Some alternatives are now duplicates?

[Kodoichi]

Is this an error in Romcenter or are some alternative files indeed duplicates of others?



After the War is not the only game, I got many alternatives like that.

[Symmo]

Dont use romcenter but in that pic its showing zips and to the right there says "expected " filename inside the archive.
So a glich in rc? Appears it dont go past [] same in alfred chicken name as well.
Just open the afterwar alt zip and see for your self how its named.

[Crashdisk]

RomCenter is not stable at this time :
"Close rom path" and re"Add rom path"

[Kodoichi]

There was a bugfix in Romcenter two days ago. I installed that new version, but the duplicates still show up. I never had such problems with RC before, so I guess some alternatives were really renamed that way in the new dats?

Symmo: The folder I'm checking has files that I already renamed with the previous Tosec dats. Left side in the image shows the files that I have on my harddisk, right side shows the correct Tosec name with the current dat.

[Wanderer]

It may not be a RC glitch. Sometimes a dat file may contain 2 roms with exactly the same CRCs. That is a datfile glitch. Here's a example with "Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF] (TOSEC-v2011-03-24_CM).dat"

Bundesliga Manager Professional v1.0 (1991)(Software 2000)(DE)(Disk 2 of 3)[a3] - Bundesliga Manager Professional v1.0 (1991)(Software 2000)(DE)(Disk 2 of 3)[a3]
    Duplicate CRC (i.e. all ROMs match another game)

Bundesliga Manager Professional v2.0 (1992-07-08)(Software 2000)(DE)(Disk 2 of 3)[a] - Bundesliga Manager Professional v2.0 (1992-07-08)(Software 2000)(DE)(Disk 2 of 3)[a]
    Duplicate CRC (i.e. all ROMs match another game)

When this happens, a log file opens during database creation, warning you about this type of situations. I'd suggest you recreate the database from the original dat file to see if you get such a log.

[Crashdisk]

Code: (Commodore Amiga - Games - ADF TOSEC-v2010-11-12) [Select]

game (
name "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)"
description "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)"
rom ( name "After the War (1989)(Dinamic).adf" size 901120 crc 1c95e101 md5 09ae688d604629a06c4405fb9a00d4d8 )
)

game (
name "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a]"
description "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a]"
rom ( name "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a].adf" size 901120 crc 6d8a9a50 md5 3ff07b3dde4592de40d9df92ec31a029 )
)

Code: (Commodore Amiga - Games - ADF TOSEC-v2011-03-24) [Select]

game (
name "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)"
description "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)"
rom ( name "After the War (1989)(Dinamic).adf" size 901120 crc 6d8a9a50 md5 3ff07b3dde4592de40d9df92ec31a029 sha1 67b676090daa0a02fd5d8ac92048b8f8a46aee2d )
)

game (
name "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[compilation Magnum]"
description "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[compilation Magnum]"
rom ( name "After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[compilation Magnum].adf" size 901120 crc 1c95e101 md5 09ae688d604629a06c4405fb9a00d4d8 sha1 954e35b7cf4f43901bdee05e6edaa0acf61f3993 )
)
The problem can occur if RomCenter renames crc:6d8a9a50 before crc:1c95e101 ...
Verifies the true checksum of your two files (eg, archiving)

[Wanderer]

The problem can occur if RomCenter renames crc:6d8a9a50 before crc:1c95e101 ...

Hmmm, now i understand better. What Kodoichi's picture shows is not a problem then, just 2 zips which are actually the same file (based on CRCs probably). What you describe is the process through which whose two files were "created" (actually renamed) by RC. It seems logical and it may not be that easy to handle because the same problem can occur the other way around.

In any case, this is something different than what i described. Maybe you should discuss this in RC's forums to see if it can be handled differently...

[Crashdisk]

The worst is the exchange of name
crc:XXXXXXXX After the War (1989)(Dinamic) => After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a]
crc:YYYYYYYY After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a] => After the War (1989)(Dinamic)
and it happens sometimes ... I'll be interested to make a comparative RomVault / RomCenter / ClrMame

[Wanderer]

The worst is the exchange of name

Certainly. I assume data can be lost that way, right? I'll discuss it in RC's forums, to see if there's something that can be done about it.

[Kodoichi]

I checked the Zip archives of both After the War files. They have the above mentioned different CRCs. So it's not the exact same file with two different names that I might have renamed wrongly some months ago.

