Adding image doesn't always go to correct folder.

[Nikorasu081]

Hello Launchbox community, I'm new here as you can see. Yes, my first thread is reporting an issue I'm having, so let's get right too it.

So, whenever I right-click a game, click edit, and then right-click where the downloaded pictures appear in "Edit Game" and manually add images, the images don't always appear in the correct folder, this is different depending on the game. This crap gets annoying because I have to manually find the image in Windows File Explorer and add it to the correct region folder. For example, If Launchbox stores the images of a game in the "United States" folder and I add a "Screenshot - Gameplay" image manually, Launchbox doesn't put that image in that folder, it will place the image outside of its region folder. The bad inconvenient thing is there are multiple region folders, North America, United States, World, Japan, Europe, Canada, etc. Isn't the USA and Canada unnecessary if North America represents both countries? Heck, they both use the same ESRB rating system. Also, there is another instance on a game where adding a "Fanart - Background" works fine and the images show up in the interface, but when I go to add a "Screenshot - Gameplay" image it doesn't appear in the interface, instead I have to find that image by right-clicking the game and clicking "Open Images Folder" I then have to navigate to the "Screenshot - Gameplay" folder and search for the image and put it in the correct region folder. Again, this whole process is annoying and Launchbox should just put the image in the correct location in the first place.

So my big question is this, if this is a bug when will it get fixed? I'm on the latest LaunchBox version. I'm no premium member right now, however, having this issue is definitely making me feel skeptical about spending $50 for BigBox if I'm having problems with the free version, and I really do like the look of BigBox

 

Edited October 19, 2019 by Nikorasu081

[DOS76]

when you manually add the image from inside the edit window you can then right click on the image and select what image type it is if you don't do that I think it just adds them as box-fronts by default. As to the region stuff if the game has no region tag it won't know where to put it and will place it in the main folder so some of that could come down to your games naming conventions. Most NA games are released for both the US and Canada but occasionally there is a specific release for Canada and when that is the case people will add the art for it.

[Nikorasu081]

4 hours ago, DOS76 said:

when you manually add the image from inside the edit window you can then right click on the image and select what image type it is if you don't do that I think it just adds them as box-fronts by default. As to the region stuff if the game has no region tag it won't know where to put it and will place it in the main folder so some of that could come down to your games naming conventions. Most NA games are released for both the US and Canada but occasionally there is a specific release for Canada and when that is the case people will add the art for it.

You misunderstand me. I don't just go randomly adding images without specifying the type of image. I know how Launchbox works, someone creates a game listing in the "LaunchBox Games Database" and than someone adds an image, specify its type and region, and than it gets approved or rejected by a moderator. The problem is when adding an image manually, Launchbox chokes and sometimes "depending on the game" puts the image outside its region folder. For the image to show up in the "Launchbox user interface" I have to navigate to the images folder and put it in the correct region folder. This whole process is annoying and Launchbox should be smart enough to put the image in the correct folder when manually adding an image via "Edit Game".

Edited October 19, 2019 by Nikorasu081

[neil9000]

6 minutes ago, Nikorasu081 said:

This whole process is annoying and Launchbox should be smart enough to put the image in the correct folder when manually adding an image via "Edit Game".

Do the images you are adding have any text in them specifying the region like (USA)? Because if not how is Launchbox supposed to know the region? Also if you are manually adding images why not just add the directly to the folder you want them in instead of going through the UI?

[Nikorasu081]

1 hour ago, neil9000 said:

Do the images you are adding have any text in them specifying the region like (USA)? Because if not how is Launchbox supposed to know the region? Also if you are manually adding images why not just add the directly to the folder you want them in instead of going through the UI?

When downloading the images from the "LaunchBox Games Database" the images don't have the region in their file name anyways. The images are named after the game with each new instance of the image having a number, for example, Secret of Mana-01.jpg, Secret of Mana-02.jpg, Secret of Mana-03.jpg. So to answer your question "Do the images you are adding have any text in them specifying the region like (USA)? Because if not how is Launchbox supposed to know the region?" adding the region to the file name does nothing. Launchbox will still put the image outside its correct folder. Launchbox assigns a region based on the metadata on the "LaunchBox Games Database". If someone creates a page for a game and specifies it as not having a region and then someone goes around and adding images with the regions specified as USA, Canada, etc, Launchbox will download those images and put them in a USA, Canada folder. However, when someone goes to add an image manually via "Edit Game" that image will be placed outside of a region folder because the "game itself" was not assigned a region on "LaunchBox Games Database".

