My Suggestions #002: "Merge ROMs" function

[Geronimo]

This is a very nice feature indeed, especially for those huge TOSEC collections with their multitude of alternate versions.

I've seen some problems with grouping ROMs together, resulting in an empty "gameslist" (the screen where you are supposed to choose a single ROM). I couldn't yet identify a pattern that creates the problem though, i'm going to report on this when i can supply more info and examples.

A small issue i've noticed: the "[a]" tag, which is commonly used to denote an "alternate", is resolved to the "Australia" region by GameEx. I believe the agreed-upon standard is to have country/region tags enclosed by round brackets (-> "(" and ")") and more "special" stuff in square brackets (-> "[" and "]"). Tom, what are your thoughts on this? Would you change the current behavious in a future GameEx version?

And a suggestion: how about showing the number of ROMs in a group in the games list? Something like "<ROM Name> (5)" or "<ROM Name> (5 items)" would be most useful.

[twotone8]

another little glitch with merged roms is that they don't show up in 'favorites' or 'last played' lists.

[Geronimo]

I've found one instance where a game is missing from the gameslist when "merge" is active.

I've created a number of CMD files (batches) for starting WHDLoad games. Created a new emulator with the advanced setup app, pointed the ROM dir to where the batches are stored, set the file spec to "*.cmd", selected the "[PC] Commodore Amiga.mdb" database and activated merging.

There's three batches for games in the "Abandoned Places" series (and lots more for other games of course) in my ROM dir:

Abandoned Places.cmd

Abandoned Places (German).cmd

Abandoned Places 2.cmd

"Abandoned Places (German)" isn't displayed in the game list, no matter what i try. I've deleted all "EMU_*.*" files in "c:\GameEx\DATA\" in order to force GameEx to rebuild its indexes/caches. The game still doesn't show up. I expected it to be merged with "Abandoned Places", but it doesn't show up in the main game list and the details page for "Abandoned Places". Happens with the latest GameEx version (10.72) as well. Renamed the file to "Abandoned Places (Ger).cmd", deleted the index/cache files, and it still doesn't show up at all. Same with "Abandoned Places (DE).cmd" and "Abandoned Places (D).cmd". Renamed the files to "Abandoned Places - A Time for Heroes.cmd" and "Abandoned Places - A Time for Heroes (German).cmd", as that's how the game is named in the mdb - still not showing up in the game list. Looks like GameEx doesn't like this game (; .

This problem is rather unsettling. The number of WHDLoad games is not very large so it's relatively easy to spot missings. But what about large TOSEC sets with thousands of files?

Please tell me if you need more information. I can provide the emulator config and all batches if it helps in identifying the issue.

EDIT: spelling

[Geronimo]

I'd like to *bump* this topic because it probably describes a GameEx bug. Tom, any comments on the behaviour i've described?