It may not be a RC glitch. Sometimes a dat file may contain 2 roms with exactly the same CRCs. That is a datfile glitch. Here's a example with "Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF] (TOSEC-v2011-03-24_CM).dat"

I get the same error whenever I have to convert the games dat to the Romcenter format, but always shrugged it off as it's just a game I don't care about. I didn't know other games were affected too, as I didn't get any warning message for them.

The worst is the exchange of name
crc:XXXXXXXX After the War (1989)(Dinamic) => After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a]
crc:YYYYYYYY After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a] => After the War (1989)(Dinamic)

I encountered that problem too when renaming the files. I solved it (and I'm still busy doing it) by moving all the affected [a(X)]s into another folder, rename the remaining games in the other one, then rename the [a]s in the other folder as well. That way RC isn't confused if it's done one after another.

[Romcenter]

Hi

Some remarks about romcenter.
Since v3.55, romcenter relies first on file name to identify a file.
It means that 'After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a]' is not a known game name in the dat.
Using this identification method allows to deal with such inversion cases. It means that the file will never be renamed if its filename is a known game filename. Instead, roms will be imported or exported to other files.
(This also protects samples names, but it's another story)

It would be interesting to know which roms are inside these zip to go further.

Anyway, no roms should be lost in the process.

[PandMonium]

Hi and welcome here

I think i understood the problem you are discussing here, found something similar when looking at TIM rebuilder code years ago.

The problem starts when a known set/rom is find and must be renamed, however using its "expected" name there is already other setfile that may also be incorrectly renamed.

Crashdisk is a simple example of this, imagining 2 single rom sets (so, 1 rom inside each):
"After the War (1989)(Dinamic).zip\After the War (1989)(Dinamic).adf" crc: AAAAAAAA, expected: BBBBBBBB
"After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a].zip\After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a].adf" crc: BBBBBBBB, expected: AAAAAAAA

This creates some kind of circular renaming problem, when the first case is found, if it is simply renamed to the right place the 2nd set will be eventually lost.

Is this the problem you've been talking about? If i've understood correctly romcenter now uses a different approach, any setfiles that have a name found in the current datfile are not touched, instead of that only romfiles are renamed or moved across sets. Am i right?
Although that may solve some cases where renaming set one would overwrite set two, it also has some problems and drawbacks. Apart from MAME and a few others, many times you will have single rom sets where the setname is similar to romname (except extension), in that case you might end up loosing files again if you copy:
"After the War (1989)(Dinamic).zip\After the War (1989)(Dinamic).adf" crc: AAAAAAAA
to
"After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a].zip\After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a].adf" crc: AAAAAAAA
... in this case, loosing file crc BBBBBBBB

Anyway this problem can be also avoided, my main concern with this problem and possible workarounds is the performance hit you will take, in this situation you will have to unzip / rezip two files in both sets, while a simple rename might have solve it. No?

I'm not criticizing, just curious on how you solved that and if it is the better solution available. If i can help with something feel free to ask

[Kodoichi]

It would be interesting to know which roms are inside these zip to go further.

After the War (1989)(Dinamic).zip contains
After the War (1989)(Dinamic).adf

After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a].zip contains
After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a].adf

(Surprise surprise)

I don't understand why Romcenter wants to rename a properly named file anyway. Maybe I activated an option to rezip the files? But then, it only wants to rename some selected games that have alternatives, not all files.

Anyway, no roms should be lost in the process.

I meanwhile renamed After the War (1989)(Dinamic) as the filename stays the same. I still have the After the War (1989)(Dinamic)[a] one. I guess if I let Romcenter rename the alternative to After the War (1989)(Dinamic), the other file will either show up in the Windows trashcan or the Archive folder of RC?

[Crashdisk]

You have "Bad File Name" in the column "Info"?
Have you tried to unzip both files and rename them eg: 1.adf 2.adf
And use "Reload path" (or just refresh) to check what you suggested RomCenter !?

[Romcenter]

Renaming file or moving roms is a matter of choice. I preferred the first one at first, but the behaviour is sometimes odd and not always understood by users.
For example, if you have a list of 10 favorites games, you don't expect one of them to change its name to another one. Another side effect is that if you want to add a new game, you simply create an emty zip with the game name and fix.

Now about rom loss, it won't happen. Romcenter never overwrite a 'unique' rom. If a rom should be replaced, and already exists, it is renamed (except roms with no crc). This behaviour exists since the first version.

Note also that cycles can occur with more than 2 roms: A->B, B->C, C->A, or A->B, B->C, C->B etc...
This is not easy to detect such cycles. Romcenter 4 will handle that in a better way.