ModerateNOOB Posted February 2, 2020 Share Posted February 2, 2020 Hi. What is the best settings when searching for metadata before you import roms?? I've been having some problems with my playlists, Which mean i had to import my roms 3 times after using a backup to restore things to normal. 1st time i searched launchbox found around 30% of the images. 2nd time it found about the same. 3rd time it found 3 images and added a -1 after the filename????? LOL. Why are there so big a difference, Are there anything i have to do to reset before importing the same roms again??, I haven't changed search options at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro808 Posted February 3, 2020 Share Posted February 3, 2020 Is it certain platforms you are having issues with? One thing we always recommend is any arcade platform you add always scrape them as “arcade”. Such as SNK Neo Geo if you add as a platform and not a playlist scrape as “arcade”. You say you are having issues with playlists? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModerateNOOB Posted February 3, 2020 Author Share Posted February 3, 2020 Hi Retro808. Yes, It's my first time trying to set up playlists on the Nintendo Nes platform. I've been trying to manually arranging them in this order : ↓Nintendo console ↓Nintendo Entertainment System (USA) ↓Nintendo (Hacked) And so on (I haven't gotten further than that, Yet!!) So i've been messing around with the parent system and probably screwed something up that made Launchbox crash each time i selected the "Platform category". Each time i had to use a backup to restore things to normal, But now the 3rd time importing the same roms, Launchbox only managed to find 3 images (Out Of many roms) while the first 2 times it found a lot more. And for some reason it also decided to place a -1 after each file name of my games (??????), My guess would be that it's due to importing the same roms several times (I guess). Could you help me with a easy explanation on how to manually sort the playlists/Platforms. Thank you kindly ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModerateNOOB Posted February 3, 2020 Author Share Posted February 3, 2020 Just wanted to add that it's Nes rom hacks i'm importing, And i used the scrape function for Nintendo Entertainment System before importing them. Also for some reason i haven't been able to search wikipedia for a while with launchbox (I'm getting some errors when i check that option. Besides that all checkboxes are ticked, Including emumovies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted February 3, 2020 Share Posted February 3, 2020 Depending on what version you are running you are going to have a hard time importing/scraping games using a "Scrape As" platform that is the same name of a platform already imported. When doing that make sure "Force duplicate..." box is checked on the last import screen. Believe it is the top most option (don't have LaunchBox open atm) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro808 Posted February 3, 2020 Share Posted February 3, 2020 4 hours ago, ModerateNOOB said: Just wanted to add that it's Nes rom hacks i'm importing, And i used the scrape function for Nintendo Entertainment System before importing them. Also for some reason i haven't been able to search wikipedia for a while with launchbox (I'm getting some errors when i check that option. Besides that all checkboxes are ticked, Including emumovies. Well Wikipedia has been an issue for a while. So it is not anything you are doing wrong. It just is not working and Jason mentioned it might get removed. As far as scraping those rom hacks as NES @C-Beats summed it up for you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModerateNOOB Posted February 3, 2020 Author Share Posted February 3, 2020 Ok, thank's for your replies (Both of you). Should i just uncheck the scrape function then??, Or should i scrape for something else like Famicom maybe???. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted February 3, 2020 Share Posted February 3, 2020 You can still scrape just make sure Force Duplicate Games is checked. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModerateNOOB Posted February 3, 2020 Author Share Posted February 3, 2020 9 hours ago, C-Beats said: You can still scrape just make sure Force Duplicate Games is checked. Allright. Just one more thing if it's okay. I'm experiencing that Launchbox behaves differently when searching for metadata, Sometimes it finds almost nothing and is very slow to import my roms, Other times it rapidly imports them and finds a good deal more. Regards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromlostdays Posted February 3, 2020 Share Posted February 3, 2020 (edited) To answer your last question, not all games have media, or are even in the LB database. See below for explanation. It should be stated that importing "Rom Hacks" probably means 2 things: 1: The Hacks are named weird. They just usually are, and Launchbox does a fuzzy naming match but it only works so well. 2: There aren't all that many rom hacks in the database. I know there are a few well known ones, but there certainly isn't media for every NES hack. You're better off using a default art (say a box) and just use paint to add the word "Hack" as it'll be a uniform look. Lagniappe: If you want official nintendo box art for the game the rom is a hack of, you need to name it right. [Game Name] (Hack Name Region Etc.) all extra info should be in parenthesis. Example: Mario Bros. (Extra Levels) (Hack) (USA).nes Scraping this as NES will make sure Launchbox recognizes this as Mario Bros. and scape accordingly. Extra Extra info: You can use Bulk Rename Utility to rename all the hacks very quickly, but from my experience some hack names are really convoluted and some don't even have the game name that's hacked, so this can