There are a lot of missing game/box images in most platforms, can this be improved?

[strich]

I've been recently adding a lot of platforms from MAME and the MAME Software List and I'm finding quite a few of the games have no images available for them at all. I'd understand the lack of box art as I'm sure many of the more obscure ones just don't have them, but I'd have hoped at least an in-game screenshot would be available. Am I missing something? Surely _someone_ with as much OCD as I do have catalogued screenshots for these sorts of games?

A screenshot of my library just for reference:

[sundogak]

2 hours ago, strich said:

I've been recently adding a lot of platforms from MAME and the MAME Software List and I'm finding quite a few of the games have no images available for them at all. I'd understand the lack of box art as I'm sure many of the more obscure ones just don't have them, but I'd have hoped at least an in-game screenshot would be available. Am I missing something? Surely _someone_ with as much OCD as I do have catalogued screenshots for these sorts of games?

A screenshot of my library just for reference:

A few things to check. 

First you should make sure your game is linked to LB DB.  Otherwise media won't download since LB doesn't know which game it is.  Thus, make sure any games not showing a LB ID (top right circle) you manually connect and media should then download. 

Second, is LB can get confused as to which platform to look for in DB (particularly for MAME as it has lots of different things beyond Arcade).  Looking at a few in your screenshot you imported "handheld" and "other" games for MAME.  For example, the game "3 in 1 Sports Arena" is a handheld game and the entry for media is listed (confusingly within LB DB) under the "Nintendo Game & Watch" platform, not arcade.  People have tended to put handheld stuff beyond Nintendo Game and Watch there. Sometimes it is in Arcade as well.  Anything under Arcade (MAME) will typically default to Arcade platform to scrape from LB DB. 

The issue is this game is under the Nintendo Game and Watch platform, not Arcade 

For this reason I separate handhelds under their own platform (MAME Handhelds, and Nintendo Game and Watch).

 

For handhelds and some non-Arcade MAME systems there tends to not always be an entry in the LB DB and if present, not as much media as you would see for Arcade systems.  Actual Nintendo Game and Watch games are relatively complete for media but other non-Nintendo handhelds in MAME set are more hit and miss. Another example is that "10R" entry is a pocket calculator which has no LB DB entry and no media. You can either hide the entry, delete it, move to another platform or leave as is with no DB data or images. But from a MAME developer view it is considered a "handheld" and gets pulled in when imported.

Edited January 28 by sundogak

[strich]

Fantastic info thanks @sundogak! So how would I reimport the MAME 261 ROMs and have them correctly set their platform? I used the Launchbox MAME importer and thought it'd do the right thing?

[sundogak]

@strichThe importer is doing what it is supposed to it is just the LB DB does not deal well with non-Arcade items that are part of full MAME set (similarly Software Lists in MAME have same issue). Reimporting won't fix the issue as it relates to the scraper and the platform used.  Thus, it is a manual affair to address it.  For example, create a Nintendo Game & Watch platform manually. Right click in left pane and select new platform option.  Set that platform to scrape for Nintendo G&W.  I recall LB will complain you shouldn't add manually, ignore that.  Then go back to your MAME arcade list and select the games you want to move to that platform.  Right-click and can use bulk edit to change the platform in one go.  LB will still point to the roms in the MAME directory and MAME will still be your emulator, but for LB viewing purposes it will move them to that separate platform from Arcade.  Then you can rescrape the games and should bring up the media correctly (at least for proper Nintendo GNW games).  There are about 50 or so Nintendo GNW games. 

For the all the other MAME handhelds it has been awhile since messed with it. I think I used the filter ability here  to select handhelds via Additional Filters and Categories, and then you can export out an XML file and import that list into LB via a plugin that imports XML files.  The difference is I hadn't imported handhelds initially. Or, if already imported, you can do the manual brute force way similar to the Nintendo GNW and look for the games, bulk select and move to a new platform.  For example if you go into list view in LB and look at "source" column anything with "hh_" will be a handheld (sadly they don't all show source data).  Developers like Tiger, Tomy are also good indicators for handhelds.  Like mentioned though, once you get into non-Nintendo G&W handhelds the media starts to get sparse. Tiger games tend to have some (or packs you can find in LB download site) but quality is not as high as what you may be used to for other systems.  It really depends on how much you want to fiddle with it all for games that tend to be low "replay" vs arcade type games.

Edited January 28 by sundogak

[strich]

Thanks for the info mate. Man, I must admit I'm a little sad - I'd have thought the MAME library would have first class clean imports as its not exactly a rapidly evolving ROM set anymore. What a shame each one of us has to manually grind out all this work.

[sundogak]

16 hours ago, strich said:

Thanks for the info mate. Man, I must admit I'm a little sad - I'd have thought the MAME library would have first class clean imports as its not exactly a rapidly evolving ROM set anymore. What a shame each one of us has to manually grind out all this work.

It is evolving particularly for non-Arcade.  Many of the GNW and Tiger handhelds were not added to running MAME set until about 4 years ago ("new" when you figure arcade games have been working for decade plus).  Media lags after added to working set.  The full MAME set has ~46,000 emulated systems vs about 3K for arcade.  Most of those emulated systems many people don't care about as they are not games (e.g., the 10R calculator above is good example). 

The media in the LB DB is user uploaded (plus people have to make it).  Gameboy, PSP type systems have good LB support and media in DB because they are popular systems.  The polls that come out for LB every year or so never get many votes for anything like MAME Software List sets or handling of non-arcade MAME stuff (I would also like better pinball support media wise).  But LB goes where the user base wants/votes.  Anything else you got to put time in and there are tools like at arcadeitalia.net and plugins at this site that can speed it up. Or you do the manual sort way which is a few hours of time. Either way you will come back to a large chunk of handheld games will not have complete media (or any) available in LB DB or otherwise.  I keep my Handhelds section hidden from Big Box for that reason.  As with all hobbies you have to decide if it is worth the bother. 

Edited January 29 by sundogak