Playlist Auto-Populate 'And' 'Or' Support?

[C-Beats]

6 hours ago, darreldearth said:

Region is equal to will give me all games which contain that region

As stated.... NO it won't... If you'd do what was asked you'd already see this in action. As previously stated Region is a single string field NOT multi-string. Equal To checks the entire string is equal to the criteria. If the game's region is "North America, Europe" (without quotes) and you utilize the playlist filter: Region - Is Equal To - North America, then the game is NOT picked up. It WOULD be if you had Region - Contains - North America.

All you need for any of the playlists you've mentioned thus far is the equal to comparison. For the 4th you'd just have all three filters in so that LB uses it's OR comparisons:
Region - Is Equal To - North America
Region - Is Equal To - Europe
Region - Is Equal To - Japan

Doing so would grab all games who's region is EXACTLY one of those 3 values and NOT include games that have region strings similar to "North America, Europe" (without quotes).

[darreldearth]

On 4/23/2025 at 4:54 AM, C-Beats said:

As stated.... NO it won't... If you'd do what was asked you'd already see this in action. As previously stated Region is a single string field NOT multi-string. Equal To checks the entire string is equal to the criteria. If the game's region is "North America, Europe" (without quotes) and you utilize the playlist filter: Region - Is Equal To - North America, then the game is NOT picked up. It WOULD be if you had Region - Contains - North America.

All you need for any of the playlists you've mentioned thus far is the equal to comparison. For the 4th you'd just have all three filters in so that LB uses it's OR comparisons:
Region - Is Equal To - North America
Region - Is Equal To - Europe
Region - Is Equal To - Japan

Doing so would grab all games who's region is EXACTLY one of those 3 values and NOT include games that have region strings similar to "North America, Europe" (without quotes).

I understand what you're saying. However, Most PS1 Games are labeled something like this...

Silent Hill (USA)

Silent Hill (Europe)

Silent Hill (Japan).

AND NOT LIKE THIS

Silent Hill (USA, Europe)

Silent Hill (Europe, Japan)

Silent Hill (Japan, North America).

As you see there's a separate game for each region (Not 1 game with multiple regions listed). I only want the game to show up if it DOES NOT show up in another region. I would need XOR logic not OR logic. when i do what you're saying they all 3 show up, because the games aren't labeled Silent Hill (USA, Europe), Silent Hill (USA, Japan) etc. etc. If there's no XOR logic then my only other thought would be to use Launchbox IDs, but even then I can't figure out how to not show a game if there's more than 1 game with the same Launchbox ID. And another option would be to separate each of them into different platforms, but even then there's still no way to have launchbox only display a game if it exists in ONLY 1 out of the 3 platforms based off it's name, region or LB ID. Basically trying to show games ONLY if there are no duplicates of that game. Hope this makes sense. 

Edited Thursday at 11:32 PM by darreldearth

[Fursphere]

C-Beats is talking about the LB DB information.   Not the file name. 

[darreldearth]

Correct, My games are all listed under the LB DB information by their region which is how I'm sorting them into playlists. Launchbox contains options for Contains, Doesn't Contain, Contains any value, and doesn't contain any value, but it needs an option for Contains only 1 of the values (XOR)

Right now hes asking me to use

Region - Is Equal to - USA

Region - Is Equal to - Japan

Region - Is Equal to - Europe

which will show all 3, but what i need is....

Region - Contains only one of the values - USA, Japan, Europe (Or something Similar)

Edited yesterday at 12:09 AM by darreldearth

[Fursphere]

I suggest you manually sort your ROMs into separate folders, then import them individually as separate platforms. 

This is the work around that I've come to use. 

[darreldearth]

5 hours ago, Fursphere said:

I suggest you manually sort your ROMs into separate folders, then import them individually as separate platforms. 

This is the work around that I've come to use. 

That's currently what I'm doing, but wanted to create a playlist combining all 3 platforms which only shows the games which exist within a single platform only. Thus giving me the region exclusive games. 

[C-Beats]

11 hours ago, darreldearth said:

Region - Contains only one of the values - USA, Japan, Europe (Or something Similar)

What I'm asking you to do DOES this...

I believe the issue you're having is your not describing the situation or your desires correctly. Are you hoping to import the following:
Game A (USA)
Game A (EU)
Game B (JP)

and only see Game B in the playlist?

It sounds at this point like you may be trying to create an auto-pop playlist with logic that requires knowing about your entire library and not just that individual game. Something like, "Find all the games who's DB ID isn't duplicated ever". This isn't currently possible and wouldn't be by adding your request. Auto-pop playlists look at each game individually and applies the filter logic to that one game before moving onto the next.

[Penlab]

I've got a fun example of an issue. I'm trying to make playlists of companies, but they can either be a publisher or a developer. How do I solve this without having to painstakingly alter each entry?

