Sinfire Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 I just spent the weekend loading up my collection of PS4 games into Launchbox. I am using Launchbox to track my inventory of games... What I have noticed is that there is no standards when it comes to images. For example, I set the Image Group to boxes, and I get a variety of images. 60% are actual PS4 box covers, others are just the picture from the box, others are just a small banner. Images of different sizes, shapes, etc. As well, when I tried to load my own image it complains that it ran out of memory when displaying the image. A couple of questions: 1 - Are there guidelines for image size, pixels, contents when it comes to loading images to the games database? 2 - If there is, does anybody actually monitor and audit the entries to ensure they meet the standards? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 1 hour ago, Sinfire said: I just spent the weekend loading up my collection of PS4 games into Launchbox. I am using Launchbox to track my inventory of games... What I have noticed is that there is no standards when it comes to images. For example, I set the Image Group to boxes, and I get a variety of images. 60% are actual PS4 box covers, others are just the picture from the box, others are just a small banner. Images of different sizes, shapes, etc. As well, when I tried to load my own image it complains that it ran out of memory when displaying the image. A couple of questions: 1 - Are there guidelines for image size, pixels, contents when it comes to loading images to the games database? 2 - If there is, does anybody actually monitor and audit the entries to ensure they meet the standards? I think they shoot for higher quality vs. lower quality, but the games database just has so much, that I think a lot of things slip through the cracks. With thousands upon thousands of games, I can understand it. I had to upload my own advertisement flyers for some arcade games that had wrong flyers, were missing entirely, or had the wrong image. Is your image like 55 million pixels or something? I've had some pretty large images that I have used before, and it never complained of memory issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinfire Posted February 1, 2021 Author Share Posted February 1, 2021 I was thinking more along the lines of resolution. For example: PS2/PS3/PS4/Xbox Box covers should be 800x1000, Nintendo game cartridge box covers would be 1300x800, etc That way when you are in launchbox and you are on a platform screen, all the images are consistent. As opposed to what I saw with image sizes varying from 800x1000, 800x200, 800x1400, etc And of course visually if the PS4 boxes should or should not have the PS4 band across the top of the screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted February 1, 2021 Share Posted February 1, 2021 2 minutes ago, Sinfire said: I was thinking more along the lines of resolution. For example: PS2/PS3/PS4/Xbox Box covers should be 800x1000, Nintendo game cartridge box covers would be 1300x800, etc We dont have restrictions on resolution of images, at the end of the day a low resolution image is usually for most people, better than no image at all. So why reject images that many many users will get use out of? As for all box art being uniform sizes, are you willing to go through every image in every platform and replace them with lovely new high resolution images that all fit to a standard? If so then please, have at it. I am going to assume though, that you are not going to do that, and actually want the people who upload the art to do it for you and to retroactively go back and edit all images, cause i can tell you now, know one is going to do that. At the end of the day would a uniform size for specific platforms be a good idea? Yes. Is anyone willing to actually do all that work? Id hazard a guess at a hard no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinfire Posted February 1, 2021 Author Share Posted February 1, 2021 3 hours ago, neil9000 said: We dont have restrictions on resolution of images, at the end of the day a low resolution image is usually for most people, better than no image at all. So why reject images that many many users will get use out of? As for all box art being uniform sizes, are you willing to go through every image in every platform and replace them with lovely new high resolution images that all fit to a standard? If so then please, have at it. I am going to assume though, that you are not going to do that, and actually want the people who upload the art to do it for you and to retroactively go back and edit all images, cause i can tell you now, know one is going to do that. At the end of the day would a uniform size for specific platforms be a good idea? Yes. Is anyone willing to actually do all that work? Id hazard a guess at a hard no. You assume wrong. I am working at getting my platforms to look consistent. Right now I am concentrating on the PS4 platform as I am using Launchbox as a games inventory of what I own physical copies and what I own from PS Plus giveaways over the years. So yes, once I am finish I will have all 276 of my PS4 games updated with consistant box covers and missing information completed. What would be handy is for Launchbox to make it easier to contribute to the Games database. Perhaps having a button on the title edit screen that will allow a user to push their updates to the games database. Like you said... It is too much for 1 person to do, but give the ability to the tens of thousands of users out there, and you will see it get populated much faster. Then have moderators to ensure that the data is correct. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainSA Posted February 1, 2021 Share Posted February 1, 2021 3 hours ago, Sinfire said: As opposed to what I saw with image sizes varying from 800x1000, 800x200, 800x1400, etc The reason for that is there is no one-stop shop where we can get the images from and they're mostly found online, which isn't always the best quality, through peoples personal scans of which there aren't many or just reconstructing them, hence the variation. The real problem starts when you get to the retro systems as a few people didn't keep their boxes (I personally, and now regretfully threw them away), some kept them but are in terrible condition and some had no means or forethought of scanning them for preservation. I would love to have the perfect database as well but unless we can get high res scans of every box for every game ever released then it'll never happen. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro808 Posted February 1, 2021 Share Posted February 1, 2021 24 minutes ago, Sinfire said: What would be handy is for Launchbox to make it easier to contribute to the Games database. Perhaps having a button on the title edit screen that will allow a user to push their updates to the games database. Like you said... It is too much for 1 person to do, but give the ability to the tens of thousands of users out there, and you will see it get populated much faster. Then have moderators to ensure that the data is correct. Not saying that would not be handy, but I dread to think how horrible thousands of users pushing images to the LB Games DB and then they having to try and moderate all those. Just seeing the comments how much junk they go through as is with the manual process of users having to upload through the website is bad enough. The crap users upload is astonishing so who know what an instant click and upload from within LB would do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinfire Posted February 14, 2021 Author Share Posted February 14, 2021 How do they moderate the images today? Is it only a small group of people that contribute to the database? Or is there a way of contributing? Or is it a matter of everyone fending for themselves and using the database as a starting point to get their game completed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainSA Posted February 14, 2021 Share Posted February 14, 2021 https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com Anyone can contribute to the database and after you've had 25 contributions accepted you can then start moderating the database as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinfire Posted March 16, 2021 Author Share Posted March 16, 2021 So basically someone has to contribute game data from a website and then download locally? Would be more convenient to have the ability to upload updated data from within launchbox itself... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 34 minutes ago, Sinfire said: So basically someone has to contribute game data from a website and then download locally? Would be more convenient to have the ability to upload updated data from within launchbox itself... No, this would lead to garbage data and images being uploaded if all users do is hit a button, there is no self editing there, just a bunch of stuff being uploaded at once and overwhelm the moderators. The database is completely community submitted and moderated and we dont want to make those people walk away because everyday there are thousands of new submissions to look through, 90% of which are probably already in the database as the user who pressed the "upload media" button got most of their images from the database in the first place, thats a waste of everybody's time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smellbringer Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 This is a major nightmare for PC users who like uniformity because it's a giant ol' mess. My solution is a SteamGridDB scraper as that actually has a universal standard; it also would work for Arcade games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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