Region Priorities Seems To Have No Effect

[locvez]

On a brand new installation of 9.9 I imported my mixed region batch of Atari 7800 games.

I'm using retroarch to launch the games which requires a region specific BIOS for USA / Europe

Region priorities were preset (before import) to North America and United States. Europe was not ticked.

After importing the games and trying to launch them, they are picking up the European rom file and the game doesn't work because I have the USA bios.

I can right click the rom and choose Play (USA) Version and the game works.

 

Is anyone else experiencing the same issues? I haven't messed with regional settings since 8.something and I think it worked okay back then.

[neil9000]

4 minutes ago, locvez said:

On a brand new installation of 9.9 I imported my mixed region batch of Atari 7800 games.

I'm using retroarch to launch the games which requires a region specific BIOS for USA / Europe

Region priorities were preset (before import) to North America and United States. Europe was not ticked.

After importing the games and trying to launch them, they are picking up the European rom file and the game doesn't work because I have the USA bios.

I can right click the rom and choose Play (USA) Version and the game works.

 

Is anyone else experiencing the same issues? I haven't messed with regional settings since 8.something and I think it worked okay back then.

How are the roms named, are they "Game name (europe)"?

[locvez]

Thanks @neil9000  it seems that the issue is how I have the files setup.

I have written batch files that download the rom from my google drive and then run the emulator. Launchbox acting are purely the frontend for everything. It seems that even using "Use folder names as game name" doesn't allow LB to use Regional Priorities if the file name of the file that is imported into LB doesn't have (Europe) or (USA) in the title. (my files are named script.bat)

I'll probably have to just delete all the european folders.

[locvez]

@Jason Carr - Do you think that the function that checks if the rom file has the (Europe) / (USA) details in the filename can be modified to include folder names if LB is pulling the game name from folder name instead of the (imported) file name ?

 

edit - Or changed to check the game name, no matter its source?

Edited June 19, 2019 by locvez
updated info

[Jason Carr]

A couple things...

• Region priorities only affect media. If you import games from other regions, LaunchBox won't skip them if those regions aren't checked in region priorities. It's assumed that you want to import them anyways if you import the files.
• Yes, the region is required to be in the file name. It probably should use the folder name if you check that box, but even still, it's not going to skip importing games that you've told it to import.

[locvez]

Thanks for the quick reply Jason, much appreciated.

I can only assume that LB is defaulting to launch the (Europe) folder for each rom as it is alphabetically first in the list (over USA) I guess this is the price for doing things weirdly within LB.

I totally understand that LB _should_ import the games from all regions if you drop the files in, or have them in the folder to be scraped, I just think it would be a good idea and help to maintain consistency if (when selecting user folder names) the same logic was applied to the prioritise region option as though it were an actual rom and launch the rom for the region selected (I hope this makes sense) - I stress that this is obviously not an important fix, nor am I expecting you to drop everything to address this, I just wanted to point this out and make this suggestion.

 

Thank you for all your hard work!

Kind regards, much love ❤️ 

[Jason Carr]

I thought LaunchBox *was* prioritizing ROMs with matching regions to the region priority settings as the main ROM for the game, when combining ROMs. I haven't tested it recently, but my most recent import looks like it did this successfully for Game Boy. The additional apps/versions are sorted alphabetically, but if you edit the game and take a look at the default ROM file, it should be the correct region (if it exists).

[locvez]

Yes, usually it works exactly like that, but I'm ot passing the rom file to launchbox and letting launchbox control the emulator launching, I'm passing it a 'none of the above' batch file that executes a download of the rom file from Google drive then launches the emulator for the correct system.

 

So all my files are named something like 'game.bat'

Because this file doesn't have (Europe) or (USA) in the name, prioritisation doesn't (appear) work.

It seems that prioritisation only works based on the name of the file being imported, where it should perhaps check the name of the game. I know I probably sound confusing but I think prioritisation should be checking the name of the game, no matter where that name comes from, is it the rom file or the folder? (because launchbox allows you to use folder names to determine the name of the game instead of the rom file)

 

I know this is a fringe case, I understand if it doesn't get fixed,  I just feel that this little weird way that I do this has highlighted perhaps a little piece of code that works slightly differently than intended or could be tweaked at some point to make launchbox more consistent in operation (just on the odd chance that someone else uses folder names instead of rom names for their files?) an example to that may be, folder name = centipede (USA) -> file name = centipede.a78. Second folder = centipede (Europe), filename = centipede.a78. In this example, from how I understand it, LaunchBox would choose the Europe folder over the USA folder even with USA as priority because the rom file doesn't contain a region. Of course I might be wrong and its only broken when you pick 'none of the above' option when importing

 

[Jason Carr]

Oic. So we just need to fix it so that regions are pulled from folder names in that scenario. That's right, makes sense. I'll put that on the list at least.

