Deleted games not found when using "Scan for removed roms"

[hitm4n]

I cannot figure this out... please help.

I have the ExodosV5 collection. All the artwork , manuals and music are moved across to Launchbox manually in their "ms-dos" counterpart folders and placed in the right places (they work).
I want the games plus the !dos folder to live on another drive though, not my C drive SSD which has more limited space

So rather than use the ms-dos.xml, that is created by the Exodos installer, i decided to import all the games fresh from their new path, but utilise the artwork and music.
And it works...

Now every game is set up to use a batch file, and every batch file is named very nicely, so when imported under the MS-DOS platform, the game names are picked up well, and they match the images i've already put in place so i don't need to scrape any art or allow the games to pick up a launchbox database ID. They just work. I have filtered my set from 7200 to 6300 or so games, this is another reason to not use the pre-existing ms-dos.xml as it lists all 7200 games and i have the same issue i'm having now.

So. I do a "roms" import, i scan for .bat files in the !dos folder, i remove all the "alternative startup" and "install" bat files, leaving me a set of around 6300 or so game bat files. All good so far. These are imported, i use the inbuilt "ms-dos" platform, i DO NOT scrape for art or metadata. The games are imported, the screenshots work, some play music (those that have some) and all is still good.

I could leave it now, live with 6300 games and all works well.

But... Then i play a game and i don't like it. I do want to slim this game set down, so i delete it. I delete the game folder and i delete the corresponding !dos game folder with the batch file. I might scan through the screenshots and delete say 10 or 20 games this way. Then, i use the "Scan for removed roms" tool in the menu, scanning only the "ms-dos" set and it always says zero games missing.

I can click edit on a game that i know i've deleted, i can see the path for the batch file which again i know no longer exists. But Launchbox doesn't seem to be able to see that its gone. What the hell is going on here?

Anyone got an idea?

Thanks.

 

[neil9000]

Go to Tools/Manage Platforms/Folders Tab, and set the "Game" folder to where your games are actually stored. It probably just says Games/MS DOS currently which means when running those scans its looking in your Launchbox/Games folder, not where the games actually are. Also i dont mess with DOS, but they are obviously not "Roms" per se, so im not sure how the "scan for removed roms" will work with files that are not roms at all, and will have multiple files/folders.

[hitm4n]

You are right in all regards, there are multiple game folders, 6300 of them in fact, they are located at "e:\roms\exo\exodos\-6300-" (btw, all the games are unpacked ready to play, no zips.)
Also in that folder path is one extra folder called !dos at "e:\roms\exo\exodos\!dos". And this folder contains a further matching 6300 set of folders with each one containing a bat file at "e:\roms\exo\exodos\!dos\-6300-"

Of course the bat files here parse the game name and knows where to find the games files (1 level up) and where to load the emulators from (2 levels up). Every bat is set to load either dosbox or scummvm, or offer options, work fullscreen, keep aspect ratio etc. It all works very nicely, this ExoDos collection is very well put together, but doesn't lend itself well to being manually messed with (if you want to trim the set at least).

The path is indeed wrong once they are all imported. You are right, it was saying "games/ms-dos". I know this is usually the case as all my roms are on this e drive and i do always have to go in there and update the path. But once i do, and i delete a game, and rescan it would always tell me its missing and remove it from view. (as an aside, i would suggest this is a bit of a bug, considering you've told the app where the games are, and that i want to leave them there, i would say that folder path should be set correctly. Anyway, thats not my real issue, i don't really care about that as its easily edited )

I don't think Launchbox should care if these are bat files or not, they are imported as roms, the path is stored correctly, and when i delete one it should surely see it is no longer there.

I know i ramble. Bear with...

So, your suggestion. I did think of this myself, i should have said i have tried it. I can only place one path so i changed "games/ms-dos" to "e:\roms\exo\exodos\!dos" This !dos folder contains the bat files, albeit in seperate folders another level in.

