What Are Launchbox Images Tied To?

[enthusiast01]

When you download media for a game, what exactly "ties" the game to the media in Launchbox? The game tittle? The name of the game file (rom, windows / dos executable), the Launchbox ID?

I ask because of the following situations that I have encountered using LB for the last two weeks.

Situation 1: I imported several thousand games. As everyone knows, roms are often named very differently from the "official" name. I scanned through everything, fixed the LB id for games missing media, downloaded media, etc. Please note: all games had multiple media files downloaded & could be viewed. When doing this, I had the box front view active. I did check for the other views, and most had media. A few games did not have 3D box available, for example.

I then made the mistake of using the media clean-up function (I backed them all up before using it). It removed 9,000 images. I scanned all my games to see the result. In front box mode, the images were still all there. But when I changed to another viewing mode like 3D box, a ton of games were missing media. So I clicked on one that was missing. I brought up the images... the only media tied to the game was the front box. All other media was missing. Before I used the tool, all media was there. So, I spent the next 4hrs fixing it.

Situation 2: I have several games with multiple discs. I have all media downloaded with the correct LB id. It all looks good. Lets say I had 3 discs for one game. So 3 identical titles appear in LB. I decided to put (Disc 1), etc in the title of each game. Now I did not change the LB id. When I put the disc # in the titles, the very first game I did this to - the media stayed tied to it. The second, third, etc I did this to - all the media dissapeared.

So, I assume the media are tied to the game tittle? Does it not make more sense to tie the media to the LB id which is then tied to the name of the game file instead of the game tittle? That way the LB id can be obtained with a correct title, download media, then change the tittle to a custom one - but have the LB ID still tied to the game name (even if the game name is not the "corect" one. This would create more flexibility. For example: The rom is named King's Field 4. The correct tittle to bring up the media for the correct LB id is - King's Field: The Ancient City. So you put in the correct title & download media. You then go back and change the title to King's Field 4. Why? Just because you like it, are afraid of file names getting too long, whatever. Can the LB id be tied to the rom name (even if it is "wrong") King's Field 4 instead of the game title King's Field: The Ancient City? In the future renaming the title can cause you to lose media if you change some things around.

Also, having thousands of games, I am not going to go rename the actual file to the name that the LB id prefers to avoid this issue in the future. I would sit there doing so for eternity.

Edited April 28, 2021 by enthusiast01

[fraganator]

Hi @enthusiast01

There are a few ways media can be tied to a game. In most cases the game title ties the two together. See this great post by @sards who goes over all the different matching criteria. In short, matching can be done based on game title, filename, stripped game title, and game ID (not the LaunchBox DB ID):

So in your example with King's Field: The Ancient City, after a LaunchBox media import the media name will be King_s Field_ The Ancient City-xx.jpg, where xx is a number starting from 01. If you then rename the game within LaunchBox to King's Field 4, the media will auto rename to King_s Field 4-xx.jpg.

With the disc number example, you might try name them with incrementing numbers for xx. So something like Final Fantasy VII which has three discs would be named Final Fantasy VII-01.png, Final Fantasy VII-02.png, and Final Fantasy VII-03.png.

When you did the media cleanup, were the images to be removed listed as duplicates, or as not in use? (scroll to the very right of the Clean Up Media window to see the reason column in case it's not visible)

[enthusiast01]

17 hours ago, fraganator said:

Hi @enthusiast01

There are a few ways media can be tied to a game. In most cases the game title ties the two together. See this great post by @sards who goes over all the different matching criteria. In short, matching can be done based on game title, filename, stripped game title, and game ID (not the LaunchBox DB ID):

So in your example with King's Field: The Ancient City, after a LaunchBox media import the media name will be King_s Field_ The Ancient City-xx.jpg, where xx is a number starting from 01. If you then rename the game within LaunchBox to King's Field 4, the media will auto rename to King_s Field 4-xx.jpg.

With the disc number example, you might try name them with incrementing numbers for xx. So something like Final Fantasy VII which has three discs would be named Final Fantasy VII-01.png, Final Fantasy VII-02.png, and Final Fantasy VII-03.png.

When you did the media cleanup, were the images to be removed listed as duplicates, or as not in use? (scroll to the very right of the Clean Up Media window to see the reason column in case it's not visible)

Based on your comments, I did a test. I have two copies of King's Field (the source files are different origins but the same game). I opened up the image folders in LB to the two images I was interested in ( box 3D & box front). I saw them named as you said - I.E. King_s Field_ The Ancient City.9c88b268-23b8-4cc0-a85d-1e335967c6ca-01.jpg, King_s Field_ The Ancient City.9c88b268-23b8-4cc0-a85d-1e335967c6ca-01.png.  I renamed one of the games to King's Field 4. The image file names did indeed change to King's Field 4xxxxxx. The second copy of King's Field - the images under edit/media/images disappeared even though in LB I could still see a front box image. I changed the name of the first game back to King's Field: The Ancient City, The image files renamed themselves accordingly. The second game still had missing images even though it has the original title. For the second version of the game (now with missing images) - I re-downloaded the media. In the LB images folders there is now (2) sets of images named King's Field: The Ancient City - each one has it's on unique ID number after the name.

So, when I import multiple versions of a game with the same title, I must make sure to regenerate the images for each one. That way they get their own unique id for the title. I think that was the problem with adding (Disc #) to the title of each game. When I imported them, they all shared the same image id for the same title. So when I changed the title without re-downloading images, they became un-linked to the original image ids.

As for the clean-up, it has been a week since I did that, so I cannot remember. I only wanted to remove images not associated with any game.

If every game was a single file, life would be simple. Just tie everything to the game file name. That way no matter what you title it, ect - it would always follow the game file name around. But that only works with roms & not DosBox or Windows games.

Thanks for your reply. I have more playing around to do, so I can avoid more of these issues in the future.

Edited April 30, 2021 by enthusiast01