Hey guys, what I wanted to ask, is whether no-intro dats are supposed to have some level of uniformity? What I mean is, some dats use different rules for deciding titles, placement of tags and such, and I was wondering, is the ideal to have all dats to be uniform? The Genesis dat, for example, is the only one I know of that seperates different country region names with a ~ such as:
[32X] Knuckles' Chaotix (U) ~ Chaotix (J)
which can be confusing. I believe there needs to be some discussion, and decide once and for all a uniform tagging structure to put in plae across all dats. I believe certain things, such as [BIOS], (Unl), (Beta) etc should be prefixed to the roms. i.e [Beta] GAME NAME (?).xxx, and some of the stuff in brackets should be revised i.e Bomberman 64 (J) (Arcade Edition) -> Bomberman 64 ~ Arcade Edition (J) or something similar, so that only tags are using [] and (). I'm not sure if this is entirely feasible though. Basically, I think all the datters and high council and other prominent members of the no-intro community should decide once and for all a strict structure for naming and put it in place across all dats. Also, numbered dats just make no sense when considering the no-intro goal, but I know a lot of people seem to like them so i guess they'll stay for the time being.
Finally, and this is probably a bit too utopic, but I think all the dats should eventually be made parent-clone. kazumi's gba parent clone dat is a very good example which I think other dats should eventually follow, but this is probly too much work for the time being. Attached is an example N64 dat including all the stuff I have mentioned, for discussion purposes. Please post comments, suggestions, insults, etc, this is all just my opinion.
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Re: Uniformity \ Lukeage on 17th November 2006, 03:16 wrote:
Standardising the naming convention is something that tries to occur here every so often and always falls through. While we all agree that a standard should be made, making one that actually handles all the sets well is a different matter.
Some of our dats have legacy naming issues which are still yet to be resolved (the genisis dat for example) due to datters disappearing or similar issues.
As for the numbered dats, they only exist for GBA and NDS and are not considered to be official. (the NDS numbered might be updated more frequently than the unnumbered, but NDS still isn't officially supported by no-intro).
As for parent cloning, I'd love to see support for it once the dat engines support 7z archives (including producing, so clrmame is partway there). I was looking into producing a lightweight rom manager that supported 7z about a year ago but things fell through when I got busy, maybe I'll be interested in getting something running again soon, but not immediately.
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Re: Uniformity \ xuom2 on 17th November 2006, 05:28 wrote:
our datters are rockstars: disappear, appear, plan to conquer the world, disappear again
they produce high quality dats, but uniformity is really an utopic idea. first of all we need the datters, second we need organization, third we need uniformity.
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Re: Uniformity \ prince albert on 17th November 2006, 11:02 wrote:
i made a small tool to extract a list of flags from a romlist, which i have been using to try to change the dats to the sort of thing i specified before. i dont think uniformity would be hard at all, i changed two or three of the dats to be the way i wanted them today and it didnt really take an exceptional amount of time. if i had clarification on all the possible tags, i dont think it would take me too long to do this for all the dats. it just needs to be decided what is best. the parent clone aspect is the only hard part, but still quite managable through looking at goodmerge lists, gamefaqs and random web pages. why not start working on this uniformity at least?
i.e for snes:
(Alternate Beta)
(Beta)
(Beta1)
(Beta2)
(Sample)
Aren't these all pretty much the same thing? With the possible exception of (Sample). couldn't these be replaced by a [Beta] ........... tag with a [a] for (Beta2) or (Alternate Beta)?
Also, all the 4 digit identifiers such as [0556], [0810], [1087], [151B] etc, what special significance do these have? Any difference to a simple [a]?
These sort of things should be discussed, explained, and worked on. Maybe I'm just bored but I think it should be done.
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Re: Uniformity \ Yakushi~Kabuto on 18th November 2006, 12:06 wrote:
An attempt at establishing "recommended conventions" has been made in our internal area. But so far we've got really little feedback. I have no idea why it's being ignored if everyone agree conventions are an important issue. Nothing can be forced on the members of the High-Council, so if they don't all agree, no luck
But it's not like there is any drastical changes in naming between various dats. We all agree filenames must be as accurate as possible, and most of the time, based on box title. That's already pretty consistent for a level of uniformity.
If you look into MAME games list, you will notice a lot of variations, especially in region & revision tags, which means even the MAME team could never apply total uniformity in their names
This is a bad example as it is compliant with No-Intro "recommended conventions". If it appears only on the genesis, then maybe only genesis carts have title varying according to the region.The Genesis dat, for example, is the only one I know of that seperates different country region names with a ~ such as:
[32X] Knuckles' Chaotix (U) ~ Chaotix (J)
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Re: Uniformity \ NGEfreak on 19th November 2006, 14:35 wrote:
Doesn't matter anymore. All naming issues will be fixed with the World Domination Project anyways.
