Is Launchbox updating my game info in the background?

[ReaperZer0]

I swear this has been going on for a while. I'll randomly be looking through a collection and something will be ... off. There will be duplicate boxarts where there weren't before. Things will be renamed, boxart will be missing. I KNOW it's wrong because I have meticulously gone through all of these. Such as this, in my collection of SNES fan translations, my FF4 and 6 boxes have changed into the US box fronts and the names to FF2 and FF3. I know for a fact I would have put the Japanese box-art and that those would have been named IV and VI respectively. But did Launchbox do this without me asking it to? There are other instances where it does similar things, but I won't get into the details. I just want to know is this a thing it's actually doing? Is there a way to stop it? Am I just imagining all of this?

[reon]

This has been happening to me constantly and it's super annoying... For example, right this second I'm editing "Teitoku no Ketsudan"(Japan) for Sega Genesis which is "P.T.O.: Pacific Theater of Operations"(USA). Both names are completely different but the Japanese version keeps having its Japanese box art overwritten and changed to the USA box art. No matter how many times I delete/replace it , as soon as I click "OK", it gets overwritten by the USA boxart. I can sometimes workaround the issue by messing with the name a bit, for example, if I name it "Teitoku no Ketsudan " (with an extra space at the end), the box art sometimes works just as expected at least until I refresh that games meta data. This happens to me constantly, I even tried removing all the images for all languages of one game and they kept coming back! Ended up deleting them from the images folder manually and then everything appeared to work as expected for a previous game but I'm tired of doing that because it happens so often and even my workaround doesn't always work... And I've tried refreshing meta data which was suggested before but that seemed to exacerbate the problem.

I'll try to share some screenshots when I run into this again.

tl;dr: launchbox should NOT override images set manually by the user period. At most, it can add secondary images which it sometimes does correctly.

Edited July 11, 2018 by reon

[neil9000]

2 hours ago, reon said:

This has been happening to me constantly and it's super annoying... For example, right this second I'm editing "Teitoku no Ketsudan"(Japan) for Sega Genesis which is "P.T.O.: Pacific Theater of Operations"(USA). Both names are completely different but the Japanese version keeps having its Japanese box art overwritten and changed to the USA box art. No matter how many times I delete/replace it , as soon as I click "OK", it gets overwritten by the USA boxart. I can sometimes workaround the issue by messing with the name a bit, for example, if I name it "Teitoku no Ketsudan " (with an extra space at the end), the box art sometimes works just as expected at least until I refresh that games meta data. This happens to me constantly, I even tried removing all the images for all languages of one game and they kept coming back! Ended up deleting them from the images folder manually and then everything appeared to work as expected for a previous game but I'm tired of doing that because it happens so often and even my workaround doesn't always work... And I've tried refreshing meta data which was suggested before but that seemed to exacerbate the problem.

I'll try to share some screenshots when I run into this again.

tl;dr: launchbox should NOT override images set manually by the user period. At most, it can add secondary images which it sometimes does correctly.

Well to start Launchbox NEVER downloads any images or metadata without you knowing about it, it only does so when you initiate a metadata update or when you import new games it will also grab the latest metadata pack. Have you checked your region priorities in the options? Also if a game has been released in different regions with the same name the front facing name will be the USA one, so will attach the USA box art also. 

[Jason Carr]

The only thing that could be happening here is if both USA and Japanese artwork is downloaded and available, LaunchBox may be switching between them if the region on the artwork isn't set properly, etc. LaunchBox does not ever download any new metadata or images without the user knowing about it. That's an impossible situation.

[reon]

Yeah at least for me, all the art work is already downloaded (which is why to fix it, I have to manually go into launchboxes images folders and delete them) but here's an example I found after getting back from work. It's hard to explain in writing but here's a minor example... While it's not the worst case I've run into since I can still add the Japanese box art myself and it will "stick" in this instance.

Maybe there should be some sort of checkbox to "disable media auto management" per game and maybe even a global setting?

edit: Just ran into this again and this video shows how frustrating it can be as it continues to override my images.

 

Edited July 12, 2018 by reon

[neil9000]

8 hours ago, reon said:

Yeah at least for me, all the art work is already downloaded (which is why to fix it, I have to manually go into launchboxes images folders and delete them) but here's an example I found after getting back from work. It's hard to explain in writing but here's a minor example... While it's not the worst case I've run into since I can still add the Japanese box art myself and it will "stick" in this instance.

