[Sik]

ICEknight, on 01 December 2011 - 07:00 PM, said:

In my oppinion, in the case of incompatibilities, that kind of info would belong in a folder name. Just like you don't mix SNES and SMS ROMs in the same folder because they're incompatible, you'd look into the "Japan" or the "USA" folder for games that aren't compatible in other regions.

Then you end up with seven unique folders (J, U, E, JU, JE, UE, JUE), and to be fair this isn't really a good way to categorize games. With the same criteria I could categorize games by just about everything that could be considered metadata.

[ICEknight]

More like 11 folders, in the case of the Mega Drive.

=|


But I personally find it more accesible than having everything in the same place. After all, if the Japanese version has a different name, having the overseas versions in the same place isn't going to help looking for it... And you also won't get the problem Meat Miracle mentioned about running into a game that's incompatible with the region you're looking forward to use.


I think that's the cleanest possible way of naming ROMs, but it's just my oppinion, of course.


EDIT: By the way, perhaps some mod could split this topic from the 20th post onwards? I'm noticing the off-topic got a bit out of hand, sorry.

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 01 December 2011 - 07:46 PM

[Sik]

ICEknight, on 01 December 2011 - 07:29 PM, said:

More like 11 folders, in the case of the Mega Drive.

Technically there are only 4 regions (domestic + NTSC, domestic + PAL, overseas + NTSC, overseas + PAL), and one of them isn't even valid (the only way you'll stumble upon it is with a console that has a region mod). But you need to take into account all possible combinations.

[Meat Miracle]

OK, I'm not entirely sure what you want to achieve here.

Do you want all games per system to be in one folder?
Do you want games for one system to be also split across regions?

So like:
- Sega CD\Keio Flying Squadron (E).rar
- Sega CD\Keio Flying Squadron (U).rar
- Sega CD\Keio Yuugekitai.rar
having the (region) in there only for games that share the title, but not for the unique ones? That's stupid, because then you wouldn't know which games are J or E or U to begin with. This is what I was assuming for the entire time.

But if you do this:
- Sega CD\E\Keio Flying Squadron.rar
- Sega CD\U\Keio Flying Squadron.rar
- Sega CD\J\Keio Yuugekitai.rar
This is more logical, and you can omit the (country) suffix as long as you don't accidentally move one file to a wrong folder!
That's why I personally keep stuff with (System) (Region) suffixes, ON TOP of folders for regions based, both folders and suffixes based on their market release and not ROM header or some other wizardry. (game naming based on the game data + game naming based on the actual physical release is WILDLY different!)

But in both cases you could also just list "Sega CD\Keio Flying Squadron (J).rar" or "Sega CD\J\Keio Flying Squadron.rar", because it's the exact same game, just released at a different region!

ICEknight, on 01 December 2011 - 07:29 PM, said:

More like 11 folders, in the case of the Mega Drive.

=|

And for the Saturn you have 16 regions, out of which 2 are invalid, 6 are reserved, and 8 that the machine can boot (JTUBKAEL). That gives you at worst 16 777 216 folders. In practice, a lot less were used though. J, T, E, U were the ones most commonly put in random orders. Some games inexplicably also used others, among them some high profile titles like the NTSC-U release of Daytona USA (header country code: BKUT), Die Hard Trilogy (PAL release: EAL, NTSC-U release: TUK). Some titles were also confusing: Golden Axe The Duel NTSC-J: JT, NTSC-U: UTJ (not JTU, but UTJ), Croc Legend of Gobbos NTSC-J: J, PAL: E, but NTSC-U: UJE. (I've only loosely checked up till the letter G, so there oughta be a handful of more)

That's why I think it's completely pointless to sort crap by whatever BS is in the game header. Some games didn't even bother to change the headers between alternate regions, you have the japanese GS-xxxx serial for Virtua Fighter Kids in the European release.

And you have regions that received 1 game in total: China for Myst, and Brazil for Riven. Do we really need a different folder for 1 single file each? Couldn't they go in just "Other"? Yeah, but if you look at the actual stuff that was released, you can see dozens of Chinese, Brazilian, Korean games, even if the disc data matched the stuff in the USA release.

And then we have all the lovely EU countries, all getting different localized versions! That means we suddenly have La Mansión de las Almas Ocultas, Le Manoir des Ames Perdues, Mystery Mansion - Das Haus Der Verlorenen Seelen, Shinsetsu Yumemi Yakata ~Tobira no Oku ni Dareka ga...~, and finally: The Mansion of Hidden Souls! AND IT DOESN'T END HERE EITHER: The Mansion of Hidden Souls is split to The Mansion of Hidden Souls (USA) and The Mansion of Hidden Souls (UK)! All are fully legit, use different game data, and have their own serial suffixes indicating different regions.

