Sounds very interesting, you've got my vote 😀

eraH wrote:

Because of the hash values, applications (I'm looking at you DFR & DGL) will be able to reliably pick up what games they are working with.

Well, why wouldn't the user be able to know what game the user is working with?

The principle advantage to a database with hashes seems to me to facilitate distribution, and the flagrant distribution of copyrighted software is a rather touchy subject here.

Thanks Ronald, you were one of the people I was hoping to year from 😊

It's got nothing to do with piracy, it's to help front ends identify games reliably and download game information. Say you own and have installed Duke Nukem 1, Episode 2. It's in a folder called DUKE2. Instead of the front end asking you, "Is this Duke 1Ep 2, or Duke 2", it will know from the hash which game it is and download the game information.

I think the database of game information would be fairly impressive on its own without the hashes.

Filenames alone ought to be more than enough to distinguish one game from another in the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases. There are cases in which hashes might be useful, but from what you've described so far, I can't see the purpose of them.

Did you know DFR uses hash's to identify games and choose the appropriate config file, that's where I got the original idea from. This is just extending that idea and centralising it so other applications can use it.
Plus, if you are going to do a filename to gamename database, you might as well use hash's as they are more reliable.

eraH wrote:

Did you know DFR uses hash's to identify games and choose the appropriate config file, that's where I got the original idea from.

Ah. No, I have never used D-Fend Reloaeded before, if that's what you're referring to.

Plus, if you are going to do a filename to gamename database, you might as well use hash's as they are more reliable.

But the filenames used by a DOS game are unlikely to ever change. In fact, subtly-different versions of a DOS game are likely to have different hashes, as you point out. If the primary goal is to serve up game information for Duke Nukem 1, Episode 2, then the end-user is not likely to care if he is running version 1.0 or 1.01a. If your goal includes trying to catalog all of the subtly different variations each different DOS game may have, well, that's a different matter.

I'll shut up now.

Yeah, don't think I will carry this on. The internet doesn't need another game database, maybe one of the existing ones (http://thegamesdb.net/, or http://www.archive.vg/) will add support for filenames/hashes.