Scan for Added ROMs Inconsistent

[Stephen Burkart]

Each time No-Intro or Redump releases a new DAT, I will scan my sets and add any new ROMs that have been released. What I typically do after scanning and fixing against said DATs is to run the “scan for removed ROMs” action since some of the file names most likely have changed. I then run the “scan for added ROMs” action to pickup any changed names and/or new files. It will often import some but not all of them and there are often leftovers that no matter how many times I run it will shows the same files as read to import only for it to say 0 imported. Run it again and the same files will show again.

The only way I can correct this problem is to delete the entire platform and start over. I am running through my sets now and have hit about 10 so far that I have had to do this with. I have been using LaunchBox for quite a few years and I just don’t recall having to do this until somewhat recently. This doesn’t seem normal and having to delete everything each time makes it hard to keep my play history intact.

[brian]

We’ve seen this caused if you already have a similar game in your library. If this is the case, you’ll need to make sure you check off the option to “Force importing duplicate games” to get LaunchBox to actually add them.

However, we are planning to look at this logic sometime in the next few months to see how we can improve the scanning feature.

[Stephen Burkart]

Well apparently you can’t just check that box I’m guessing without further problems. I just tried that with SMS and it duplicated all the existing games. It indeed imported the few files stuck but caused a different problem.

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[brian]

Yes, if you force duplicate games, it’ll import the games again, like you are asking. Therefore, you could also turn on the option: Combine ROMs with matching titles into a single game. That would then import the duplicate games you are wanting, and then combine them together into one game entry, all at the same time.

[Stephen Burkart]

In the example I showed where Action Fighter, Addams Family, and Aerial Assault were duplicated, if I combine them, will I still end up with both entries of say… the US version combined under 1 entry? Or will it throw away the duplicate? I just don’t want to then end up with with dupes showing up under the “play version” option.

In this example, would I see 8 entries instead of 4?

[Stephen Burkart]

Well I’m in a testing mood today so gave it a shot on my SNK CD set. As I suspected, it combined the games but kept the duplicate entries. Unless there are any other ideas to handle this, I’ll continue to delete the platform and import clean.

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[Stephen Burkart]

It has been a year since I put this ticket in and wanted to breathe a little life back into it to see if fixing this issue is anywhere on the horizon. It is by far the most frustrating issue I have with the software. If I didn’t have a bunch of custom playlists I would just delete all the games and add them back, but that just creates more work doing it that way. I keep my sets pretty current and nearly nearly every platform will have a handful of games that refuse to import because the parent record exists already. Maybe most people don’t bother updating their sets after importing, but for us that do, it is sometimes very difficult to locate the game or games blocking an alternate app from getting appended.

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[brian]

I’ve had it explained to me how it works, and while it’s working in the way it was intended to work, we are aware that it’s not always ideal, especially in situations like yours.

We do have plans to address certain things with it in future updates, and as it stands it is currently on our long list of things to do. It’s currently a pre-requisite for a much larger project that we want to eventually tackle with the program.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to give an ETA for it at the moment, but just know we are aware of the feature’s shortcomings and we wish to expand upon them in the future.

[Stephen Burkart]

I appreciate the update. I’m happy to hear at least it is a known issue and MAYBE it will be fixed at some point. I’ll set my calendar to poke this in a year.