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unexpectedpanda / retool

Retool: a better filter tool for Redump and No-Intro DAT files.
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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Nintendo Wii 1g1r list seems to contain multiple clones #260

Closed SiriusVI87 closed 1 year ago

SiriusVI87 commented 1 year ago

Dat

Nintendo - Wii (2023-04-18 21-39-09) (Retool 2023-04-26 21-39-58) (1,673) [-abBcdmpPr].dat

Issue

I created a 1g1r rom list using the dat from redump as a source. In the list created by retool, I found several clones still remaining. Examples are:

  1. Party Pigs: Farmyrad Games (USA) - Athletic Piggy Party (Europe)
  2. Mercury Meltdown Revolution (USA) - Tama-Run (Japan)
  3. Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution (USA) - Naruto Shippūden: Gekitō Ninja Taisen! EX (Japan)
  4. Just Dance: Summer Party (USA) - Just Dance 2: Extra Songs (Europe)
  5. The Kore Gang - The Kore Gang: Outvasion from Inner Earth
  6. Active Life: Magical Carneval (USA) - Issho ni Asobu! Dream Theme Park (Japan)

These are just a few examples and there are many more. Is this a bug or am I missing something? Is there a reason these clones are included?

Thank you! Nintendo - Wii (2023-04-18 21-39-09) (Retool 2023-04-26 21-39-58) (1,673) [-abBcdmpPr].zip

0xC0D3D34D commented 1 year ago

Are your clone lists up to date? I have already fixed the party pigs issue and it has been merged. If I get chance I'll take a look at the others in the next few hours and submit another pull request.

SiriusVI87 commented 1 year ago

Well I created the dat recently, on April 26 2023, which was not that long ago. Of course I updated the clone lists before creating the dat. Have there been significant changes since then?

0xC0D3D34D commented 1 year ago

It was merged yesterday. By the way, you'd have probably been better posting this in the clone list repo here

SiriusVI87 commented 1 year ago

Ah that's good to know, thank you. I was of the impression that the work on all these parent/clone relationships was already completed. In order to keep a 1g1r set clean, it would be required to check periodically if something has changed, right?

SiriusVI87 commented 1 year ago

I've tried the updated clone file and indeed the party pigs game is now sorted correctly. However, none of the other games are.

Additionally, "Super Swing Golf Season 2" was for some reason excluded, even though it should be included in the list. This is not intedned, right?

https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Super_Swing_Golf_Season_2

Edit:

"Ashes Cricket 2009 (UK)" and "Atrevete a Sonar (Latin America) (En,Es)" were also excluded from the list.

These were just the ones I found by quickly checking, there might be many more. I'm kind of worried now. I was planning on updating my existing list and hopefully get rid of the last few remaining clones I didn't find in my own research (especially the Japanese games are very hard to sort throuh). This is why I wanted to use retool. However, I didn't expect there would be so many issues. Please tell me if I am doing something wrong here or if I misunderstand the results I'm getting. I don't want to end up deleting files that retool incorrectly sorted out.

EDIT 2:

"group": "Super Swing Golf Season 2", "titles": [ {"searchTerm": "Super Swing Golf Season 2"}, {"searchTerm": "Swing Golf Pangya 2nd Shot!"}, {"searchTerm": "Super Smash Bros. Brawl"} ]

This error explains why the golf game got excluded.

EDIT 3:

I've just finished going through all of my handpicked wii games from my last setup and compared it to what retool did. These were all the titles I included (that are not clones), but retool excluded (I know that in some cases, like the metroid prime games, retool worked as intended, but I keep them anyway)

