How do you organise your favourites

[PeterJ]

This one is for computer based emulator users.

How do your organise your favourite games (tap/tzx etc)?

Do you...

• Download from the website each time you want to play the game.
• Just keep everything in your downloads folder in an unsorted mess.
• Keep ultra organised and have folders for each game with maps / inlays etc
• Keep a paper or computer based notepad / spreadsheet or similar.

Or something completely different.

[Nitrowing]

I have a folder with ZX81, MSX & ZX folders. These just get filled with their respective files as they come.

[1024MAK]

It’s supposed to be

• Keep ultra organised and have folders for each game with maps / inlays etc

But often ends up just being

• Just keep everything in your downloads folder in an unsorted mess.

Which is even worse considering my downloads folder has files for various computers, not just ZX Spectrum stuff!

And I download on a Linux system and a separate Windows system. Plus on a pad…

Sorting it out, is somewhere in the bottom of my list of things to do…

Mark

[firelord]

I spend much more time "sorting" games than playing them...
Very quickly I can say this:

When I am away from home and want to play one game I usually have 2 options: 1.open a private page I made and have put a few favorite games or 2. Search a game from spectrumcomputing and using the online play link.

When I am at my home PC:
The games I have are all :
a) inside folders starting with their initial letter (eg A,B,C,Numbers ,...). Inside these folders are the subfolders POKES,INFO,INLAYS,SCRSHOT.
b) Some selected games are stored in other folder with category name (AdvTXT,Platf,ArcAdv,...). Games here are duplicate copy of the ones stored like A.
c) I have seperate folders for extra media (maps etc)

I use DOS SGD to keep my games database.
I started my collection by using the initial SGD databases from WOS https://worldofspectrum.net/misc/spectr ... -database/ (seperate databases for Adventures , Arcades , utility etc..). I also keep an extra database with the games I owned in physical copies.

I seperate my favorite games from the others by adding after their name crosses (+ ,++,+++) as a rating system .
Also, I have made a script that takes the SGD .DAT database and shows the list in the browser.From there I select the game and play it with QAOP from my browser. When I want to play more seriously I use x128 emulator directly from SGD.

Spoiler

Oh, forgot to say that all games are stored using 8.3 dos namimg
Also, since I use a linux live system : Almost everything (games, utils ,emulators etc) are stored in a single 1.7Gigabyte Squashfs file . it's something like a ZIP file but my OS mounts it during boot and merges it with my filesystem .

sample of my folders (link will expire in 1 month): https://privatebin.net/?7f004ee4bdc1972 ... dHVTZ4dicB

[PeterJ]

Very impressive @firelord!

[Jbizzel]

This one is for computer based emulator users.

How do your organise your favourite games (tap/tzx etc)?

Do you...

• Download from the website each time you want to play the game.
• Just keep everything in your downloads folder in an unsorted mess.
• Keep ultra organised and have folders for each game with maps / inlays etc
• Keep a paper or computer based notepad / spreadsheet or similar.

Or something completely different.

All of the above.

[+3code]

I have folders for each genre with sub-folders for each title, with inlays, manuals, etc.

[+3code]

I spend much more time "sorting" games than playing them...

Me too. Sad, but right.

[flatduckrecords]

To avoid too much time sorting I mainly rely on search, but I do try to keep all my Spectrum-related files in a certain folder, and so on with separate directories for other machines. Not that I’m a paragon of backup discipline but at least it’s all in one place when I do want to make a backup.

I use a Mac so the tools I use are Alfred for searching and Hazel for keeping my downloads roughly organised. I’ve got a couple of simple rules set that will periodically unzip any game files and chuck tap, dsk and tzx files into my Spectrum folder. The rule isn’t specific enough to distinguish things like CPC or SAM disks, but it’s good enough! It can also gather up any .scr left on the desktop or whatever.

[Ralf]

I have folders starting with 1st letters of the game - A. B, C, D...

Actually it's a copy of old WOS game base. In the old days you could download the entire game collection of WOS by FTP.

I considered in the past more management of it, even making some tool for browsing and cataloguing them.
But nah, I'm too lazy for it

[bucephalus]

I use GameBase and have everything neatly organised within.

In the screen below, everything's in alphabetical order with anything bold being a Crash Smash. I have the loading screen and in-game screen for each game, there's links to maps, instructions, pokes and walkthroughs, depending on the set-up for each game.

I've got 752 games on there, basically stuff I played as a kid or wanted to play. I just double-click a game and away I go...

