GameIndex.dbf naming consistency

[karasuhebi]

UsWe need to be more consistent with our naming. Mainly I'm talking about game subtitles. So decide if there's going to be a colon or a hypen (or nothing) between a game's name and its subtitle(s). So for example:
Final Fantasy X: International
Final Fantasy X - International
Final Fantasy X International

I believe we should either make it so the first subtitle uses a colon and the second subtitle uses a hyphen (to avoid stuff like 'Final Fantasy XII: International: Zodiac Job System') or it should all be hyphens.

It's not my call how this gets formatted but I do believe a decision needs to be made for consistency's sake.

P.S. I understand that our GameIndex.dbf is based on SonyIndex.com and that's why these inconsistencies are there in the first place but I still believe we should fix them.

P.P. S. WTF region is NTSC-Unk? Is that supposed to stand for 'unknown'?

[Ryudo]

Funny part is that FFXII shouldn't have any : or ' in it in the first place. Except for Revenant Wings.

• Final Fantasy XII
  
• Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System
  
• Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System (Ultimate Hits)
  
• Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

For FFX games:

• Final Fantasy X
  
• Final Fantasy X International Edition
  
• Final Fantasy X: Eternal Calm
  
• Final Fantasy X HD Remaster (Not for PS2, but still listing it anyways)
  
• Final Fantasy X-2
  
• Final Fantasy X-2: International + Last Mission
  
• Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (Not for PS2)

These should be the way it's supposed to be listed.


As for the UNk thing. No idea. I've seen a lot of PAL-UNk things too. (More than NTSC UNks). Maybe they're not sure what version it is or whatever?

[karasuhebi]

How do you figure? "International" and "Zodiac Job System" are clearly subtitles:

[Ryudo]

Doesn't matter. It's the exact same game with some extra features. If you were to label it as Final Fantasy XII: International Edition, it would imply an entirely different game with a different story in the FF12 series.

Revenant Wings for example IS a different game, in which case you should use ":"

[avih]

I don't think consistency should come before accuracy.

If you know the exact names and GameIndex.dbf has incorrect names, you're welcome to fix them and we'll incorporate the fixes (preferably as a github pull request, but if you don't know how to do that, you can edit GameIndex.dbf from the latest download from http://buildbot.orphis.net/pcsx2/ , edit it, and post it).

[Ryudo]

I think for such a big project you might need 2 or 3 people working on it tbh to double check all the names. And then you still can't be sure if a name is 100% accurate. For confusing names like the FF series you might need that small team of people and just come to a decision together on what name we SHOULD be using.

[avih]

We don't have the menpower for that, but like I said, if anyone volunteers to fix, go ahead, and we'll incorporate the fixes.

[karasuhebi]

I don't think consistency should come before accuracy.

If you know the exact names and GameIndex.dbf has incorrect names, you're welcome to fix them and we'll incorporate the fixes (preferably as a github pull request, but if you don't know how to do that, you can edit GameIndex.dbf from the latest download from http://buildbot.orphis.net/pcsx2/ , edit it, and post it).

I don't think 'exact names' is that easy of a thing to decipher for Final Fantasy titles, as Ryudo mentioned. If you take a look at the spine on the cases for these subtitle-laden games, you will see that there's no colons or hyphens being used (thanks Japan -_-), they just put each subtitle on its own line or make the subtitle a smaller-sized font. So we can either do the same thing (which would be ridiculous and/or impossible) or we can decide on a system of our own for naming these games in a consistent manner. I rather like Ryudo's way of going about it but I don't think we should go with that because then it wouldn't be accurate, it would just be consistent. What I mean is that for Final Fantasy titles like FFX-2: International + Last Mission and FFXII IZJS, Square-Enix used the same formatting choice of putting each subtitle on its own line, while Ryudo's proposed system would have us use colons for one and nothing for the other, which would not be an accurate representation of the actual names.

Here's some pictures:




And now that I have us all on the same page, let me throw a monkey-wrench in the mix:


Would you list that as Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix or Kingdom Hearts -Final Mix-? Or maybe since the title on the front cover doesn't use the hyphens and just puts the subtitle on a different line, could you go with Kingdom Hearts Final Mix?

IMO there's no 'exact title' (in English anyway) for these games, since they are Japanese-only releases and Japanese people use punctuation marks in different way. Sometimes they use hyphens to surround a subtitle, and sometimes they even use tildes instead. When have you ever seen an English subtitle use anything but a single hyphen or a colon?

[Arcadius]

I personally use hyphens for the ISO names I rip, since Windows doesn't allow colons to be used, which is quite unfortunate.

From what you listed I like this the most; Final Fantasy XII: International which is how I would name my ISO's if I could. On games that wrap a word with tilde or hyphens, just name do Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix, since that makes sense to us English users.

[Akio]

How about following the names on gamefaqs.com?