[locvez]

Thanks Jason!

[kal9000]

I'm also struggling with the region priorities; opened a thread here 

, 

 

My understanding is that at present region priorities are only for media, not versions of games, but even then I'm not seeing correct behavior. As an example, G-Loc: Air Battle for Sega Game Gear is using the 'G-LOC_ Air Battle-01' box front image from the Japan folder, even though there is a North American version, and I do have NA listed above japan in my region priorities config.

[Jason Carr]

On 7/12/2019 at 7:06 AM, kal9000 said:

I'm also struggling with the region priorities; opened a thread here 

, 

 

My understanding is that at present region priorities are only for media, not versions of games, but even then I'm not seeing correct behavior. As an example, G-Loc: Air Battle for Sega Game Gear is using the 'G-LOC_ Air Battle-01' box front image from the Japan folder, even though there is a North American version, and I do have NA listed above japan in my region priorities config.

Check the Region field on the games, as I believe that defines what region should be used for images. If a game has a specific region specified, it should be using images from that region if available. If no region is specified, it should be using the region priorities list and taking the first available image, in the order of those priorities.

Also, make sure you refresh your images (right click, Refresh Selected Images) in case it's a relic from previous data. If you're still seeing things that are incorrect after all of that, let me know, and I'll do some further testing.

[kal9000]

Ok thx, I think there may be a couple issues here as I dig in.

 

1. Maybe some bad image data in emumovies; I noticed the clear logo for Contra is showing 'probotector', but maybe that is just what's on emumovies.

2. It's unclear how launchbox is prioritizing games when imported. Sometimes (most of the time?) it seems to be what I want, prioritizing US/NorthAmerican regions as I specified in region priorities, but then there are others where it makes strange selections. For instance, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo has the 'Hispanic' version set as the default, even though there is a USA version available. Also, I'm not sure how to even switch it to make the USA version the main one and have the hispanic version move to 'additional apps'.

 

Thanks!

[neil9000]

4 minutes ago, kal9000 said:

1. Maybe some bad image data in emumovies; I noticed the clear logo for Contra is showing 'probotector', but maybe that is just what's on emumovies.

Probotector is the European name for Contra.

5 minutes ago, kal9000 said:

Also, I'm not sure how to even switch it to make the USA version the main one and have the hispanic version move to 'additional apps'.

Right click the game and edit, click the additional apps tab, click the version you want then click the "Make Default" button, to make that the front facing version.

[kal9000]

Re Euro-Contra; yeah I get that, I was just surprised that there was no Contra Clear Logo and it used that instead.

 

And thx, the edit 'make default' options works. I saw that but didn't use it because when I hit it, it doesn't change the values in the current dialog, so still looked like it was using hispanic version. Only once you hit OK and close the dialog does it seem to be reflected.

[Freestate]

On 6/19/2019 at 6:05 PM, Jason Carr said:

A couple things...

• Region priorities only affect media. If you import games from other regions, LaunchBox won't skip them if those regions aren't checked in region priorities. It's assumed that you want to import them anyways if you import the files.
• Yes, the region is required to be in the file name. It probably should use the folder name if you check that box, but even still, it's not going to skip importing games that you've told it to import.

@Jason Carr region priority is a mess, and take regionalized alternate names as priority the same, many people are adding regional tags to secondary or optional names, some of them kanji. It is even worse than before. There are people who choose, for example, American roms just because they play them at 60fps without problems and because they have retroachievements, but they want to see European art downloaded and viewed in the display of their collection. Right now I am importing roms from super nintendo USA that easily with the old functioning of the priorities imported without problems with the art of all the regions or only the European one if I put it on the priority list. Now it is impossible, it is updated if or if the identification of the rom as USA, and it does not matter that you only select Europe in the art priority or that you change the region or the version of the roms, it continues to download only the art that corresponds to it to the region that they have assigned.
Please fix it by adding a simple option that allows download art according to rom region or according to region preferences in order.