Maybe there should be some sort of checkbox to "disable media auto management" per game and maybe even a global setting?

edit: Just ran into this again and this video shows how frustrating it can be as it continues to override my images.

 

Looking at the second video there it looks like it could be a cache issue. During the whole video when you deleted and when you added the correct images you didn't once refresh the cache for that game, so its likely you simply have the older images you want to remove cached in the Launchbox/Images/Cache folder. What i would do is edit that game again and remove the images, then exit out of the edit screen and with the game still highlighted hit F5 on your keyboard to refresh the images for that game, it should now show you dont have any images at all. Add the ones you want and exit and refresh again and see if that fixes it for you. I believe that is what is happening that game has been previously cached with the images you do not want so they need to be removed/refreshed in the cache.

[Jason Carr]

Yes, most likely the confusion is just coming from the image cache. Keep in mind that if you manually add or remove images, you have to refresh the cache for that game before the changes are necessarily reflected.

[reon]

18 hours ago, neil9000 said:

Looking at the second video there it looks like it could be a cache issue. During the whole video when you deleted and when you added the correct images you didn't once refresh the cache for that game, so its likely you simply have the older images you want to remove cached in the Launchbox/Images/Cache folder. What i would do is edit that game again and remove the images, then exit out of the edit screen and with the game still highlighted hit F5 on your keyboard to refresh the images for that game, it should now show you dont have any images at all. Add the ones you want and exit and refresh again and see if that fixes it for you. I believe that is what is happening that game has been previously cached with the images you do not want so they need to be removed/refreshed in the cache.

I'll try that next time it happens, but I do want to point out that the game does "blink" (around 1:17) as if the cache was cleared (hitting F5 with a game selected appears to do the same thing).

Question, does restarting lunchbox clear cache?

Edited July 13, 2018 by reon

[neil9000]

5 hours ago, reon said:

I'll try that next time it happens, but I do want to point out that the game does "blink" (around 1:17) as if the cache was cleared (hitting F5 with a game selected appears to do the same thing).

Question, does restarting lunchbox clear cache?

No the cache is permanent unless deleted or refreshed, or altered in some other way like changing what images you display in Launchbox from say boxes to clear logos will repopulate the cache with the clear logos.

[reon]

Tried the refresh images thing but no dice. I also tried running LB in admin mode just in case it was some file permissions thing but the problem persisted. Is there a way to enable debug logs? I see the logs folder but it's always empty.

 

[Retro808]

3 hours ago, reon said:

Tried the refresh images thing but no dice. I also tried running LB in admin mode just in case it was some file permissions thing but the problem persisted. Is there a way to enable debug logs? I see the logs folder but it's always empty.

 

I tried to replicate your issue on my test pc and main cabinet. I did not get the issue you showed. I tried on different region games and different platform. Even replicating your video step by step the issue was not present. The only test I did not do is a game on a platform that I had imported two regions on. I only import one version of a game so did not have that to test. Posting a clip to give Jason some more insight.

 

[neil9000]

Im at a bit of a loss on this one. The only thing i can think of is Launchbox doesnt like having the same game from different regions with different names imported separately rather than combined into one entry, but i honestly dont know.

[Retro808]

I think I may have to do with importing two games of the same name for two regions. Well, at least that was the only instances I could get this to occur. 

I imported Die Hard for NES for JP and US regions (also did the game Reon showed in his video). I then deleted the images from the JP version and the issue showed up. Doing it for any single import game or for any game that I imported versions for two regions, but each game had a slightly different name it did not occur. 

[reon]

On 7/14/2018 at 4:17 PM, Retro808 said:

I think I may have to do with importing two games of the same name for two regions. Well, at least that was the only instances I could get this to occur.  

I imported Die Hard for NES for JP and US regions (also did the game Reon showed in his video). I then deleted the images from the JP version and the issue showed up. Doing it for any single import game or for any game that I imported versions for two regions, but each game had a slightly different name it did not occur. 

I see, I'll be doing that moving forward and I'll separate the existing platforms first. I had planned on separating them after gathering images but it's been driving me nuts so I'll gladly separate the regions first