So, i think the scan for missing roms is only looking at the path i put in. Strangely though, shouldn't it then tell me that all 6300 are missing if it can't find those bat files?
Does the "scan for missing roms" not scan the subfolders too in a path?

I think its an odd issue, and odd that no-one has seen this before?

Thanks.

[hitm4n]

Any word from the Launchbox authors on this issue? Any clarity on how the scanning for roms (or batch files in my case) takes place, whether theres a workaround maybe, or any planned changes to allow for checking subfolders of a romset? Has this issue been noted before and thought about ? Cheers.

For now, i am deleting each game manually from my launchbox view, then deleting the related 2 folders from my e:roms drive. Whittling it down that way but its really slow. I really wish i could bulk delete the games from the roms folder and then rescan within launchbox to clean up the list.

Cheers.

 

[neil9000]

12 minutes ago, hitm4n said:

Any word from the Launchbox authors on this issue? Any clarity on how the scanning for roms (or batch files in my case) takes place, whether theres a workaround maybe, or any planned changes to allow for checking subfolders of a romset? Has this issue been noted before and thought about ? Cheers.

For now, i am deleting each game manually from my launchbox view, then deleting the related 2 folders from my e:roms drive. Whittling it down that way but its really slow. I really wish i could bulk delete the games from the roms folder and then rescan within launchbox to clean up the list.

Cheers.

 

It doesnt work as they are not roms. They are batch files that launch a emulator. As there is no emulator associated with the files in Launchbox they are not considered roms.

[hitm4n]

Hi neil9000, thanks for assisting (i know you do a lot round here, i'd heard of you before i even came to these forums ).

And with that, i'm going to disagree with you Feel free to rebuttle (is that the right word) what i say here. I'm sorta thinking out loud.

I could add a new emulator where the file extension for the games is .squiddlyboo, Launchbox shouldn't care. It scans them, looks at the file names, tries to make sense of those names and find some game info when scraped. I can attach this set of squiddlyboo roms to any emulator i wish. Launchbox will parse that file to the emulator and the emulator will play it.

So why does it matter that these are bat files. These work in the same way, they are scanned and scraped and work without issue. Each one has its path saved, as if it was its own entity, its own game. Again i say, Launchbox doesn't (or shouldn't) care, its not sentient. What if these bat files were exe files, with each game stored in its own folder?

My feeling here is, its not the extension thats the issue, its the fact the files are in sub-folders below whatever folder path i give it. If i could select all 6300 folders at once and save those into the "game" path option, i would. I say this because scraping, asjusting paths and other such options takes a fair few minutes to complete. Checking for "missing wrongs" takes less than a milisecond and simply says nothing is missing. Theres no way its actually checking through the folder or checking that every batch file still exists.

If theres no hope for me here, thats okay. I hope maybe the Launchbox/Bigbox authors may consider whats going on here and maybe look at some new features or improvements in this area. Otherwise i'll just have to play, delete and remove manually from Launchbox each game as i go through them. 6300 though, thats a long road.

[C-Beats]

What Neil stated isn't really a matter of opinion. It is how the tool does indeed work. That being said I can understand your point of view as well. I would suggest you go to the top of the page and click "Help & Support" then "Request a feature" and explain there how you think the tool can be improved to do what you are trying to do with it. Will help us keep track of the suggestion and allow other users to vote on it.

[hitm4n]

Thanks. I've done just that, hopefully it gets some consideration from the team. Cheers.

[neil9000]

11 minutes ago, hitm4n said:

Thanks. I've done just that, hopefully it gets some consideration from the team. Cheers.

Well, @C-Beats is one half of the dev team.

 

[ImagicalFantasy]

I think it should at least test if specified file of each game exist. If not, it could remove the game. We talk about the same test that say "The file that you specified for the application path cannot be found" when you try to launch the game.

In my case I will need to make python script that edit my platform xml and manualy do the test.