LB does not properly add Dreamcast and DS ROMs

[goremachine]

Info:

1. ROMs:
   - Dreamcast: Folder with subfolders containing the GDI/BIN/RAW, also tried to CHD the folders
   - DS: Folder with ZIP
2. Software:
   - LB Version 1.1
   - Android 9 running on a RP2+

Issue:

Launchbox > Import Games

• Selecting Folder for Dreamcast ROMs
• Selecting Sega Dreamcast as a Platform
• Enabled Combine ROMs
• Enabled Import from subfolders
• Tried with and without enabling to use Folder Names
• Clicking to proceed with import

The importer now finds 1028 files, it should be the Metacritic Top 100 for the DC and imports them as such. The playlist afterwards has 1028 entries, each individual file.

If I do the same thing with a CHD, it just adds the CHD, does not scrape the name, content or anyhting.

For the DS the exact same thing happens. It just adds the ZIP without scraping.

I've added 14 other systems, they all worked flawlessly, so I have to assume something's very wrong with Sega DC and Nintendo DS scraping. My filenames should be more than fine.

[goremachine]

I also have LB Premium for Windows. Tried importing the very same ROM sets there and the parser scrapes the ROMs just fine. So either something's wrong with the Android version or with the DB Android uses for scraping.

[neil9000]

18 minutes ago, goremachine said:

I also have LB Premium for Windows. Tried importing the very same ROM sets there and the parser scrapes the ROMs just fine. So either something's wrong with the Android version or with the DB Android uses for scraping.

How are your roms named, and can you give a example? There should be no difference between the importer on Android or Windows, and the same Launchbox database is used for both. Also, you do not CHD folders, you CHD files, in your case it would be the GDI and BIN files that are compressed to CHD.

For the record i have some Dreamcast on my Fire HD 10 tablet that are CHD and they imported just fine.

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by neil9000

[neil9000]

And here is Nintendo DS, same results, imported just fine, although my games are not zipped.

 

[goremachine]

9 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

How are your roms named, and can you give a example? There should be no difference between the importer on Android or Windows, and the same Launchbox database is used for both. Also, you do not CHD folders, you CHD files, in your case it would be the GDI and BIN files that are compressed to CHD.

Aye, by "by folder" I mean running chdman over the subfolders, parsing the GDI's creating the CHDs.

But currently I have a subfolder/file structure on the SD like so:

/Roms/Sega - Dreamcast - Top 100/4X4 EVO v1.001 (2000)(GOD)(NTSC)(US)[!]/4X4 EVO v1.001 (2000)(GOD)(NTSC)(US)[!].gdi

Either way, extracted and compressed it doesn't work. Should not be the ROM-Sets "tags" as it parses fine on Windows. Maybe Android has issues with "()[]" but the core information "4X4 EVO" should still match.

[goremachine]

So out of the 100 GDI files (and their accompanying bin/raw)  the importer comes up with this:

 

Adds the individual files instead of parsing them. Really, weird.

[neil9000]

7 minutes ago, goremachine said:

but the core information "4X4 EVO" should still match.

Not in this case as you also have the version in the name, so in your case Lauchbox thinks the game is called "4x4 Evo v1.001" and of course there is no such game as that, so thats a major issue you have, any data that is not the game name should be in () or [] so that info is ignored when matching the game name to the database. As for your rom types, that im not sure about, frankly your 4x4 Evo looks a mess with multiple bin and raw files so i'm not sure how Launchbox would handle that. Frankly the actual files and naming are bad in this case, not bad as in they wont work of course, but bad in relation to a frontend as there are too many files, as well as a "incorrect" name on each game due to the version not being ignored by the scraper.

[neil9000]

As for your Nintendo DS games, i'm going to guess those have the stupid number at the start of the games? If so, thats the issue with them.

[goremachine]

3 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Not in this case as you also have the version in the name, so in your case Lauchbox thinks the game is called "4x4 Evo v1.001" and of course there is no such game as that, so thats a major issue you have, any data that is not the game name should be in () or [] so that info is ignored when matching the game name to the database. As for your rom types, that im not sure about, frankly your 4x4 Evo looks a mess with multiple bin and raw files so i'm not sure how Launchbox would handle that. Frankly the actual files and naming are bad in this case, not bad as in they wont work of course, but bad in relation to a frontend as there are too many files, as well as a "incorrect" name on each game due to the version not being ignored by the scraper.

I disagree, the thing is, this works perfectly fine on Desktop with exactly the same folder structure, file names and extenstions.

While I do not know how LB works under the hood but pretty much any language can easily match the substrings and extension via RegEx.

I'll try later today renaming the whole thing and sees if LB Android parses it correctly afterwards. This then would clearly point to an issue with LB Android and "weird" file names.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, goremachine said:

I disagree, the thing is, this works perfectly fine on Desktop with exactly the same folder structure, file names and extenstions.

While I do not know how LB works under the hood but pretty much any language can easily match the substrings and extension via RegEx.

I'll try later today renaming the whole thing and sees if LB Android parses it correctly afterwards. This then would clearly point to an issue with LB Android and "weird" file names.

One thing to check on Windows is if the games did actually match to a database ID, If you right click 4x4 Evo and go to edit/edit metadata is there a database ID associated with it, or did you just get lucky with some artwork matches from emumovies and no metadata or artwork from the Launchbox database was downloaded?

[goremachine]

1 hour ago, neil9000 said:

One thing to check on Windows is if the games did actually match to a database ID, If you right click 4x4 Evo and go to edit/edit metadata is there a database ID associated with it, or did you just get lucky with some artwork matches from emumovies and no metadata or artwork from the Launchbox database was downloaded?

I stand corrected and agree now, you're absolutely right. LB tries, for whatever reason to match the title "4X4 EVO v1.001".

It seems to remove all the bracketed metainfo properly but keeps the version string as title info. As soon as I manually delete the version info from the title it matches with the LB DB.

So here we go, time to batch-RegEx :D... if substring separated by spaces, starting with v and containing one or more digits and/or points either remove it or wrap it with brackets.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[goremachine]

Also noteworthy if anyone runs into this in the future:

• LB seems to ignore bracketed strings when matching during scraping. I put all version information in () and that's solved.
  LB now still tries to import all the files, so not just the GDI but also the BIN/RAW so it's much more robust if you CHD your ROM
• Renaming can be tedious, particularly in Windows, I highly recommend Microsoft Windows' PowerToys, which contain a "PowerRename" that allowes batched RegEx renaming of whole file trees from the Windows Explorer

Roms with "Title 1234 (something)[anything]" will be detected as "Title - 1234" and not yield a match
-> Rename to "Title (1234) (something)[anything]"

Roms with "1234 - Title (something)[anything]" will be detected as "1234 - Title" and not yield a match
-> Renaming to "(1234) - Title (something)[anything]" will yield ":Title" and match and show up as "Title" in your collection.