Better genres

[SsjCosty]

I have noticed that sometimes, genres are not too well-defined. For example, a game like Final Fight (arcade) has the genres "Action; Fighting; Platform". It's not really a platformer (I'm thinking Super Mario, DuckTales, Mega Man), and the "Fighting" genre is also used by one-on-one fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, or Killer Instinct.

Another example is the "Shooter" genre, as it encompasses wildly different types of games:

• a third person shooter like Serious Sam 3 BFE and Call of Duty: Black Ops III
• a top-down shoot 'em up like "1943: The Battle of Midway", Armed Police Batrider, or Captain Tomaday
• a side-scrolling shoot 'em up like Contra, Gunstar Heroes, or Thunder Zone
• a top-down game like Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Ghoul Patrol, True Lies, Shock Troopers, or The Chaos Engine
• an isometric shoot 'em up such as Viewpoint, Desert Strike, Jungle Strike
• FPS games...

How would I even begin to separate these different types of games?

[Lordmonkus]

9 minutes ago, SsjCosty said:

How would I even begin to separate these different types of games?

Your guess is as good as anyones, this is just how the naming of gaming genres is going to be with so many different genres and cross over of genres.

To go along with this if anyone tried to come up with some sort of "Official Genres" you would have a massive debate over what games fit into what genre.

Fortunately in Launchbox you can edit each game and it's genre tags to suit your opinions and you can even type in your own custom genre if you like.

[SsjCosty]

Thanks, that makes sense.

Quote

Fortunately in Launchbox you can edit each game and it's genre tags to suit your opinions and you can even type in your own custom genre if you like.

Editing genres in Launchbox is not clear cut. Let's say that I want to set my own "Shoot 'em up" genre to multiple games, I can do it using bulk editing, but (as mentioned in another thread) and set that genre, but then all those games will lose all their other genres that were previously set up (e.g. "Action", "Adventure", etc.). There's no way to add or remove a genre to/from multiple games, I can only use the bulk edit feature which overwrites existing values.

[Lordmonkus]

You can select multiple genres in the bulk edit wizard.

[SsjCosty]

Yes, you can select multiple genres. However, these genres will overwrite any existing genres for your selected games.

So for example:

• Game 1 has genres: Action;
• Game 2 has genres: Role-Playing;
• Game 2 has genres: Action; Adventure;

If I bulk edit them to add the "Beat 'em up" genre, they will all lose their individual genres.

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah, how would you propose you bulk edit games and each one have different genres ?

[Agent47]

- Add a set of radio buttons or a drop down list to the form for fields that support delimited values, "Replace" and "Add" (or whatever you want to name them)

- If "Add" is selected the delimiter and the new value is appended to the existing value instead of just setting that field to the new value

[damageinc86]

yeah shoot 'em ups should not be with shooters, or run 'n gun.  That one is pretty obvious.  FPS games should be their own genre "First-person shooters".  I haven't really messed with genre stuff much, but I would have thought that it wouldn't be as general as what is presented in the original post.  Interesting.  Good solution from agent47 as well.

[Lordmonkus]

58 minutes ago, Agent47 said:

- Add a set of radio buttons or a drop down list to the form for fields that support delimited values, "Replace" and "Add" (or whatever you want to name them)

- If "Add" is selected the delimiter and the new value is appended to the existing value instead of just setting that field to the new value

Feel free to submit a feature request.

47 minutes ago, damageinc86 said:

yeah shoot 'em ups should not be with shooters, or run 'n gun.  That one is pretty obvious.  FPS games should be their own genre "First-person shooters".  I haven't really messed with genre stuff much, but I would have thought that it wouldn't be as general as what is presented in the original post.  Interesting.  Good solution from agent47 as well.

Feel free to make your own custom genres in LB and edit your games to suit your needs.

[SsjCosty]

I've decided to make a plugin for adding/removing genres for multiple games. I will post it on the forum in the next few days.

[Agent47]

I don't use LaunchBox, just offering up a solution. If OP or someone else wants to request it they can copy and paste my response or paraphrase it.

[Lordmonkus]

7 hours ago, SsjCosty said:

I've decided to make a plugin for adding/removing genres for multiple games. I will post it on the forum in the next few days.

This is already doable unless either I am completely misunderstanding what you are asking for or you aren't explaining it properly.

I did a test here where selected a bunch of games and started up the bulk edit tool. I then typed in a custom genre simply called "Generic Game" just as an example.

From there I could then select multiple genres from the drop down menu to go along with it, I tagged Action just as an example.I finished out the bulk edit wizard and checked a game and sure enough it had both genres associated to it.

Like I said, maybe i'm misunderstanding what you are asking for or you aren't explaining this correctly but based on what you are saying this is already very much doable.

[SsjCosty]

Yes, you've misunderstood the issue. I will try to explain it:

Let's say I have 3 games: Game 1, Game 2, and Game 3. To start, they have the following genres:

• Game 1 has genres: Action;
• Game 2 has genres: Role-Playing;
• Game 3 has genres: Action; Adventure;

I select all three games, and open the Bulk Edit tool, I select Field: Genre, then Value: Action; Beat 'em up;

After saving, my three games will all have the following genres:

• Game 1 genres: Action; Beat 'em up;
• Game 2  genres: Action; Beat 'em up;
• Game 3  genres: Action; Beat 'em up;

That is not what I want. My desired result is to add the two genre values, like this:

• Game 1  genres: Action; Beat 'em up;
• Game 2 genres: Role-Playing; Action; Beat 'em up;
• Game 3 genres: Action; Adventure; Beat 'em up;

Alternatively, I also want to be able to remove genres in a similar fashion.

Edited March 18, 2019 by SsjCosty

[Lordmonkus]

Ok, that makes more sense and I would suggest submitting a feature request for it here: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/new

[SsjCosty]

Hi again. I have developed a plugin that solves this issue. I have made the source code available on GitHub, and I've added one release so far:

https://github.com/SsjCosty/LaunchboxPlugins

I've also added a forum page for it here.

Edited March 23, 2019 by SsjCosty