Guest mdac356 Posted August 23, 2022 Share Posted August 23, 2022 Hi, Entering "pac" in bigbox search returns games that do not start with "pac" and do not have "pac" anywhere in the title (it does also return "pac-man" along with all those others). What algorithm does bigbox use to search for games? thanks, Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeViking245 Posted August 23, 2022 Share Posted August 23, 2022 I believe it searches the metadata ("Notes") as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rlad Posted August 24, 2022 Share Posted August 24, 2022 It will find those three letters anywhere in the metadata, Title: 'Space Invaders', Developer: 'Apache Software' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mdac356 Posted August 24, 2022 Share Posted August 24, 2022 Wow....anyway to change that? Since the intent of the search is to return a specific game (or a specific set of games), and most commonplace players associate games with game titles only, it seems reasonable to restrict the search parameters to title only. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted August 24, 2022 Share Posted August 24, 2022 The following fields are utilized in the search function and returns any game where any of the following fields contain the string you’re looking for: Title Platform Developer Publisher Source Status Genre Alternate Name Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skizzosjt Posted August 24, 2022 Share Posted August 24, 2022 12 hours ago, mdac356 said: it seems reasonable to restrict the search parameters to title only. except for when you want to search by any number of the various other sets of info as detailed by C-Beats..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mdac356 Posted August 24, 2022 Share Posted August 24, 2022 5 hours ago, skizzosjt said: except for when you want to search by any number of the various other sets of info as detailed by C-Beats..... except for when you want to search for a specific game title and not have to scroll through 50+ games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mdac356 Posted August 25, 2022 Share Posted August 25, 2022 10 hours ago, C-Beats said: The following fields are utilized in the search function and returns any game where any of the following fields contain the string you’re looking for: Title Platform Developer Publisher Source Status Genre Alternate Name Thanks c-beats! This is very helpful.....I can now just delete problematic metadata to get title-priority in searches. There is another thread, started by another launchbox user. who had similar concerns as I do. I'll cross post your content on that thread so he will see it. Regards... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mdac356 Posted August 25, 2022 Share Posted August 25, 2022 11 hours ago, C-Beats said: The following fields are utilized in the search function and returns any game where any of the following fields contain the string you’re looking for: Title Platform Developer Publisher Source Status Genre Alternate Name Looks like it also queries the "Notes" field, which is causing the problems. The Mame "Notes" field contains a long description of the games. Launchbox uses a basic string search (i.e., it will look for the string "pac" in any combination of characters within the field). So searching for "pac" returns the game "Bio-Ship Paladin" because the notes field contains the word "space". Difficult to see any value in that...but regardless I guess the only way to fix this is to wipe the entire field. Will experiment with more contextual search patterns to see in more detail how their search algorithm works. I asked for a BigBox refund given their search function and they were kind enough to provide one. Anyway...I'll post any additional information to help other Launchbox users on this issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted August 25, 2022 Share Posted August 25, 2022 11 hours ago, mdac356 said: Looks like it also queries the "Notes" field, which is causing the problems. The Mame "Notes" field contains a long description of the games. Launchbox uses a basic string search (i.e., it will look for the string "pac" in any combination of characters within the field). So searching for "pac" returns the game "Bio-Ship Paladin" because the notes field contains the word "space". Difficult to see any value in that...but regardless I guess the only way to fix this is to wipe the entire field. Will experiment with more contextual search patterns to see in more detail how their search algorithm works. I asked for a BigBox refund given their search function and they were kind enough to provide one. Anyway...I'll post any additional information to help other Launchbox users on this issue. I listed all fields used in the search and outlined exactly the logic we use to fetch the return set. As stated notes is not one of them, alternate names however is. Bio-Ship Paladin has an alternate name of "Space Battleship Gomora" and is thus returned in the result set. If you're looking for a more granular search functionality you could instead use the Filter menu of Big Box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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