Solution 1: build a DB that lists crap by all the physical releases, separately listing crap for USA, JPN, KOR, BRA, CHI, EUR (generic), ENG, ESP, FRE, GER, IT, WHATEVER, ELSE, and then build a 2nd database that is dynamically linked into the first, and only lists the actual game data: so Nights into Dreams BRA and Nights into Dreams KOR all have a link saying: "game data same as (link)Nights into Dreams USA(/link).

Solution 2: fuck it, let's have a beer.

Ponder long enough on all of this, and you'll come to one of those two solutions, I can guarantee you.

[ICEknight]

Quote

That's why I think it's completely pointless to sort crap by whatever BS is in the game header.

Me too. Those folders were based on release regions rather than header values, or at least they tried to be.

And I opt for the solution 2 for now.

[Meat Miracle]

ICEknight, on 01 December 2011 - 09:00 PM, said:

Those folders were based on release regions rather than header values, or at least they tried to be.

Then, if they are MD/Genesis titles, they are wrong: you can't have Europe + USA because USA never had any Megadrive games, and Europe never had any Genesis ones officially released! See how fucked up this is?

Quote

And I opt for the solution 2 for now.

You can tell that I have more experience with this because I did that before I started writing that entire post.

[Sik]

Meat Miracle, on 01 December 2011 - 08:39 PM, said:

And for the Saturn you have 16 regions, out of which 2 are invalid, 6 are reserved, and 8 that the machine can boot (JTUBKAEL). That gives you at worst 16 777 216 folders.

Wait, how the hell do you reach that much? If you consider only the valid regions the system can boot from (because no other region would really work for starters), you get at most 255 possible combinations. Heck, even if you took into account all 16 possible regions, you'd have at most 65,535 possible combinations.

Meat Miracle, on 01 December 2011 - 08:39 PM, said:

Solution 1: build a DB that lists crap by all the physical releases, separately listing crap for USA, JPN, KOR, BRA, CHI, EUR (generic), ENG, ESP, FRE, GER, IT, WHATEVER, ELSE, and then build a 2nd database that is dynamically linked into the first, and only lists the actual game data: so Nights into Dreams BRA and Nights into Dreams KOR all have a link saying: "game data same as (link)Nights into Dreams USA(/link).

Solution 2: fuck it, let's have a beer.

To be fair, if you have an OS that supports symbolic links (e.g. Linux) and a script to generate the folders and the links, solution #1 sounds feasible. But c'mon, even if you could do that, in practice when you're looking for a game you care about at most two things: the system and the name. All that categorization will go to waste, really. So solution #2 it is, even if you could do #1.

This post has been edited by Sik: 01 December 2011 - 10:17 PM

[Meat Miracle]

Sik, on 01 December 2011 - 10:17 PM, said:

Wait, how the hell do you reach that much? If you consider only the valid regions the system can boot from (because no other region would really work for starters), you get at most 255 possible combinations. Heck, even if you took into account all 16 possible regions, you'd have at most 65,535 possible combinations.

I got it by going with solution 2 early on (and doing 8^8 (16 mil) instead of 8! (40320). However, that 8! only counts the total permutations for JTUBKAEL, and doesn't count for the fact that after the first character, the rest are optional. So with the empty char in mind, you have, uh, 8*(8!/2) maybe? And that's assuming that an empty space can happen in the last seven characters and, have it still followed by additional codes? I don't think that one is allowed, so if the empty space is the last char, than wouldn't we have something like 8! * 2?


But if you do not count the order of each letter, than you are down to 8+7+...+2+1 = 36.

Maybe.

[Sik]

The order of the letters shouldn't really matter since we only care about which regions are supported (since we're talking about compatibility), not in which order they're defined. In this case the amount of combinations is (2^n)-1, where n is the number of regions. With 8 regions, the count is (2^8)-1 = 256-1 = 255. The -1 is there so "no region supported" isn't counted, for obvious reasons =P

I don't think the order of the regions even matters at all. Systems are only meant to support one region, so if there's anything region-specific, it'll be also system-specific.

[Meat Miracle]

Yeah, 2^8-1 sounds right. I have no idea where I got those numbers from.


Order of regions doesn't count for anything more than having it documented. If you just batch run through every saturn game, you'd get a bunch of permutations about that for sure - you might just want to get the value as a binary switch of sorts instead of the letters themselves (so instead of grabbing JTE and UTJ, you'd have J = 1, T = 2, U = 4, E = 64, and record JTE as 67 and UTJ as 70). Whatever is this thing called...

[Sik]

Meat Miracle, on 01 December 2011 - 11:40 PM, said:

Whatever is this thing called...

Bitfield?