Here I give you another example, for the game Atelier Lulua, launchbox is pulling the Fanart images from \Windows\Fanart - Background. I added these images manually and LaunchBox did not put them in a region folder, yet the images still show up in the Launchbox User Interface. However, when I add a gameplay screenshot, Launchbox still puts the game outside of a region folder but this time the images do not show up in the Launchbox User Interface, instead it turns out the correct folder is \Windows\Screenshot - Gameplay\United States. Why is Launchbox pulling it from the \United States folder?  I don't know. The game doesn't even have a region assigned to it on the "LaunchBox Games Database" anyways https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/115736.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Nikorasu081

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, Nikorasu081 said:

Why is Launchbox pulling it from the \United States folder?  I don't know. The game doesn't even have a region assigned to it on the "LaunchBox Games Database" anyways https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/115736.

The database is based on the American naming unless a game was released in another region and not in the US, so unless explicitly specified on the database all regions are American.

[Nikorasu081]

5 hours ago, neil9000 said:

The database is based on the American naming unless a game was released in another region and not in the US, so unless explicitly specified on the database all regions are American.

Okay I understand now "Launchbox assumes all games are USA or North America if a specified region wasn't assigned in the database". So my big question is this, will anything be changed in the code so that LaunchBox will now place all images added via "edit game" to the correct folder? Or will users have to continue to navigate using Windows File Explorer and put the images in the correct corresponding folder. All though the best solution would be to just change the game's region to the appropriate region after searching for and retrieving the game's LaunchBox DB ID, if I do this, every image I add via "edit game" will go into the correct folder and will finally appear in the Launchbox User Interface. If I leave it blank sometimes the images will not go into any region folder but will instead be placed in Windows\Screenshot - Gameplay .

Overall, I'm more concerned with users of Launchbox as a whole, specifically the ones who aren't the tinkering type. Maybe Launchbox should be simple and intuitive for those people, not everyone will bother to change the games region after retrieving the games Launchbox DB ID. And than when they decide to add images manually they will be confused when it doesn't show up in the LaunchBox User Interface.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Nikorasu081

[neil9000]

13 hours ago, Nikorasu081 said:

Overall, I'm more concerned with users of Launchbox as a whole, specifically the ones who aren't the tinkering type.

Well to be honest you are the only user that i am aware off to ever bring this up, so i really dont think that most users even care where there images go, and in fact most users just use the built in downloader which names and places images in the correct location automatically, and leave it at that.

[Nikorasu081]

On 10/20/2019 at 7:30 AM, neil9000 said:

Well to be honest you are the only user that i am aware off to ever bring this up, so i really dont think that most users even care where there images go, and in fact most users just use the built in downloader which names and places images in the correct location automatically, and leave it at that.

Well I guess you are right about me being part of the "niche userbase" that manually add images via "edit game". I'll just make sure to change the region from now on before downloading from the database. Better yet, if there is a really amazing image I like, I'll just add it to the database, which I've been doing the last 2 days.

[Jason Carr]

We added regions after the fact, and never added support for regions when adding media manually, nor can you currently change the region that is associated with a particular image. Currently, it's all only done through the folders. I do have an item on my list to allow changing and specifying media regions, which I believe would solve these issues. I'm not exactly sure when we'll get to it, but it is on my list.

[Nikorasu081]

On 10/21/2019 at 1:18 PM, Jason Carr said:

I do have an item on my list to allow changing and specifying media regions, which I believe would solve these issues. I'm not exactly sure when we'll get to it, but it is on my list.

That's good news. Can't wait for it to be implemented.

[Nikorasu081]

On 10/21/2019 at 1:18 PM, Jason Carr said:

We added regions after the fact, and never added support for regions when adding media manually, nor can you currently change the region that is associated with a particular image. Currently, it's all only done through the folders. I do have an item on my list to allow changing and specifying media regions, which I believe would solve these issues. I'm not exactly sure when we'll get to it, but it is on my list.