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Re: Uniformity \ FitzRoy on 22nd November 2006, 06:57 wrote:
One common mistake I still see in no-intro databases is that the word "is" sometimes doesn't get capitalized. Verbs should ALWAYS be capitalized, no matter how short.
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Re: Uniformity \ Lukeage on 22nd November 2006, 07:52 wrote:
That really all depends on what standards you adhear to. It is quite legit to use non-capitialisation on forms of to be (i.e. is, are, was) in different circumstances. In fact, this is just another area where we still don't have uniformity yet (although that could be a little more difficult given not everyone here is a native english speaker either....)One common mistake I still see in no-intro databases is that the word "is" sometimes doesn't get capitalized. Verbs should ALWAYS be capitalized, no matter how short.
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Re: Uniformity \ FitzRoy on 22nd November 2006, 10:04 wrote:
I'm a fifth year English major and I've never heard any debates about verbs of short lengths getting capitalized in titles. There's nothing legit about it. It's simply a person being tricked by the length of the word. Prepositions longer than four letters are the only debate. Some institutions believe all prepositions should be lowercase, but most think that any over four letters in length should be capitalized (and I agree). Here is a link about this stuff that you can read at your leisure:
http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipmar98.htm
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Re: Uniformity \ Lukeage on 22nd November 2006, 11:29 wrote:
Ok, while I will admit the only example I was thinking of off the top of my head were cases where only the first letter is capitalised (e.g. library catalogs) you do seem to be right.
However, the no-intro set names need not necessarily match the rule of English precisely (and which form of English do we choose anyway? I'd much prefer British English to American English, or perhaps we have different rules depending on the roms region? (I don't actually know if that would make a capitalisation difference however)). As it said, there is still a lot of conflict due to where the titles come from as well and should we match their own captialisation?
For example, using 'is', (there is only one game in the GBA set that has this) we look to Boktai.
http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/boktai/eng ... head01.gif
Here we can clearly see the title given by the developer doesn't conform to 'correct English'.
Anyhow, let's worry about capitalisation once we a standard on the structure of the file names.
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Re: Uniformity \ FitzRoy on 22nd November 2006, 21:41 wrote:
I've seen lowercase titles with prepositions capitalized, too. But let's face it. Developers and artists are just as susceptible to this kind of mistake. We, the index people, are the only people who must be anal about these title rules. As such, I think it's obvious that we don't give any bearing to how the art uses capitalization when it has lowercase lettering. Most games are all upper case and we don't have to worry about capitalization unless words are combined and some letters are given clear prominence over others (SimCity). But I've spent the last two weeks on a naming and inclusion doctrine for my new dat site. I spent a lot of time with NGEFreak on NSRT trying to get the names right, so I've pretty much seen every kind of bullshit a game can dish out. Take endorsements on the packaging, for example, that don't appear anywhere in the game. You would never just think of that stuff without having seen it. And trying to word these rules in the way that nothing can slip through, and wording them in an order that takes into account previous rules, so as to make it as concise and short as possible, is a task in itself.
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Re: Uniformity \ Stahn on 28th November 2006, 10:57 wrote:
I just want to know why someone used f*cking colons ":" in a dat. Mega Drive dat, that is. Windows does not allow that, and makes me cry
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Re: Uniformity \ xuom2 on 28th November 2006, 18:04 wrote:
in a few months nointro should pass thru a radical change.
yes, the world domination project. don't ask more..
don't expect clear answers to debates about dat's coherence because at this moment we aren't organized - but a lof of things should change.. and maybe in the wrong way
changes were planned for 2006, but we had no time.. i hope i am not wrong again
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Re: Uniformity \ ElBarto on 28th November 2006, 18:55 wrote:
That's my fault. Clearly a mistake.I just want to know why someone used f*cking colons ":" in a dat. Mega Drive dat, that is. Windows does not allow that, and makes me cry
That'll be patched for the next dat. I hope I'll find the time this week to finish for the end of the WE but I'm really busy and no Internet at home.
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Re: Uniformity \ Stahn on 29th November 2006, 12:01 wrote:
No rush, I (and most people should) don't need the change "now", I just want it done sometime, be it tomorrow or next year.
Anyways, I will enlist as a soldier for world domination, if physical agression is needed
