Noticed 2 schools of thought when it comes to those submitting and moderating media images posted.

[Fugus]

I have noticed that there seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to the media.

1) That if the game never was officially released, it should not have a default front box type of at all, it can only have fan art boxes. This is somewhat understandable if they are going to be completely literal about it. These people also feel the same way when it comes to WiiWare titles that they aren't supposed to have a box that is anything other than it's menu icon, anything else should be labeled as fan art. Then you have....

2) That the best images should be set as the menu box for a game. If the game is a virtual console release that has no box, a decent one should at least be there as a placeholder and that having all the best versions of them there along with the officially release leads to the most readable and visually pleasing "Out of the box" results that require less tinkering to get looking decent. If it's a WiiWare title, it can have a box there to at least hold the place.

What is the general views of it here? When it comes to moderation both of them seem to be pretty common.

Also, off topic, why do people feel the need to have insanely big images? I can understand having the box being able to fill a 4k monitor I guess for people wanting to use it on their big screen across the room. But having the clear logo filling the 4k monitor is a bit much and having a game with a resolution of 720x576 but screenshots posted at 1440x1080, it just seems excessive and either that screenshot is a lot of wasted space or they increased the rendering on their emulator at which point it isn't representative of the native game anymore.

[Suhrvivor]

I agree with option 1). The other one is basically a hack, I don't think we should have hacks in the database (but having them on your own system is fine), the db should be as vanilla and neutral as possible. 

3 hours ago, Fugus said:

Also, off topic, why do people feel the need to have insanely big images? I can understand having the box being able to fill a 4k monitor I guess for people wanting to use it on their big screen across the room. But having the clear logo filling the 4k monitor is a bit much and having a game with a resolution of 720x576 but screenshots posted at 1440x1080, it just seems excessive and either that screenshot is a lot of wasted space or they increased the rendering on their emulator at which point it isn't representative of the native game anymore.

Yeah, I don't like people essentially remastering the game with the emulator's enhancements and then uploading pictures of it to the database. Anything better than what the real hardware can do is kind of inaccurate in my opinion.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Suhrvivor

[Fugus]

6 minutes ago, Suhrvivor said:

I agree with option 1). The other one is basically a hack, I don't think we should have hacks in the database (but having them on your own system is fine), the db should be as vanilla and neutral as possible. 

Yeah, I don't like people essentially remastering the game with the emulator's enhancements and then uploading pictures of it to the database. Anything better than what the real hardware can do is kind of inaccurate in my opinion.

For me, I feel that if the game has an official release with an official box than that should be the thing in the box.
If it's like a game that was finished but never released or a WiiWare title and has no official box to go with it, a fan art box should be allowed to go in the box section, just keeping it a permanent blank spot seems like a waste, especially if you are trying to make your set visually consistent.

Really suck if you go to 3DS or Wii U or something and half the boxes are actual box arts and the others are just some weird icon that has no description or anything on it that the system menu shows because that was put in their box section when it wasn't even a box just looks sloppy.

If they REALLY want to keep that level of separation I would ask for a new designation in the database where the community could designate the default image per database where Launchbox will always grab that default unless you tell it to ignore the default and just go for specific types like we do now.

For the screen shots, those should be at the same resolution of the game itself and the box art and clear logo and all there should be some reasonable size limitations. I have came across clear logo's over 6MB each and so big that even on my 1440p resolution monitor it has to shrink it to fit on the screen and there is no reasonable excuse for a clear logo to take in 1/32nd the screen let alone ALL of it and then some.

[Suhrvivor]

47 minutes ago, Fugus said:

If it's like a game that was finished but never released or a WiiWare title and has no official box to go with it, a fan art box should be allowed to go in the box section, just keeping it a permanent blank spot seems like a waste, especially if you are trying to make your set visually consistent.

Really suck if you go to 3DS or Wii U or something and half the boxes are actual box arts and the others are just some weird icon that has no description or anything on it that the system menu shows because that was put in their box section when it wasn't even a box just looks sloppy.

You can make LB to show a fanart boxart if an offcial boxart is no present, there's a priority settings that can manage this (not sure if free users can access this though), you don't have to add a fanart outside of its appropiate section. The moment you let people decide what to put in empty spaces you'll have logos, banners or whatever along side actual boxarts, people like to upload their hacks into the database thinking it would be what everyone else would want.

[Fugus]

2 minutes ago, Suhrvivor said:

You can make LB to show a fanart boxart if an offcial boxart is no present, there's a priority settings that can manage this (not sure if free users can access this though), you don't have to add a fanart outside of its appropiate section. The moment you let people decide what to put in empty spaces you'll have logos, banners or whatever along side actual boxarts, people like to upload their hacks into the database thinking it would be what everyone else would want.

Does nothing in Wii, Wii U, DS and 3DS games where your main box designations have literal menu icon's as their boxes in the database. You are still stuck pruning it all because it won't be showing the fan art because it has menu icons labeled as the default.

And you are mistaken in how I applied it. I never said anything about putting stuff where it shouldn't go at all. The only thing that I think should go in the box-art sections is actual box art, if that file has no applicable box art since it was never released in a box, then fan art boxes could fill the void but only fan art boxes. A fan art box art is still box art.

