Some quirks with the Arcade platform

[CaptainGreenhat]

A little preface, as a matter of taste I strongly dislike bucket dump platforms. I like to separate things, for example Arcade or windows pc whatever the default pc bucket is called. I keep Arcade as a platform category and then I add two sub categories, Arcade platforms, and Arcade Emulators. Then from there I add the emulators as individual platforms, teknoparrot, final burn, mame, etc, and the same for individual machine sets (sega model 2, cps1, 2 , 3, etc). I know doubling up like this is way beyond standard practice but this allows me a lot of control.

Anyways, I was just adding Final Burn NEO and whenever I manually search for metadata it is resetting my platform to arcade. I micro manage all my platforms like this and use the heck out of "scrape as" and this is the only time I have seen this behavior. 

The other thing I am seeing is when I go to download metadata im being forced to download multiple versions of different media gribbles. For example, 3 count bout, 2 arcade cab images, 2 circuit borad images, 2 control panels images, 4 marquees, 2 3d boxes, , 2 fan art box fronts, and 2 gameplay screenshots. I have seen this before on for screen shots but never anything else. This seems like a lot of forced bloat.

The are both minor inconveniences in the scope of things but still a layer of extra tedium that could and imo probably should be avoided.

Thanks for making this front end and for putting a next button on the metadata edit dialog, VERY APPRICATED!!!!!!!!!

Edited Friday at 07:08 PM by CaptainGreenhat
spell check changed some wording, I fixed it

[CaptainGreenhat]

Looks like the metadata lookup is being quirky in some circumstances as well, for example, it treated 10-yard fight 85, and 10-yard fight as the same game. (same metadata and same media gribbles, even the same data base ID#

[CaptainGreenhat]

It's not properly scrapping for retroachievements either. Are these new issues to the current version or because it is expecting the platform to be called arcade? All my other nonstandard custom platforms have scraped absolutely fine for me.  

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, CaptainGreenhat said:

I was just adding Final Burn NEO and whenever I manually search for metadata it is resetting my platform to arcade. I micro manage all my platforms like this and use the heck out of "scrape as" and this is the only time I have seen this behavior.

No idea on this one. Hopefully someone else can chime in on it.

 

1 hour ago, CaptainGreenhat said:

I go to download metadata im being forced to download multiple versions of different media gribbles.

When you edit an individual game and go to download images, this is what you'll get.  Alternately, you can select the [single] game and go to Tools < Download < Update Metadata and Media for selected Game... and have the option to set the limit per image type.

Neither option will let you select e.g. which of the 2 available Arcade Cabinets to download. If you're doing just one or a couple (or several), there's a plugin that will let you view and select exactly what and which images to download.   LaunchBox Games Database Image Viewer-Plus

 

And of course, there's always room for Feature Requests.

 

[CaptainGreenhat]

Thanks. I appreciate the feedback. Unfortunately most of the extra images are old low quality stuff so I definitely want control over picking. I was more or less posting all this to bring awareness. 😁

[JoeViking245]

17 hours ago, CaptainGreenhat said:

Looks like the metadata lookup is being quirky in some circumstances as well, for example, it treated 10-yard fight 85, and 10-yard fight as the same game. (same metadata and same media gribbles, even the same data base ID#

I was under the impression that in Arcade, clone ROMs (10yard85.zip) were considered the same game as their parent ROMs (10yard-zip). 

In this example "10-Yard Fight '85" is listed as an alternative name to "10-Yard Fight" [since it's the "same game"].

However, in the LB Games Database "Vs 10-Yard Fight" (vs10yard.zip), another clone of 10yard.zip has its own separate listing. But even though it has its own db ID#, the description is the same as "10-Yeard Fight" as are most of the images. But it is missing most of its metadata.

 

So a couple quirks, I suppose.  Inconsistency in how clones with different titles than their parents are separated out. And incomplete metadata for the separated out clones.

Personally, I think they should be lumped together and listed as alternate names. But then again, I don't have any involvement with the inner workings of the LB Games DB ( not do I want to. )

[CaptainGreenhat]

I'm weird. I'm a data hoarder/maximalist/completionist. I keep backups of everything, I seriously downloaded all of emu paradise, pleasure dome, and myrient before they all shut down and I keep full unmerged mame, fb, fbn, dphne, tosec, redump, nointro, exo, flashpoint, the older computer, etc anything I can justify as a set and have them all as alternate apps. I do this so I never have to hunt something down when a new rom hack comes out or a site shuts down. Admittedly I need more space so I can grab eggmans arcade dumps but most of those don't work without extreme finesse anyways. I even use a heirachy of which sets use which emulators. My rule of thumb, if it significantly changes gameplay or graphics it gets its own entry. Have to keep rebuilding launchbox though as once I get to about 12k games scrolling crashes launchbox.