How do I add additional version of games?

[Tom Drake]

For a new platform, I can import roms and it'll group different versions together as one game. That works great.

But what if I want to run a new import that has another version of that game? It seems that both "import roms" and "scan for new rooms" will ignore that new rom when the game already exists.

Is there a process to make sure all games in a folder are included on a future import or scan?

[Lordmonkus]

Drag the game into LB to start the import process, tell it to force duplicates and after it's imported select it and the game you want to combine it with. Right click and combine.

[Tom Drake]

Thanks, that works!

What if I had an entire set of games, can I just drag in all of them to force it this way, then use the consolidate option?

Just trying to make sure I'm including all the games without having to lose play count, favourites, etc.

[Lordmonkus]

You can but you will have to combine games 1 by 1.

I think (but not certain) that if you remove the games from LB and then re-import the full set forcing duplicates and combining during import it should keep the play count and favourites but I cannot say for sure so if you do that do so at your own risk and back up the platform xml file before hand.

[Tom Drake]

I tried, but no luck. Once the games are deleted in LB, the platform XML is gone until reimporting.

It's so odd that you can't simply update based on your folder.

Maybe @JoeViking245 could open up his Copy Metadata plugin to include things like: Favorite, LastPlayedDate, Completed, CompletedDateTime, PlayCount, PlayTime

Then people could do a fresh import and catch all their roms, then be able to patch the personal stuff like above back in. Plus, we could share favourites as a way to highlight top games.

Or even better, come up with a solution to batch import all roms like it was an initial import, but match the duplicates up to games already in the DB! 😉

I see the Tools > File Management > Combine Roms that basically combines all duplicates, but maybe it's as simple as needing the ability to have it default to the oldest "DateAdded"?

[C-Beats]

13 hours ago, Tom Drake said:

Maybe @JoeViking245 could open up his Copy Metadata plugin to include things like: Favorite, LastPlayedDate, Completed, CompletedDateTime, PlayCount, PlayTime

If you turn on the cloud sync feature LaunchBox does this for you already with any game that has a DB ID attached to it.

[Tom Drake]

4 hours ago, C-Beats said:

If you turn on the cloud sync feature LaunchBox does this for you already with any game that has a DB ID attached to it.

Oh my god, I missed this feature update! This is great, and probably what @Lordmonkus was talking about.

I still think it would be great to have a scan/update option to get all the roms added (and removed) from the directory. But for now, I'll happily delete all the games in a platform and then re-add for major rom changes that I might do every year or two!

Thanks to both of you!

[C-Beats]

If you run the standard ROM import on the same folder again it should only list new files. Scan for removed can be used to find games who's files are no longer there.

[Lordmonkus]

44 minutes ago, Tom Drake said:

Oh my god, I missed this feature update! This is great, and probably what @Lordmonkus was talking about.

I wish I could say it was but I had no idea about this feature lol.

[Tom Drake]

1 hour ago, C-Beats said:

If you run the standard ROM import on the same folder again it should only list new files. Scan for removed can be used to find games who's files are no longer there.

 It doesn't seem to work for games where a new version is adding to one already there. So if I have a new Rev # or want to add a fan translation, it doesn't pick it up. If I do force duplicate, it'll add it and the original as a new entity, but that's a mess that then needs to be combined back to the original. Import new roms (or scan for new roms) seems to really be new GAMES, it isn't adding addition versions for me.

[C-Beats]

24 minutes ago, Tom Drake said:

 It doesn't seem to work for games where a new version is adding to one already there. So if I have a new Rev # or want to add a fan translation, it doesn't pick it up. If I do force duplicate, it'll add it and the original as a new entity, but that's a mess that then needs to be combined back to the original. Import new roms (or scan for new roms) seems to really be new GAMES, it isn't adding addition versions for me.

What you're talking about sounds correct for the "Scan for new games" functionality, but not the actual import. It doesn't pay attention to DB IDs at all (since by that point it hasn't matched your file to it).