Sonic Playlist? Any ideas how to get this done?

[Mr.Laor]

Hey folks,

 

This will sound pretty silly. I'm trying to make an Auto-playlist for every game that includes Sonic (the hedgehog).

I can't use - title - contains - sonic - because then I get games like - Sonic Boom, Sonic Wings, etc. (here is where I wish there was a BUT NOT option).

I can't use - title - contains - Sonic the hedgehog - because there are a bunch of sonic games that don't use "the hedgehog" like - Sonic Colors, Mario & Sonic

I can't use Publisher - contains - Sega - because then I don't include all the Sonic Hacks I have.

Any ideas? Sounds like it should be simple - except - there is no way to include a BUT NOT - option for auto-playlists and it's driving me nuts.

 

Edited August 21, 2021 by Mr.Laor

[Rlad]

'Doesnt contain' is what you want to use isnt it?

[Mr.Laor]

I tried.  No. Then it includes Every game that "doesn't contain" . It looks and includes both search terms (the Contains the doesn't).  that's why we need an and/or/but not option in between the tags. 

[Scotsman]

This is what I use for my sonic games, all my rom hacks are included and it stops Sonic Boom & Sonic Wings from being included. however I don't have any sonic games past the 16bit era so I can't say if it'll work for anything newer.

if you want the sonic arcade games, you could switch out Platform for Genre > has none of the values > Shooter / Flying Vertical and this also stops Sonic Boom & Sonic Wings being included

Edited August 21, 2021 by IainSA

[Mr.Laor]

Nice but this still won't work. It still captures console games like - Aerobiz Supersonic - SNES or Sonic Boom for C64 (for examples) and then it will leave out games like Sonic and Sega All-star Racing (Arcade-Sega Ringwide).

Other ideas?

[Scotsman]

My Apologies, I didn't realize Sonic Boom had been released on multiple platforms (I've only ever played the Arcade version)

You can try this,

copy and paste this value into the genre field "Shooter; Shooter / Flying Vertical; Construction and Management Simulation" without the quotes

and this should remove Aerobiz & Sonic Boom (Arcade & the Activision release for the C64) and include Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing Arcade.

 

Now the other problem is, if you have Sonic Boom for the Amstrad, Amiga or the NET Software release for the C64, they will still be included because they are marked as Action instead of Shooter.

So if you include action in the genre field, it'll remove some of the sonic games.

The only thing I can think of is to select these versions and change the genre to shooter and that should then remove them from the playlist as well.

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by IainSA

[Mr.Laor]

Funny thing.

This still won't work - I just have too many games (77K) on too many platforms - so relying on genres to be right is troublesome.

BUT  - you gave me a great idea. I could never figure out how to do a James Bond Collection - I kept using titles - contains - James Bond & title - contains - 007 - but that gave me any game with 2007 in the title.

Now I tried - Genre - not equal to - Sports - and it seems to have solved the problem. 

[Scotsman]

6 minutes ago, Mr.Laor said:

I just have too many games (77K) on too many platforms - so relying on genres to be right is troublesome

Yeah, you're probably bound to run into problems with that many games. I've only got a couple thousand so I haven't had any problems with the genres (Yet)

But glad to hear it helped with the James Bond Collection at least.

[Rlad]

20 hours ago, Mr.Laor said:

I tried.  No. Then it includes Every game that "doesn't contain" . It looks and includes both search terms (the Contains the doesn't).  that's why we need an and/or/but not option in between the tags. 

I thought the doesnt contain would fix this but if you can only use one value then it's kind of useless still. ?

[Fry]

You could start by creating an automatic playlist where title contains Sonic.  Then once it's created, edit it, uncheck auto-populate, and go to the games tab and delete out the ones you don't want.  You'd want to come back and add any new sonic games to this playlist if you add one in the future but that works fine for me since the last sonic game game that was released was almost 5 years ago.  

 

Another option, puts some more effort on you to maintain your metadata but if you go through all the games that you want to appear in that playlist and set the series to Sonic The Hedgehog then you can use the series field to drive the automatic playlist. 

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Fry

[Mr.Laor]

Thanks.  I've done all this.  I was really hoping to automate the process. Sometimes i get a big dump of games and I don't want to individually edit all the metadata for the +100 collection play lists I have. 

[C-Beats]

1 hour ago, Mr.Laor said:

Thanks.  I've done all this.  I was really hoping to automate the process. Sometimes i get a big dump of games and I don't want to individually edit all the metadata for the +100 collection play lists I have. 

You can select multiple games, then press edit, and add the series value to them en masse. When trying to create series playlist I typically just set the series to the correct value and then build an auto-populated playlist where series is equal to that value.

[Mr.Laor]

I get it. I appreciate everyone's suggestions.  I think we are at an impasse.  Ultimately,  Sonic is just one example of where the current automated Playlist fall a bit short. Same problems with a pac-man list, Mario or Nintendo mascots,  Capcom fighters, etc) It is not unusual to import a collection of over 30 games (hacks, translations, pc games) and  i cant hand-tag all of them. I long for a " or - but not  - and" option. LAUNCHBOX rocks. Just one of my pet peeves.

[C-Beats]

Think you are grossly overstating the complexity and time required for the task at hand. The following steps can be used for a large majority of your use cases and takes very little time:

1) Select the correct platform in LaunchBox (all if there are several involved)
2) In the search box type the name of what you would want in the "Contains" field of the Auto-populate playlist
3) Select the first game in the result set and then press "Ctrl-A" to select them all
4) Quickly make sure you don't have any that don't belong and deselect them by holding Ctrl and clicking on the item
5) Press "Ctrl-E" to bring up the bulk edit
6) Select the "Series" field
7) Add the series you are wanting to tag the items with
8) Create an auto-populated playlist using Series - Is Equal To - (Series you added in step 7)

[Rlad]

Yeah that's what i do minus making the playlist, the only issue is you have to remember to add a series entry for anything new you add.

[Mr.Laor]

Exactly. It is way too time consuming to go through a dump of games and hand edit all the different series that games might belong to (example - kingdom hearts alone would go in my Disney, Mickey, and cartoon collections. I'm spoiled and used to the more complex auto Playlist from most music platforms (media monkey/ itunes) that allow boolean logic to help the process. Again, we can drop it if its just me.  Like I said - a pet peeve.