Metroid Prime (Japan) Metroid Prime 2 - Dark Echoes (Japan) Quiz Party (UK) uDraw Studio (USA) (En,Fr,Es) --> here retool used the European version instead Lucha Libre AAA - Heroes del Ring (Latin America) (En,Es) Thomas & Friends - Hero of the Rails (UK) My Spanish Coach - Improve Your Spanish (UK) Springdale (Scandinavia) (En,Sv,No,Da,Fi) Top Trumps - Doctor Who (UK) Peppa Pig - Fun and Games (UK) Little League World Series Baseball 2009 (USA) Namco Museum Remix (USA) My Pet Hotel (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It) Little League World Series Baseball 2008 (USA) Imagine - Champion Rider (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It,Nl) Golden Balls (UK) G1 Jockey Wii 2008 (UK) G1 Jockey Wii (UK) Family Fortunes (UK) Doctor Who - Return to Earth (UK) Ready Steady Cook - The Game (UK) Chavo, El (Latin America) (En,Es,Pt) Chiffres & Des Lettres, Des - Le Jeu Officiel (France) Babysitting Party (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It,Nl,Sv,No,Da) Super Swing Golf Season 2 (USA) Ashes Cricket 2009 (UK) Atrevete a Sonar (Latin America) (En,Es)

Hope this helps

Of course, I was only able to check, because I made a 1g1r set by hand a few years back. There is no guarantee that this list is complete, and it probably isn't.

0xC0D3D34D commented 1 year ago

Thanks for the info. It will take me some time to go through all these and check for all clones. As for why certain titles are being excluded depends on your settings, eg regions, languages etc. Retool can tell you why in the log.

Ashes Cricket 2009 (UK) is a variant of Cricket (Australia)

unexpectedpanda commented 1 year ago

Cheers @0xC0D3D34D, appreciate your work :) And thanks @SiriusVI87 for the heads up!

I was of the impression that the work on all these parent/clone relationships was already completed.

It's always a work in progress. Redump and No-Intro still update their DATs too, so it's an endless chase. Community involvement is definitely welcome. Ideally Retool would get to a point where there are specific system maintainers. There have been many invaluable contributions (shout out especially to @rufotheone-fr, @retroNUC, @0xC0D3D34D, and @Florin9doi) over its lifespan.

Of course, I was only able to check, because I made a 1g1r set by hand a few years back.

Awesome, your expertise is appreciated.

The clones you've listed I'll look into. In the meantime, can you provide your settings so I can copy your setup? That way I can look into those individual titles more deeply, and why they were excluded. Usually attaching config/user-config.yaml is the easiest way. If you used system settings, then attaching config/systems/Nintendo - Wii (Redump).yaml is also useful.

"group": "Super Swing Golf Season 2",
"titles": [
  {"searchTerm": "Super Swing Golf Season 2"},
  {"searchTerm": "Swing Golf Pangya 2nd Shot!"},
  {"searchTerm": "Super Smash Bros. Brawl"}
]

Oof, that's a clanger. I'll get that one corrected ASAP.

unexpectedpanda commented 1 year ago

I've updated the clone list to include the titles you've mention except for:

Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution (USA) - Naruto Shippūden: Gekitō Ninja Taisen! EX (Japan)

I need to do more digging on it, as I can only find one reference which suggests it's a bit of a hybrid, and fighting games can get complex.

0xC0D3D34D commented 1 year ago

I don't think its a variant, just shares the engine see here

I see you've put just dance as a clone. They seem to be a superset of just dance 2 see here

unexpectedpanda commented 1 year ago

I don't think its a variant, just shares the engine

Ah, so yes, a hybrid after all. Thanks :)

Just Dance: Summer Party (and its PAL counterpart, Just Dance 2: Extra Songs) are games released during July 2011. The game features most of the DLCs from Just Dance 2 and two of the Best Buy exclusives.

This is why I dread the singing and dancing games. There's always a song list to trawl over ;_; That reads to me like it's DLC from the standard JD2 and the exclusive songs from Best Buy version of JD2, as opposed to a superset of JD2 itself. I've run out of time to verify this today, but it's on my to-do list to look into.

SiriusVI87 commented 1 year ago

Hey, thanks for looking into everything! Keep in mind that I constructed my 1g1r list with minimal research. Now I know much mmore than what I did back then, and I'm not sure enymore if games I excluded should actually have been included. That's kind of why I wanted to give retool a try in the first place.

The Song and Dance games really are hard to judge. Like, there might be 2 different ssongs in every regional variation, so should all of them be included or are these just regional varioations that should not be included in a 1g1r list? I don't know, it depends, I guess, and that is not a satisfying answer for a tol like retool, haha.

