Why do version numbers in names confuse LB so much?

[DaveC1964]

So any game that has a version number in the name will not be recognized when importing.  For example Amiga game: "Fly Harder v1.00".  LB has no idea what to do with that until I manually edit out the v1.00.  Is there a way to fix this?  There are a LOT of these so doing this manually is not fun.

[Lordmonkus]

It can handle files with numbers just fine, but they need to be wrapped in brackets

"Fly Harder v1.00"

should be:

"Fly Harder (v1.00)"

For example I can import the following Final Fantasy VI rom hack and the scraper will detect it as a Final Fantasy VI because all the hack information is wrapped in brackets:

Final Fantasy VI (Brave New World FF3 Rev 1 Hack v2.0 BTB,Synchysi).sfc

The "fuzzy" name scanning feature is limited in what it can do and can't do to try and figure out the games name for metadata and media scraping. The other way to do this is to force people into a very specifically named rom set that matches a database but that removes all flexibility on what rom sets can be used by the end user. It's a trade off where each method has it's own pros and cons.

[DeadVoivod]

Try AdvancedRenamer, great tool with many options for renaming batch files. 

[fromlostdays]

Alternately, I can't live without a program called Bulk Rename Utility. Unsung hero of rom renaming imo. It takes a little bit of getting used to but if you just think of it like a text editor that edits all filenames in a folder, instead of text, it's not all that unintuitive.

For "Fly Harder v1.00"

You can use the Find/Replace box to:

Find: v1

Replace with: (v1

Fly Hard (v1.00

This will also target every other file in the folder that has v1 in the title.

Then use the Prefix and Suffice Box to add:

Suffix: )

Fly Hard (v1.00)

This will target every file in the folder.

Note: if there are files without version numbers in the set, you can just use a windows search for "v1" and move all the files with version numbers to a separate folder real quick, use Bulk Rename Utility to fix them, and when finished just put them all back. If you don't, the first change will only target files in which "v1" exists, but the suffix ) will get applied to all files. There are ways to have it target only specific files in a folder but a quick directory move is the simplest and quickest way to target only specific files.

Done for the whole set in less than 10 seconds. If there are versions 2, 3 ,4 etc. just run the find replace 4 times and change the numbers to v2, v3, v4 etc.

Edit: just a quick warning though, the program does exactly what you tell it to do. So if you don't uncheck the suffice box for instance and keep running it for all the version numbers you would wind up with

Fly Hard (v1.00)))

You can undo your last move but that's it. So when you're learning, best to take it slow. Having said that, if you make a mistake, you can usually just use the same program to fix it  So in the above example

Find: )))

Replace with: ) 

Hope it helps!

Edited January 16, 2020 by fromlostdays