become a chore. If you do however, rename as above, instead of importing as a different system "Hacks" you can import all the hacks into your standard NES system and they will all automatically be setup as additional apps if you check the option for that. Turn "Force Duplicates" off if you go this route. I'd be willing to bet import is much slower when launchbox is struggling to make database matches because of the rom naming. Edited February 3, 2020 by fromlostdays Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted February 3, 2020 Share Posted February 3, 2020 Would depend what options you are picking. Currently downloading from LaunchBox Games DB is faster than EmuMovies and Wikipedia by quite a bit. Also depends if the game has already been matched to something in the GamesDB or not. If it hasn't it attempts to find it again, also games that aren't matched attempts to do different things with name matching on the other sources causing it to take longer. Other things that can affect that speed is: How many threads LaunchBox is allowed to used How many other applications are running with LaunchBox is How much disk write speed LaunchBox can utilize Other applications using the disk i/o Internet speeds/connectivity Any real time firewall processes Any real time compression on the folder Server load at the time for the scrape service Really hard nail it down with nothing really specific to look into. Turning on logging would help gather more information about what may be going on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModerateNOOB Posted February 3, 2020 Author Share Posted February 3, 2020 (edited) 12 minutes ago, C-Beats said: Would depend what options you are picking. Currently downloading from LaunchBox Games DB is faster than EmuMovies and Wikipedia by quite a bit. Also depends if the game has already been matched to something in the GamesDB or not. If it hasn't it attempts to find it again, also games that aren't matched attempts to do different things with name matching on the other sources causing it to take longer. Other things that can affect that speed is: How many threads LaunchBox is allowed to used How many other applications are running with LaunchBox is How much disk write speed LaunchBox can utilize Other applications using the disk i/o Internet speeds/connectivity Any real time firewall processes Any real time compression on the folder Server load at the time for the scrape service Really hard nail it down with nothing really specific to look into. Turning on logging would help gather more information about what may be going on. I just found it weird because it was the same Nes hacks i re-imported again. the first time i imported them it found some box artwork (Which is nice when we are talking about a little over 2000 hacks), Still have to do a lot of the work myself and most likely just smacking a Self-made cover art on most of them (Something simple). Then i ran into some trouble with playlists and launchbox crashes and had to delete some xml files to even launch launchbox again, But this time it was very very slow on importing and found litterely nothing. using a 4gb mobile broadband connection and usually gets aroun 20-30 mbits, And a 20tb HDD which Launchbox is on. Edited February 3, 2020 by ModerateNOOB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModerateNOOB Posted February 4, 2020 Author Share Posted February 4, 2020 And Launchbox added this (-1) to all the filenames of the roms???, Had to use a bulk-text editor to erase it again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromlostdays Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 It adds the -1 because some media has more than one of the same type available. There might be 5 screenshots for a game so it will download: Screenshot-1.png Screenshot-2.png Etc. For use with Launchbox, there is no reason to delete this number, but the media will still work without it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModerateNOOB Posted February 4, 2020 Author Share Posted February 4, 2020 3 minutes ago, fromlostdays said: It adds the -1 because some media has more than one of the same type available. There might be 5 screenshots for a game so it will download: Screenshot-1.png Screenshot-2.png Etc. For use with Launchbox, there is no reason to delete this number, but the media will still work without it. It's not the screenshots, But the name of the rom. You wouldn't want to play Castlevania -1.nes (That's criminal). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromlostdays Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 Oh wow. Yeah Launchbox should definitely not be changing the name of roms! Sorry, I was reading too quickly. That's definitely some kind of bug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro808 Posted February 5, 2020 Share Posted February 5, 2020 On 2/3/2020 at 7:13 PM, ModerateNOOB said: It's not the screenshots, But the name of the rom. You wouldn't want to play Castlevania -1.nes (That's criminal). Are you having Launchbox move the rom file when you import? If you are that is why it is adding the -1 after multiple times trying to import the rom. Launchbox will not overwrite a rom or image file it will simply add the -1, -2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModerateNOOB Posted February 5, 2020 Author Share Posted February 5, 2020 8 hours ago, Retro808 said: Are you having Launchbox move the rom file when you import? If you are that is why it is adding the -1 after multiple times trying to import the rom. Launchbox will not overwrite a rom or image file it will simply add the -1, -2. Yeah!!, I import the roms into Launchbox from another folder, However i never experienced that it added a -2, Instead it ads -1-1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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