~Sigh~ ?. I have been uploading images to the Launchbox Games DB for the past 4 days which was all for nothing. Downloading the images via clicking the "Download Images/Media" button, not all images appear in the interface after clicking save. This is so troublesome! Launchbox still places the images in a folder that it chooses not to pull from. I hope with this video, you can truly see what is going on with the issue I am pulling my hair out over.

 

Edited October 23, 2019 by Nikorasu081

[Retro808]

@Nikorasu081 This is likely due to image priorities you have set. Launchbox is technically doing what you set it to do. It is prioritizing which region images get shown above others. 

I see in the screenshot gameplay for this game 4 images are World and 3 are North America. Launchbox is displaying images only in order of your preference. So it will choose your first priority and if no image exists it will go to the next one, and so on until it finds a region with images that exist. If there are regions below the one that does have images and they also have images Launchbox does not show those other region images. 

Based on what I see in the video I would think you have North America listed above World. If you edit that and place World above North America and go back to that game you should see it showing the images now from the World folder and not the North American folder.  I do not think the logic is built to show all regions you have selected. 

[Nikorasu081]

So what is the best solution? Should I go back and edit the region on all the images I uploaded to the database and change them to North America? The reason I set "World" on some images in the first place is because I thought they were more appropriate because they didn't contain text with language tailored to a specific region, I set the region to "World" because it was just art.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Nikorasu081

[Retro808]

18 minutes ago, Nikorasu081 said:

So what is the best solution? Should I go back and edit the region on all the images I uploaded to the database and change them to North America? The reason I set "World" on some images in the first place is because I thought they were more appropriate because they didn't contain text with language tailored to a specific region, I set the region to "World" because it was just art.

That is up to you. I would say not to arbitrarily assign a region for an image if the image is from a specific region's game just because it contained no text.  It would be best uploading it as the region for the game it actually came from. Even though it contained no text specific to a region if the image came from, let's say a European region game, it shouls upload it as such so the DB can be as accurate as possible. 

[Nikorasu081]

56 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

That is up to you. I would say not to arbitrarily assign a region for an image if the image is from a specific region's game just because it contained no text.  It would be best uploading it as the region for the game it actually came from. Even though it contained no text specific to a region if the image came from, let's say a European region game, it shouls upload it as such so the DB can be as accurate as possible. 

I'll just set every image to North America from now on to avoid any problems. I'll also go back and edit the regions of images I previously uploaded, what a hassle.

[Nikorasu081]

WTF? I tried changing the regions of all my previous contributions on the LaunchBox Games Database but I'm being rejected. Why??? I even gave an explanation for submitting the request "Needed to re-change all the regions of my previous contributions due to images not showing up in the Launchbox UI." I wouldn't even be needing to do this if Launchbox would pull from the location it puts the images in. Now I'm trying to fix my mistakes but my changes are being rejected.

[Retro808]

Not sure why you say Launchbox is not pulling images from the location its puts it in when it has clearly been advised it is based on the region priorities you set in your Launchbox. It is not the fault of the program. It is doing what your settings are telling it to do. 

Everything I mentioned above I tested importing the same game you show in the video. It works as I mentioned. 

[Nikorasu081]

45 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

Not sure why you say Launchbox is not pulling images from the location its puts it in when it has clearly been advised it is based on the region priorities you set in your Launchbox. It is not the fault of the program. It is doing what your settings are telling it to do. 

Everything I mentioned above I tested importing the same game you show in the video. It works as I mentioned. 

I understand what you are saying. That is why I'm trying to change the rest of the images I uploaded on the database to "North America", fixing my mistake by making launchbox put the images in just one location. Launchbox is pulling images from the North America folder only. There are 8 other images missing which is in the world folder, Launchbox isn't pulling those images from that World folder, it's only pulling from the North America folder. I'm trying to change every image I uploaded on the database to one specified region that way when users download the images via the Database, all images will appear in there Launchbox UI.

I want to make the same changes to images I added to other games on the database as well.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Nikorasu081