TOSEC Naming convention (pre-release V0.98) ----------------------- to start with....the (blabla) thingies are called flags....(good to know to make sure u won't have that "WTF!" feeling:-) To comply with TOSEC standard, use the following in the filename: filename (language/country)(year)(misc) * filename Name of the Game * language/country Can be U/J for USA or Japan, or PAL/NTSC but also Countrycodes, like Nl, Ge, It, Fr, etc. * Year The Onscreen release Year. if u can't find one, add (y) instead of (-) * misc Actually, there are two forms of misc. flags The first one uses ()'s and is meant to contain info about the game itself (the production number for example). The second form uses []'s. These flags are meant for miscellaneous info regarding the dump itself. in this case u can think about [b] for bad, [h] for hacked and so on. In some cases renaming might turn out to be a bad thing. There are systememu's which can only work with 8.3 names (8 character name, 3 character extension) or only recognise gamenames they have in the internal datfile for the emu. in that case we usually add the original filename as flag, because the files won't work without their original dumping name (ti99/4a+ for example). The same problem (non working files) might occur when u have a game that has a loader. the loader looks for a very specific filename and won't work anymore if u change it. in this case we will also add a flag with the original filename basically, a file will look like this: Championship Baseball (Y)(-)(File 1 Of 2)[Champbbc] | | | | | filename year | misc info dump info | publisher Dumpflags --------- [bad] bad (doesn't run in an emu) [bad1] second bad dump (for if there are more then 1 bad dumps) [alt] alt [t] trained [f] fixed [d] docs [tf] trained and fixed [td] trained and docs [cr] cracked [o] overdumped [p] pirate [h] known hack [!] known redump Country/language codes ------------ (En) English (fr) French (De) German (It) Italian (Ja) Japanese (Fi) Finnish (Sw) Swedish (Swa) Swahilian (fat chance:-) (Nl) Dutch etc.. only add countrycodes when the country is non-standard. if u rename atari 800 games for example, don't add (En) after every english languaged file. Same goes if you are working on oric (a mainly french system)don't add (fr) to every french file what we basically do here is using the first 2 letters of a language name. we use 2 to prevent confusion. (f) could mean finnish and french... (y) if no year is to be found (-) if no softwarehouse/publisher is to be found about bad files... ------------------ TOSEC considers a file "bad" if it won't run in an emulator.Offcourse it's hard to tell if a rom is bad if there isn't a working emulator for it, so we won't put bad flags on unemulated games. We usually use the most common or most advanced emu available. when we're not sure about a game, we will try an alternative emulator for renaming. if the game still seems to be not working, we mark it bad untill proven otherwise. about multiple zips... ---------------------- we don't work with multiple file zips. we prefer to zip files individually to make collecting easier. usually on multiple file games we place a (part 1 of 3) flag. In some cases a game exists out of multiple diskimages. in that case we use (disk 1 of 3) about finding rename info ------------------------- occasionally we come across games with no start up screens or onscreen year, publisher or country info. In that case we usually check the file with an hexeditor. 9 out of 10 times u can find info inside the file itself. if u only have a gamename.... ----------------------------- there are loads of system specifik pages on the net. a lot of release info can be found there what we usually do before we start renaming is trying to find release lists on the net. these lists often contain information you won't find in the game itself.