When it comes to hacks, I can definitely see the potential issues with it. Honestly would love to see the official/unlicensed/pirate section split from the aftermarket/homebrew/hack section. Then you could legitimately have the previous section eventually complete of entries and locked so it was set with only the media changing on them till those finally filled out and was locked as well while the other section could always remain in flux because there is always more added.

[Suhrvivor]

I understand what you're saying now. I have that problem with Switch games too (I made custom boxes and deleted official ones to make them all match but I have very few games compared to people that have them all). We definetly have a problem with the lack of consistency when it comes to boxes. I guess we can't do much about it from our side, we'll have to wait until they improve the database by adding more sections and cleaning the current ones (did they hire a web developer yet?)

[Fugus]

No clue. I would love to have them appoint a few people to maintaining and auditing the database to check and make sure it is consistent. Like we both agreed to with splitting the hacks apart from the rest. If they could do that and hammer down a concrete set of the official games, that would make maintaining them so much easier. Actually had a game's ID on the NES get deleted entirely from it being merged with another game as they were clones if I hadn't noticed it, that game would never get an update again as I am assuming Launchbox wouldn't also remove that ID and inform me of it yet.

Just to have all the entries being set in stone for those, then have the media would be that much easier to deal with.

Just being able to put Fan Box Art for the games that have no official box art would be a huge deal that would help many but then you have others coming behind them and voting to have it deleted or renamed to another type.

Wouldn't need a full time member just to handle auditing it if the users on the database could agree to some kinda consistent rule set but with that conflict of ideals playing out on the media moderation ends up with issues.

Edit: Also hoping they eventually start including movies. Already have a lifetime membership to Emu Movies but the lack of database gives it too many false positives unless you are checking each file manually and know exactly what each game is to compare it against. Also noticed that many of the singing and dancing games is just a video of it asking you to insert the device.

Edit again: Also learning to use Skraper for Screenshots and Videos due to the database nature of it and the screenshots matching console resolution for the ones I have come across. Was weird replacing 35MB of GBC color screenshots with another one at 1.91MB just due to the resolution change. The box art though, definitely better to use the Launchbox database as they tend to be clearer and, unlike the screenshots, the increased resolution can actually matter.

Edited January 13, 2023 by Fugus

[Freestate]

On 1/12/2023 at 1:22 AM, Fugus said:

I have noticed that there seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to the media.

1) That if the game never was officially released, it should not have a default front box type of at all, it can only have fan art boxes. This is somewhat understandable if they are going to be completely literal about it. These people also feel the same way when it comes to WiiWare titles that they aren't supposed to have a box that is anything other than it's menu icon, anything else should be labeled as fan art. Then you have....

2) That the best images should be set as the menu box for a game. If the game is a virtual console release that has no box, a decent one should at least be there as a placeholder and that having all the best versions of them there along with the officially release leads to the most readable and visually pleasing "Out of the box" results that require less tinkering to get looking decent. If it's a WiiWare title, it can have a box there to at least hold the place.

What is the general views of it here? When it comes to moderation both of them seem to be pretty common.

Also, off topic, why do people feel the need to have insanely big images? I can understand having the box being able to fill a 4k monitor I guess for people wanting to use it on their big screen across the room. But having the clear logo filling the 4k monitor is a bit much and having a game with a resolution of 720x576 but screenshots posted at 1440x1080, it just seems excessive and either that screenshot is a lot of wasted space or they increased the rendering on their emulator at which point it isn't representative of the native game anymore.

We must respect the correct fields to make the media download transparent to the user and predictable. i understand that some users twist the rules by personal interest or as woraround to solve tha lacks of database (we need extra fields) or the app ( option to download fanmedia if nothing legit is available an only in that scenario). My choice is to be orthodox and if it is fanmedia only accept it if is located in the correct field.

I understand waht are you saying about the size of logos, again is a workaround due to lacking of options in database and app, maybe we must promote a build in image compression method inside launchbox to just addthe highest quality available and make the size compression an option for the users or create new fields like clear logo HD, because some themes or pause/start themes use logos at full screen size.

Jason is asking for suggestions is up to you 

 

[Fugus]

@Freestate

Funny enough, me and you are the 2 most recent posters on that one.

The sad thing is, if we want to go with what you are suggesting, it will require either a moderator handling each submission to ensure they don't or the ability to delete many default fields within the games.

Like for games released on the WiiU through digital release only, that would require the "Box-Front", "Box-Back", "Box-Spine", "3D Box", "Cart-Front","Cart-Back", "3D Cart", and any other relevant fields be full on deleted or blocked from ever having submissions in them or people WILL be trying to media to them constantly because those gaps can create some really annoying situations in getting stuff in order.

 

Specially with how some (Like myself) would prefer there be a default box in those areas to keep collections nice, organized, and uniform, then you have others who feel a fan-art box doesn't fit but the media icon does and leaves you with some obscure media icon with no text as to what it is with many games having icons that don't even give enough information on what a game is, then you have others who just feel that that area is forever be blank.

And if it must be blank, than it needs to be greyed out or deleted to prevent the other 2 schools of thought trying to fill that slot and if it wants the other two than it would need a moderator overseeing it or at least a set rule by the moderation in what can potentially fill those slots which will still have some who didn't read it trying the other stuff and some people who just mindlessly hit "Accept" on moderation systems. I personally have only tried to moderate submissions a few times but mainly just keep hitting skip for 99% of it because I didn't know enough to accept or reject on the submissions.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Fugus