[C-Beats]

59 minutes ago, Penlab said:

I've got a fun example of an issue. I'm trying to make playlists of companies, but they can either be a publisher or a developer. How do I solve this without having to painstakingly alter each entry?

There isn't a way to do OR across two separate fields currently. With the variations in company names it could make doing that via an auto-pop difficult anyway since names change over the lifetime of the company. You can always manually add the games to a playlist though.

[Penlab]

1 hour ago, C-Beats said:

There isn't a way to do OR across two separate fields currently. With the variations in company names it could make doing that via an auto-pop difficult anyway since names change over the lifetime of the company. You can always manually add the games to a playlist though.

Thanks, that was kind of my point in mentioning since you all seem to be discussing reasons why an "and" "or" structure would be useful. 

Name changes and variations wouldn't be that much of an issue since Launchbox already allows for "contains" as a qualifier. The "or" part is the real problem. 

And yes, of course games can be added manually, but as an example, Capcom. They've got a lot of games, you know? It's not viable as a long-term solution.

Frankly, I admit I'm surprised "or" isn’t a function. No offense, but it feels like a pretty basic standard for any kind of system like this.

[MrDeKat]

Two doubts about Playlist Auto-Populate:

- Can I search for information in the Application/ROM Path in additional application? This is to have an automatic list of games on itchio or other stores/ROMs, when my main version is one from Steam or GOG.

- I'm preparing automatic lists of series based on their titles. Is it possible to filter by a field that contains one word and excludes another? For example, the Call of Duty series: contain "Call of Duty" while exclude "Commandos" so that "Commandos: Call of Duty" doesn't appear.

[darreldearth]

15 hours ago, C-Beats said:

What I'm asking you to do DOES this...

I believe the issue you're having is your not describing the situation or your desires correctly. Are you hoping to import the following:
Game A (USA)
Game A (EU)
Game B (JP)

and only see Game B in the playlist?

It sounds at this point like you may be trying to create an auto-pop playlist with logic that requires knowing about your entire library and not just that individual game. Something like, "Find all the games who's DB ID isn't duplicated ever". This isn't currently possible and wouldn't be by adding your request. Auto-pop playlists look at each game individually and applies the filter logic to that one game before moving onto the next.

Correct, I'm looking for comparison logic which will give Game A (USA), Game A (EU), Game B (JP) = Game B (JP). Figured LB might have an option for it since it basically has an Audit List capability already built in per platform which would make it easy to do the comparison. I Can always have Ai do the comparison and make the Data xml, but just thought it would be nice if there was a work around already built into launchbox.

[Penlab]

12 hours ago, Penlab said:

Thanks, that was kind of my point in mentioning since you all seem to be discussing reasons why an "and" "or" structure would be useful. 

Name changes and variations wouldn't be that much of an issue since Launchbox already allows for "contains" as a qualifier. The "or" part is the real problem. 

And yes, of course games can be added manually, but as an example, Capcom. They've got a lot of games, you know? It's not viable as a long-term solution.

Frankly, I admit I'm surprised "or" isn’t a function. No offense, but it feels like a pretty basic standard for any kind of system like this.

Heh, found someone provided my same exact example four years ago. I guess I should forget about that ever being an option, which is a shame, because it really handicaps what you can do with playlists to not have that ability.

[darreldearth]

I created a program that everyone can use since the Game comparison logic wasn't built into Launchbox. This program will compare all your games (XML Files) from whichever platform/playlist xml files you want (Which are in your Data Folder), and then give you a list of unique games FOR EACH xml file in a .txt file which are not found in the other xml files. It then allows you to create txt files in subfolders titled with the unique game names so you can import them, You'll just need to manually changing the file extensions of the imported txt files (e.g., from .txt to the appropriate format such as .ISO, .CSO, .7z, or .Zip) using the batch rename function in notepad.

• Select XML Files: Allows you to pick multiple XML files containing game lists.
• Compare Games: Reads the selected XMLs, finds games unique to each file (using Database ID first, then normalized filename), and handles variations.
• Generate Unique Lists: Creates a separate text file for each input XML, listing the games found only in that specific XML.
• Create Folders/Files: Based on the generated text files, it creates a subfolder for each text file (named after the text file) and puts a blank text file inside for every unique game listed in it.

game_comparer_gui.zip

Edited 4 hours ago by darreldearth

[Penlab]

Follow up question on my request.

Is there a way to combine data from two fields into one field in bulk? Tell Launchbox to take whatever data is in the Publisher field and add it to the Developer field?

I'd rather have technically inaccurate information if it allows me ease and peace of mind to make automatically updating playlists.

[Penlab]

Or, is it possible to take the data from Publisher and Developer and put them both in another field altogether? That way I could just create playlists based on that field alone using "contains".