cover/scan/etc questions/suggestions
Hello,
I'd like to contribute a bunch of box photos and cart scans that I've got sitting around, but a few questions have come up and I feel like I could make a few suggestions for improvements so people wouldn't hit the same stumbling blocks I am.
After talking to Manuel and some others in #openmsx on IRC, it seems the guidelines are rather loose (ie. "upload what you can, we want more media!"), but none the less, some guidelines to image uploads could stand to go in the FAQ. Things like "photos are ok, but actual box scans are preferred", target resolutions for images (or at least lower boundaries maybe), formats, etc. Oh, and a definition of "complete" would probably help. Manuel explained it's a fully unfolded slipcover, but I would have possibly considered it to be a picture of the box and everything inside (like a spread of the box, manual, cart/disk, any additional contents).
On the user side of things, when submitting a cover shot we only have five options, and from what I understand, they might be different from what the backend recognises, so this paragraph of feature suggestion might double as a bug report (if so, sorry about that). When submitting a cover image, my options are: front, back, side, complete, manual. I have cart scans, but I'm assuming with the exception of manual, the others refer to a box. I've been trying to think of other ways to represent the menu for choosing what type of image the user is submitting and I keep going back to VGMdb. I'm not at home right now, so I'll try and get a screenshot up of that as soon as I can.
Regardless, it would probably be useful to be able to submit front/back/side of both box and at least front/top of the (or multiple) media, as well as possibly submitting scans of the entire manual, and perhaps the registration card or stickers or anything else that may have come in the box. I'm told the current types of cover scans are not stored as freeform strings and I don't know how hard it would be to let the user specify their scans as such, or if that is desired.
Anyway, please feel free to correct me if any of this information is wrong / not representative of your goals for the site. Just trying to be helpful and figure out if there's anything I *shouldn't* upload. =]
Replies (8)
Hi,
thanks for your suggestions. I updated the upload form for covers with some more information and also added the missing cover types in the dropdown 
The reason that I use the dropdown is to make sure everybody uses the same types.
About what kind of covers we prefer, in the past we only accepted scans, but then I got some mails from people who didn't have a scanner and wanted to contribute some covers. Since then we also accept photo's. Also for some games it's very hard to get the actual scans because the games are very rare. And when I see a photo of it on an auction site I will upload them so people can see how the cover looked like. And when somebody uploads the real cover scans we will remove the photos.
I did have a look at the VGMdb, and saw how they handle the uploads. I will see if I can update the form in something like that, but not on a short term
Regards,
Sandy
The reason that I use the dropdown is to make sure everybody uses the same types.
About what kind of covers we prefer, in the past we only accepted scans, but then I got some mails from people who didn't have a scanner and wanted to contribute some covers. Since then we also accept photo's. Also for some games it's very hard to get the actual scans because the games are very rare. And when I see a photo of it on an auction site I will upload them so people can see how the cover looked like. And when somebody uploads the real cover scans we will remove the photos.
I did have a look at the VGMdb, and saw how they handle the uploads. I will see if I can update the form in something like that, but not on a short term
Regards,
SandyPlease login to reply to this thread.