What am I supposed to name those games for them to be correctly picked up by the LB database?

[Flyojumper]

I have a list of 7 Commodore Amiga games that I cannot for the life of me get picked up correctly by the database, no matter how I alter the rom title:

Discovery (MicroIllusions)
Elf (Ocean)
Knightmare (Mindscape)
Overdrive (Team17)
Rage (Unreleased)
Tetris (Mirrorsoft)
WarZone (Paradox)

Those names are exactly as they appear on the website (no alternate title available for any of them), yet they all get picked up as a game by the same title that has another developer in parenthesis.

For example, a rom named "Elf (Ocean).lha" gets picked up as the game "Elf (MicroValue)", exactly like a rom "Elf (MicroValue).lha" or even just "Elf.lha" would. It seems to completely ignore the parenthesis part, even though it's an official part of the game title in the database.

I am aware that I can manually edit each of those game entries to the correct game, but I sometimes have to reimport my rom list and I would like the cleaner and more permanent solution of naming the roms properly so the games are recognized upon import.

Could someone advise how I should name those 7 roms or look into fixing that issue of ignoring parenthesis content? (or perhaps adding an alternate title recognition like "Elf - Ocean" for games like those if the parenthesis are problematic?)

[Flyojumper]

bump

[Flyojumper]

Could a mod or dev please look into this?

[Flyojumper]

12 minutes ago, zugswang said:

I just tried the first 2 and they come up no problem.

Add them manually.

Just type in dis for the first one and el for the second one etc and then look down the list (both are there and probably all the rest as well)

 

On 8/2/2023 at 3:50 PM, Flyojumper said:

I am aware that I can manually edit each of those game entries to the correct game, but I sometimes have to reimport my rom list and I would like the cleaner and more permanent solution of naming the roms properly so the games are recognized upon import.

You are referring to a manual lookup and fix, I am concerned about them being properly recognized upon import. That should be possible like any other games assuming the user named their rom identically to the title present in Launchbox, but the parenthesis in the current Launchbox naming system seems to make that impossible. Short of fixing that issue of parenthesis being ignored and causing a problem, I believe changing the parenthesis in the official LB naming to a dash or something similar could work.

[sundogak]

LB ignores parenthesis as you noted so that isn't changing in that it would cause other issues unless there was some sort of toggle or lock (my preferred would be ability to lock certain fields).  Assuming that isn't changing any time soon, you already have a mechanism to do what you want.  Add an alternative name in the database for that game entry.  The DB is mostly community driven vs some official naming process so you would need to make those changes.  Arcade entries in particular have these to deal with the MAME developers way of naming things (e.g., "3 Count Bout / Fire Suplex" = alternative name for 3 Count Bout so MAME naming imports).  

Edit: the other would be you submit a bitbucket feature request, but that is long term if at all solution since depends on others wanting similar.  

Edited August 12, 2023 by sundogak

[Flyojumper]

4 hours ago, sundogak said:

LB ignores parenthesis as you noted so that isn't changing in that it would cause other issues unless there was some sort of toggle or lock (my preferred would be ability to lock certain fields).  Assuming that isn't changing any time soon, you already have a mechanism to do what you want.  Add an alternative name in the database for that game entry.  The DB is mostly community driven vs some official naming process so you would need to make those changes.  Arcade entries in particular have these to deal with the MAME developers way of naming things (e.g., "3 Count Bout / Fire Suplex" = alternative name for 3 Count Bout so MAME naming imports).  

Edit: the other would be you submit a bitbucket feature request, but that is long term if at all solution since depends on others wanting similar.  

I wish I could have fixed it by submitting an alternate title in the database, but from my experience, those are not enough to ensure it gets properly picked up by the import tool. I am not sure how the inner workings of the database work but I suspect there are either "official invisible" alternate titles that are not listed in the game page, but that those are the ones that are used by the import tool, not necessarily any alternate listed on the website. That, or there is several days delay between an alternate title being in the website and the actual import tool taking it into account (despite manually updating the metadata file of course).

I have had experiences in the past where I submitted an alternate title, it was accepted in the database and it was still not enough for the rom to get picked up by the import tool despite having the title match character by character what the alternate field was. I can guarantee that this happens and if a mod replies to this and wants me to fish out precise examples, I will.