[firelord]

I use GameBase and have everything neatly organised within.

I also tried gamebase but I couldn't find how to apply the POKES automatically in each game (like SGD).

[Jbizzel]

Once consideration is what you use to play the games.

The esp32 emulator I am currently messing about with can't see folders. So there is that.

Divide can, and a big list of games is very slow.

For divide I have alphabetical folders with about 80games each in them.

These are my favourite games.

I also have a CF card with a certain archive of every game (up to a point) this is hard to use on real hardware as the folders are massive.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

For commercial games, I have two folders: TZX & Z80-TAP. Each folder has a lot of files (currently about 1,400), but I have all the games in them and it's easy to choose one for a random choice whenever I play on my laptop.

Another folder for every magazine with covertapes.

Also one folder for inlays and another for instructions, for every game (if possible).

[PeteProdge]

I just use the folders set up for me when I downloaded the TOSEC archive of ZX Spectrum programs. The filenames are quite detailed and have very high consistency.

[R-Tape]

I keep mine in folders according to genre or other property: ACTION, SHMUP, TEXT ADV, DEMO, BASIC, AGD, CHURROS...

Unfortunately within those folders it's a chaotic mix of organised folders, unzipped downloads and tape files.

[*]Keep a paper or computer based notepad / spreadsheet or similar.

I'm still hoping someone posts a photo of their immaculately penned Speccy logbook. In fact - I'll send them a Parker pen for Xmas!

[flatduckrecords]

I'm still hoping someone posts a photo of their immaculately penned Speccy logbook.

Computer Tapes Log Book, circa 1992


Saracen Paint? I think that's a C64 thing actually. DISQUALIFIED!

It's not immaculately penned but it is a logbook and I swear it's real!

[R-Tape]

It's not immaculately penned but it is a logbook and I swear it's real!

Ha very cool. It's got the lot - doodles and impasto Tippex too.

You and ducks! Were those pictures much cop?

[flatduckrecords]

Heh, thanks. I really can’t remember about the pictures, if I can dig out the tape I will let you know. (I can confirm that Horace does indeed load better on Side B though).

In the meantime I found some Gemini Wing level codes on the back page. And… a space ship… with lasers? I guess?

[Juan F. Ramirez]

I keep mine in folders according to genre or other property: [...], CHURROS...

2 Variable not found, 10:1

[R-Tape]

2 Variable not found, 10:1

It's a quirk of mine, I like to keep my sweet pastries in my games folder, and MK1 games in my sweet pastries folder.

[flatduckrecords]

Oh I thought it was a MK1-based operating system. ChurrOS

[Morkin]

Fairly boring Windows File Explorer setup.

A-Z folders
Game name sub folders

In any game folder there's a random mix of files, some .z80, some .tzx, some .tap, instructions, screenshots I've taken, whatever I've decided to download to play the game at the time.

[Lee Bee]

As someone who rarely plays games or uses emulators any more, I'm honestly quite surprised to hear that Spec-chums are having to organise their collections in such a primitive way.

Forgive my ignorance on this, but I'd have assumed all Spectrum emulators did the organising for you, with a library of games automatically generated from whatever you drop into your assigned games folder. This library can be displayed by title, date, manufacturer, etc, or filtered by typing in a filter box, and of course a system for favourites, or ratings.

I'd also have expected to be able to display either "present" titles (default), "all" titles, or "missing" titles, so you can browse every known Spectrum game, even if you haven't downloaded them.

Furthermore, with Speccy games being so small, I would definitely have imagined that everyone's collection was the same - with all available games available to download in one big pack (probably less than a gig in total), with the pack updated every so often.

I might also have expected there to be additional downloadable packs such as an "instructions" pack, and a "covers" pack (collection of all the cover artwork), allowing all Spectrum titles to be browsed by cover. Perhaps a 'logos' pack, too?

If I were someone who played a lot of Speccy games, I would definitely want a more graphical interface, like the Hyperspin experience:

[PeterJ]

@Lee Bee,

There are similar systems like LaunchBox, but these are just a front end to various emulators. If you want the 'additional download packs' that you mention this is what you need. They need a lot of setting up, but are useful if you want to emulate lots of systems. Most people don't want to be searching through 1000's of titles.

An emulator on it's own is not concerned with this 'fluff'. The only Spectrum emulator I know that has the concept of favourites is Spectacular.

Maybe if you don't use emulators, this topic isn't for you