Hi,

I have a feature request regarding parent-clone relations. :)

Currently, my relations of my dats look like this:

game (
name "7th Saga, The (USA)"
description "7th Saga, The (USA)"
rom ( name "7th Saga, The (USA).sfc" size 1572864 crc b3abdde6 md5 a42772a0beaf71f9256a8e1998bfe6e3 sha1 8d2b8aea636a2239805c99744bf48c0b4df8d96e )
)

game (
name "Elnard (Japan)"
description "Elnard (Japan)"
cloneof "7th Saga, The (USA)"
rom ( name "Elnard (Japan).sfc" size 1572864 crc 14320873 md5 7b5534c75a19f851b0942f1132ca8d78 sha1 75ef2ada1e7df8e9c3ae7f61b032bf54ff8e798a )
)

This would merge "Elnard" into the set of "7th Saga, The", but the set would still be called "7th Saga, The (USA)". The country flag is now misleading and obsolete.


I want it like this:

game (
name "7th Saga, The (U)"
description "7th Saga, The (U)"
cloneof "7th Saga, The"
rom ( name "7th Saga, The (U).sfc" size 1572864 crc b3abdde6 md5 a42772a0beaf71f9256a8e1998bfe6e3 sha1 8d2b8aea636a2239805c99744bf48c0b4df8d96e )
)

game (
name "Elnard (J)"
description "Elnard (J)"
cloneof "7th Saga, The"
rom ( name "Elnard (J).sfc" size 1572864 crc 14320873 md5 7b5534c75a19f851b0942f1132ca8d78 sha1 75ef2ada1e7df8e9c3ae7f61b032bf54ff8e798a )
)

This would, in theory, merge both into the new set "7th Saga, The" and would solve the misleading flag problem. However CM complains that the parent does not exists. Of course it is possible to add fake parent entries with nodump information, but this is kinda ugly. ;)

Can you implement a feature like that? Maybe by introducing a new keyword like “virtualparent”, so it won’t interfere with the cloneof function. Or by adding a new setting in the dat header to disable the parent exists check?

Sounds definetly interesting but that's a huuuge change on scanner core level which I can't see to be added in quickly or on short term. Maybe with the rewrite ;)

Until then...hmm...rewrite the datfile 8) keep the parent setname rather neutral and give the romnames a more specific name if possible.


Roman Scherzer

As feature requests go: this is something I too would like to see.

Just putting in my 2 cents! thanks!

well...did a little brainstorming about that and I think it's not that tough to implement. All you need is to define a parent set in the dat with no roms at all but name and description tag. Next cmpro will allow such empty, 'virtual' sets then. So when using split or unmerged sets, you won't see this virtual parent, while merged, it will be used as the parent set.


Update: I doubt it will be in the next version....


Roman Scherzer