JaysArcade Posted June 2, 2017 Share Posted June 2, 2017 This is a question for @Vlansix or @Jason Carr. I see what use to be Visual Pinball in the database is now just called Pinball. Shouldn't the various Pinball Platforms be separate? For example, Funhouse exists in both Visual Pinball and Future Pinball and I know that while they are similar, screenshots and stuff will be different. There are many, many tables that are in both platforms that share the same names but I think the art would differ. At the most I figure there would only need to be 3 or 4 different platforms but at the very least I think the two main platforms should be separate. If the answer is that you want recreations of original tables only, what happens when someone loads original tables that never had a company behind it such as Williams, Midway, Data East, etc? In my opinion, these tables should probably at least have a way of notating who the table author is. I know everyone is busy with other stuff but I hope that the various Pinball platforms get some attention before people start mass importing tables and filling the database with useless entries. Thanks for your consideration. I did open a ticket a while back for more table specific entries to be included if anyone is interested. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/2287/request-for-additional-fields-for-pinball Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 3, 2017 Share Posted June 3, 2017 We need to come up with a solution that separates games in a platform that have the same name anyways, as this is already an issue. However, merging platforms is something that has been talked about for almost a year now on the forums. So I think we need to have that solution in first, besides overhauling how Pinball works in LaunchBox. Currently not many people even utilize LB and Pinball, as it's one of the more difficult platforms to get working. While we're also not against adding platforms, we split "PC" in to a few for example, there needs to be a good reason why we would want to. An example of platforms we merged was Famicom and NES; there doesn't really need to be two platforms of the same thing. If it hasn't already happened (we're in the process of changing everything up), then the small Arcade platforms aren't going to be there either, it'll just be Arcade (except for a few exceptions). It's hard to explain, but I hope that gets across part of the methodology. We don't want platforms split just because someone else in another community at one point said they should be. Custom Platforms and Playlists are extremely easy to make and manage. Granted, I still agree that doesn't solve the problem you've outlined, however we still have that problem elsewhere and it's something we need to fix. I think a combination of Game Name first, then if that's duplicated then use the year, and then if that's duplicated use the developer / publisher. I think that might be one of the only ways to effectively sort out that issue. At which point, this doesn't need multiple platforms, but anyone is still more than welcome to create a custom platform then scrape it as Pinball. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaysArcade Posted June 3, 2017 Author Share Posted June 3, 2017 Well I did say it was a question for @Vlansix or @Jason Carr but since youy responded.... No offense Brad, but the focus should be on getting an accurate scrape, not some "not many people even utilize LB and Pinball" excuse. I hear tones of you aggreeing with me in your statement above but in the end you basically are just saying !#@ it, just scrape it as pinball. It really rubs me the wrong way when I hear stuff like this. The systems are different and important to those of us that do use them. I do have my pinball platforms separated because I want them that way and media added to them manually out of necessity. I think I know what I'm talking about when I say the systems should be seperate, at least when being scraped. After they are scraped I don't care how they are separated (or not) in Launchbox. You guys that don't play pinball just see this as a bunch of pinball tables, just lump them all together. That's fine, but the systems are different and should be scraped as such. I liken it to scraping for a Sonic the Hedgehog game in Game Gear and getting the Genesis version images. They are different! I think saying !@$# it, just lump everything together is pretty narrow minded in the grand scheme of things. Customers want choices, not to be boxed in to a single way to do things because anything else is hard to implement or not enough people use it. Lame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 5, 2017 Share Posted June 5, 2017 For the record, I am perfectly qualified to answer these questions. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlansix Posted September 17, 2017 Share Posted September 17, 2017 I'll be looking into this eventually. See related issue! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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