Anyway, here are my files. Retool Files.zip

0xC0D3D34D commented 1 year ago

@unexpectedpanda you're correct about Just Dance 2, I didn't read it properly. I thought it was saying it contained the content of JD2 and the DLC (most of).

I wonder whether for a 1g1r set any version with a unique track should be kept. I can see reasons for and against.

Have to agree the music games seem a PITA.

SiriusVI87 commented 1 year ago

@unexpectedpanda you're correct about Just Dance 2, I didn't read it properly. I thought it was saying it contained the content of JD2 and the DLC (most of).

I wonder whether for a 1g1r set any version with a unique track should be kept. I can see reasons for and against.

Have to agree the music games seem a PITA.

Yeah extremely difficult. However, in other cases regional variations are usually not kept. Best examplenis Contra / Super Probotector on SNES. The European Version turns the main characters into robots. Ist this a big enough change that warrants its inclusion in a 1g1r romset?

There is no clear answer here I guess. With Song games, I think if a substabtial amount of songs are different, the different versions should be kept.

unexpectedpanda commented 1 year ago

I wonder whether for a 1g1r set any version with a unique track should be kept. I can see reasons for and against.

Historically I kept titles with unique tracks, but I recall the Singstar series in PS2 being grouped together by a few different contributors. I figured at the time your average English-speaker isn't going to sing along with Dansk tracks... but vice-versa certainly isn't true and that decision is probably going to need to be revisited in the future.

Yeah extremely difficult. However, in other cases regional variations are usually not kept. Best examplenis Contra / Super Probotector on SNES. The European Version turns the main characters into robots. Ist this a big enough change that warrants its inclusion in a 1g1r romset?

For Retool, sprite swaps, palette changes, or texture changes are generally considered clones if the gameplay remains largely the same. For example, there are quite a few Game Boy games that are identical save for the sprites, as there were different licensing deals done in different countries for specific cartoon characters. They're considered clones. There are also a few PlayStation games that are just retextures with a few different models, but otherwise things are the same. For a specific example, V-Ball - Beach Volley Heroes and Chou Sentou Kyuugi Vanborg for PlayStation are considered clones, even though there's unique content between them, as they are still functionally just reskins -- the unique volleyball courts don't really change the experience in any measurable way.

There's always a blurry line which means titles have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, but the general rule of thumb is: does it impact gameplay in a meaningful way (new levels, different ways of interacting)? If so, there's a chance it's a unique title. That can break down for things like fighting games where each variation makes refinements to balance (and there's a vocal crowd of people claiming that every change is meaningful due to competition use of such games), but overall it works reasonably well as a rubric.

Another guiding star for me: the point is to only have one copy of a title. If you only had time to play one version of this game, which would it be? If you're going to include more than one, you're heading down the slippery slope of hoarding again, so that extra title better be included for a very good reason.

unexpectedpanda commented 1 year ago

Anyway, here are my files. Retool Files.zip

Thanks, but I think you've included the wrong files -- I already have the clone list locally and the DAT. I need the following files to learn about your configuration:

SiriusVI87 commented 1 year ago

Sorry for the wrong files. This file does not exist for me: config > systems folder: Nintendo - Wii (Redump).yaml`

But I can send you the other file. user-config.zip

unexpectedpanda commented 1 year ago

No worries, that just means you didn't create a system config, which makes debugging easier for me :)

unexpectedpanda commented 1 year ago

Here's my results using the configuration you provided.

Other titles selected due to user config

These titles were replaced by others, as they were found to be lower priority clones.

Titles that are in the output DAT with your configuration

I'm not sure why these are in the list. These all make it to the output DAT on my machine.

FWIW, you can follow Retool's decision process by using the trace option.

SiriusVI87 commented 1 year ago

Hey, thank you so much for your feedback. i just tried again and now all the items are included. I don't know what I did wrong at first, but I'm sure I messed up somewhere.

Thank you!

unexpectedpanda commented 1 year ago

Cool, I'll close this out then. Feel free to file another issue if you find missing clones :)