so it'd be awesome to look at genres and see (we'll use sports as it's a good example) sports and that's it vs inside my genre view Sports - *type of sport* for each sport. The flattened view just makes it kind of messy. I'd rather just click sports and then see a list of all the different sports sub genres which I could then click on one (say basketball) and then see all the different basketball games.  Same thing with series. Take either Ghosts 'n Goblins or Bubble Bobble.

Instead of having a huge list of series that includes (a flat option).

Bubble Bobble, Bubble Bobble etc, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Ghosts 'n Goblins etc, Gargoy's Quest, Maximo, Makaimura etc, Rainbo Islands, Puzzle Bobble(Bust-A-Move),

I'd prefer to have it be just Bubble Bobble and Ghosts 'n Goblins then when you click on each you'd see for Bubble Bobble  (either Main or Bubble Bobble) and Bust-A-Move for Ghosts 'n Goblins see the images (more of a tiered option).

Being able to have a choice between the flat and the tiered views would be nice (some settings toggle).

2. Option to compare Launchbox Metadata vs Wikipedia Metadata: When you have tens or hundreds of thousands of games it can be a bit daunting to go through. Let's say I'm importing a just one game into my collection and it's missing some information like the Series from Launchbox but some of the other information from Wikipedia. Since I'm being platform and name specific It'll usually pull up a small list of matches or even just one match. I'd like the ability to set one as my primary data source and have the other as a secondary data source. This happens with many games typically Wikipedia will pick up on the original Japanese release while Launchbox will use the USA release that's why it'd be nice to set a primary when comparing since that'd change things like dates and publishers. Mostly this is to fill out missing info that one or the other might not have. *Edit: Also there's sometimes when parsing the data from Wikipedia if it's not recognized in Launchbox that it'll put quotes around the series name "Battleship", "Archon". Sometimes it'll be an apostrophe 'Bubble Bobble' and I've also seen it do double appostrophe. If when parsing the series information from wiki could we get it so it scrubs those off?

One last thing a question, if for example the Launchbox database for a game get's updated, let's say Brandish has it's series added, does that update get pushed to me and if so how long / how often do I check for updates?

3. Community Rating: I know this is already planned so there's not much else needed to say. However I'd recommend both a simple and a in-depth aspect to it. What I mean is an overall rating and a area specific (game-play, sound, graphics, story, difficulty, voice acting, etc). We'll talk more about this in a bit.

4. Users: Think Netflix / PSN / Xbox Live / etc. This has many different advantages/reasons to do so.

        4a. Multiple Users: Pretend I have a group of friends or family that I like to play games with and of course they like to play games on their own as well. Each user can log in while playing so if it's just me I'd log in as just me. If there's 8 of us all 8 could be able to log in and it'd track that information for each of us (we'll come back to this).

        4b. Connected Data (aka It Follows, yeah kinda like the movie but as a good thing): I imagine in the future when Launchbox has grown, become more ubiquitous, and spread to other platforms. Let's continue with this little scenario and say I have Launchbox on my main PC, and Arcade cabinet, my cell phone, and on some hacked consoles/ handhelds/tvs/tvbox etc. As I play on one area it'd be nice to carry that information over to my other setups, say I complete a game or add it to my favorites I'd want that to carry over to all my systems. How about I go to a friends house who also has many different launch box configurations, same story.  In regards to #3 the community rating this could be tied into that to provide a recommendations. I mean gathering player data to help recommend (again will come back to this... starting to get old I know). 

5/4c Saves Manager: This is sort of a continuation of the users but it's big enough that it really does warrant it's own section. I mean being a save manager for save states, emulated saves (memory cards, etc), and computer game saves. This'd probably be a paid service, part of Big Box subscription, an add on to it, or etc. So imagining parts 4a and 4b with this in mind. My saves follow me to any device, my buddies house, and even on the road. We can be playing that 8 player game (just for the sake of being over the top) and we can continue it at any location using any of their profiles to load from. Backups if you lose any data and I'm sure there's even more scenarios.

6. Discover Mode (yay the end! and also the beginning): Having all of these things working together. Play data gathered from time spent playing games on my User profile combined with community ratings to produce recommendations. Also taking into consideration how many players I play with typically. Being able to weight different areas of the rating systems in-depth portions. Say I don't care as much about graphics as I do about story and maybe I have a difficulty preference (piece of cake, insane, etc since difficulty either way could be what I'm looking for). There's a recommendations area that suggests games for me. It can be based upon my playing habits and the games I've rated myself. A section added in the screen that you launch games from that says related games (which could come from the community / wiki / etc). Area for Top Game of the week, month, year etc for many different categories (platforms, genres etc).

7/6b On the Fly Filtering (I lied before but this really is the end): As a part of Discover mode I'd like on the fly filtering akin to playlist creation inside of Big Box (with an option to save as a Playlist for Discover Mode). An example Filtering by Board games and then Series or Sub Series and then by how many players. Essentially I want a hotkey that filters my current selection down further by whatever choice. And this can be applied over and over. Could be something like f or alt + f or ctrl + f etc to bring up a filter menu, which could also be mapped to a key combination or have a button up at top or to the side to do so.

 

P.S. I love LaunchBox , but really I'd also like to have access to the max player information I know it's on the websites information but I don't see it anywhere inside of LaunchBox or Big Box, just the type Single Player, Multiplayer, and Cooperative unless it's a Arcade game. I'd like both sets of information to be applied to both groups of games. I really like knowing if ti's N player alternating or simulatenous as well as if the style is cooperative or mulitplayer (competitive?). Cleaning this section up and organizing might help. Maybe had Multiplayer Style:  Which could include things like, cooperative, single player, competative, mmo, etc. Multiplayer Mode: Which could be 1 Player, 2 Player Alternating, 2 Player Simulations... n Player Alternating, n Player Simulations. Multiplayer Connection(??): These things could be Split-screen, Single-screen, server, multiple machines, lan, etc.  (this aside probably should've been in a seperate post but eh...)

Edited March 15, 2017 by Coldain
Added piece to metadata section in regards to how it's retrieved from wikipedia " ", ' ', '' ''. and top/hot community suggestions.

[Coldain]

@Jason Carr I love what you do, you're really awesome and I hope you'll take a look at my post!  Also let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

@SentaiBrad as I look through the forums you always seem to be the one helping out. Many thanks! Take a look at my post and let me know what you think.  

@SIMPLY AUSTIN many thanks for leading so many to discover these wonderful communities and platforms! Keep up the great and entertaining work my friend!  

Edited March 15, 2017 by Coldain