Add games to a custom playlist

[deraile]

Or alternatively, how do playlists work/what are they intended for?
Hi, just bought premium and trying to set up this great app.

So, I see I can automate playlists, but I can't seem to be able do anything if I don't check that box. Other than changing a few data fields, a new playlist is essentially uninteractable without the 'auto-populate' option.

Now I'm wondering if I'm expecting the right thing out of playlists. In my head, I have a platform, for which I've imported all my games, and under that platform I can have different sets of games depending on how I want to group them (but now looking more into it, 'platforms' just look like fancier groups that are using a preset and can really be anything).

I don't want to group them by genre, developer, or year of release, those tags are useless for the purposes of my groups. For instance, I've already painstakingly made a 'master' list of the best SNES games, or those I feel I should play at some point. But I don't want to only import those. I still want my entire library available, if I ever desire to take a peek into it. Then maybe I want a group with multiplayer games (but those I'd want to play with my bro, and another list I'd want to play with someone else), etc.

tl;dr: In short I want to entirely curate every single game that goes into the set, or playlist I'm gonna make. How do I achieve that? Seems like a basic feature that a library organiser like Launchbox should have. I hope I'm just not finding how to do it.

Thank you.
-D

Edit: Oh and I did check around a fair amount but couldn't find an answer. The main side didn't seem to have any particular info on the topic, surprisingly no manual. The YouTube Tutorial playlist doesn't touch on this, at least no video with 'playlist' in its title. And nothing in the forums jumped at me so far

Edited December 23, 2023 by deraile

[Lordmonkus]

11 minutes ago, deraile said:

In short I want to entirely curate every single game that goes into the set, or playlist I'm gonna make. How do I achieve that? Seems like a basic feature that a library organiser like Launchbox should have. I hope I'm just not finding how to do it.

You import the games you want, whether that is a full set or curated set that is up to you. This will be the platform.

You can then make playlists either using the auto-populated method which uses fields as you have already figured out or you can right click a game or select multiple games using Control + Click on each game and then right click a game and add to playlist which will then ask you to set a name for that playlist or if you have playlists already made you can choose one of those to add the games to.

[deraile]

1 minute ago, Lordmonkus said:

You import the games you want, whether that is a full set or curated set that is up to you. This will be the platform.

You can then make playlists either using the auto-populated method which uses fields as you have already figured out or you can right click a game or select multiple games using Control + Click on each game and then right click a game and add to playlist which will then ask you to set a name for that playlist or if you have playlists already made you can choose one of those to add the games to.

Ohhh, ofc. Somehow didn't think of creating playlists from that angle. However I'm still looking at adding an entire set that I've already curated. I don't want to go and individually add the 350+ games again from the main playlist. I guess there's just no such option as 'add folder', which is a shame. With such an in-depth category/platform/playlist system, this feels like an oversight. I guess I'll eat the hit for that one, and curate my games from within LB from now on. Whenever I'll next need to, I've pretty much grouped all the consoles I want for now. I didn't have LB when I did my big sorting operation.
Thanks for the quick reply.

[Retro_Rage]

1 hour ago, deraile said:

Ohhh, ofc. Somehow didn't think of creating playlists from that angle. However I'm still looking at adding an entire set that I've already curated. I don't want to go and individually add the 350+ games again from the main playlist. I guess there's just no such option as 'add folder', which is a shame. With such an in-depth category/platform/playlist system, this feels like an oversight. I guess I'll eat the hit for that one, and curate my games from within LB from now on. Whenever I'll next need to, I've pretty much grouped all the consoles I want for now. I didn't have LB when I did my big sorting operation.
Thanks for the quick reply.

When you add the games, you can add multiple folders to Launchbox and it will import them as one platform. Then if you manually add a playlist, under auto populate there is a source option. If you select that and enter the (custom) name of the folder that the games are in, it will automatically populate with only games from that folder.

[deraile]

17 hours ago, Retro_Rage said:

When you add the games, you can add multiple folders to Launchbox and it will import them as one platform. Then if you manually add a playlist, under auto populate there is a source option. If you select that and enter the (custom) name of the folder that the games are in, it will automatically populate with only games from that folder.

Ahh this is what I looking for. Kinda unintuitive, but hey, it's there! My setup isn't quite ready to create a playlist this way, but that's on me. Thank you for pointing out this method to me. I had seen this same 'source' option, but I didn't know how to use it. I'll try it out when I have time. Kinda done for now with my setup, done so much sorting today! 😵😪 Thanks again, good evening/night/day.