What's new in Game Collector? (page 4)

Quick Search: Search-As-You-Type suggestions

Instantly find and select a particular game in your local database:

• In the Quick Search box, just start typing the first few letters of the title you are looking for.
• While typing, a drop-down list will appear, showing the first five matching games (for most games, it only takes 2 or 3 letters before it shows up).
• Once you see the one you were looking for, use the up/down keys to select it, then hit Enter.
• The game will now be selected in your list, with the details showing in the Details Panel.

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Fixed:

• Crashes during Check for Update proces

Fixed:

• Edit Game:
  • On User Defined Fields tab, “_[Add pick list item]_” didn’t work for comboboxes
  • Changing the role for a credit would mark all games dirty where that person appeared instead of just the edited game
• Manage Pick Lists: removing pick list items didn’t mark their corresponding games as modified
• Main Screen: accelerator keys in main menu (like “ALT+F” for files menu) didn’t work

Easily add games that come up as “Unrecognized Barcode”

• In Add Games Automatically, when a barcode is not recognized, a new “Unrecognized Barcode” screen will appear.
• In this screen:
  1. Just find your game by platform and title (Search-As-You-Type is also active here!)
  2. Use the integrated Find Cover tool to select the cover image.
  3. Then click Add Game.
• This will:
  1. Instantly add the barcode to OUR Core online game database, connected to the game you selected.
  2. Add the game to YOUR database with full game details, your barcode and image AND linked to the new Core entry.

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New:

• Quick search now also supports Regular Expressions. Enter “matches:” followed by regular expression in the quick search box.
• Free Trial now has an information panel to show the user how to get started.
• Trial Popup has been simplified to make it easier to pick one of the options.
• The Trial Popup sometimes showed when it shouldn’t for existing users.

New: “Search-As-You-Type” suggestions when adding games by title

If you are adding most of your games “By Title”, then this will be a huge time-saver.

Here’s how the new “Search-As-You-Type” feature works:

1. In the Add Games Automatically screen, just start typing the first letters of the game you want to add.
2. While typing, a drop-down list will appear, instantly showing the five most popular games that match,
   listing the title, platform and a small thumbnail image.
3. For popular games, it usually takes only 2 or 3 letters before it shows up.
   For older or less popular games, type a few more letters.
4. Once you see your game appear, use the arrow keys to select it, then hit Enter.
5. Then under Search Results, that exact game will be listed.

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Fixed:

• Export to XML is now capable of exporting large databases without “Out of Memory” errors, as it now writes the XML directly to hard disk. This is a bit slower though.
• Sync with Cloud: Original field was cleared when syncing down from the cloud
• Add/Modify Filter: “Contains” filters were always case insensitive even when “case sensitive” was checked
• Edit Multiple Games: F8 didn’t clear price values

Fixed:

• Program could throw a “Handle is invalid” error after multiple edits

Fixed:

• Main Screen:
  • The folder tree was wrapping the values in the list
  • A double hint was showing for the thumbnail slider to resize thumbnails in Images View
• When working offline, closing the program could cause Access Violations
• User Defined Fields: values of check box lists were not loaded correctly in some cases

Improvements:

• Cloud Syncing: Now does up to 5 retries when a sync action fails because of a temporary connection problem.
• Edit Game: Improved “search as you type” behaviour of search boxes for adding credits.
• Dark Skin: active window now has a light grey border, making it stand out more when windows overlap.

Fixed:

• Screen started to “flicker” after leaving the program inactive for a few minutes.
• Add Automatically: adding a checked result would sometimes uncheck a result from another search in the queue.
• Main Screen / Two Panel Mode: selection status text would sometimes show an invalid text when no games were showing in the list.
• Edit Multiple: F8 to clear didn’t work for memo fields like Description and Notes.

Fixed:

• Edit Game:
  • Changing collection status sometimes would uncheck a radiobutton but not check the selected one
  • Previous/Next/Ok could mess up data when the edit screen was still loading

Fixed:

• Export to HTML: access violation could occur in some cases when using a custom index template
• Edit Screen: Checkbox List hints would sometimes not disappear
• Main Screen: changing font size could make some screen elements disappear

Changes

• Date Fields: Year field’s position now also depends on system’s shortdate setting

Fixed:

• Edit Game:
  • Date fields didn’t clear their Month and Day values using next/previous when they weren’t filled in for the next/previous item
  • Delete key didn’t work in Month and Day fields to clear their values. Backspace did work normally.

Changes

• Date fields now have dropdowns for Month and Day. Order of Month and Day dropdown depends on system’s shortdate setting now

Fixed:

• Edit Multiple: F8 in date fields didn’t clear them
• Main Screen:
  • horizontal scrollbar was sometimes showing in folder tree when it shouldn’t
  • Cards View: scrolling using the mouse wheel wasn’t working properly
  • layout wasn’t always restored properly when quick filter panel was showing
• Quick Filter Panel: collection status filter wasn’t showing in filter description at bottom of the screen

NEW: Choose between Light, Dark or System skins

Yes, We’re getting rid of the gray!

Game Collector now comes with a skin system, which affects the look of all screens in the program,
main screen, edit screens, add auto-screen, sync screen etc.. even the settings screens.

We have designed two different skins for you to choose from: Light and Dark.
The third option “System” is basically the old pre-v16.3 look.

• Light: A clean look, white backgrounds, dark fonts. Very readable, easy on the eye.
• Dark: A cool looking, modern design, with dark backgrounds, light fonts.
• System: Keep things as it was, with the program following your Windows theme.

Please note:
The program now defaults to the Dark Skin. You can change to a different Skin using the Skin option in the View menu.
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Fixed:

• Main Screen:
  • Cards View: selection wasn’t always restored properly
  • Scrolling the Details View with the mouse wheel would scroll the list when the scroll bar reached the top
• Quick search:
  • pasting text into quick search box didn’t show the clear button
  • Escape button will now clear quick search
• Sync with Cloud: cancelling sync didn’t always work

New view for the main screen: Card View

Next to List View, Images View and Cover Flow, we have added a Card View, a multi-column view with little info cards for each game, showing the main game details and a small cover thumbnail.

Fixed:

• Add Automatically: right click menu didn’t popup when there were no results showing
• Templates: Online https links didn’t open

Fixed:

• Loading of backup.xml is now more robust

Fixed:

• Improved Webcam functionality for Webcam Barcode scanning:
  • Sometimes starting the webcam feature would hang the program
  • Some webcams didn’t show any video
  • A JPEG error could be thrown for some webcams
• Add Automatically: when you didn’t want to move a game from your wish list into your collection, it wasn’t possible.

Find Image Online tool now uses Bing Image Search

The Find Image Online tool previously used Google Images to find images.

However, it turns out that on December 1, Google terminated the free Google Image Search API
that we were using, causing our Find Image Online functionality to stop working.

Google provides a new paid version of the Search API, but it is limited to max 10K searches per day.
With the amount of customers we have, we need at least 20K daily searches (600K per month!) 🙁

The solution: Switch to BING!

Microsoft also offers a paid Bing Image Search API and this one has no limits.
Or, to be more precise, they let us pay more for higher limits.

We immediately went to work and updated all our Windows and Mac programs
to use Bing Images for the Find Image Online tool instead.
Obviously, this generates considerable extra monthly costs (well over US $1,000),
but we have decided that we will NOT pass on these extra costs to our customers.

So here it is: the new Find Image Online, powered by Bing. Enjoy!

Fixed:

• Freezes at start up for some users, caused by the webcam detection.

Fixed:

• Access Violation when starting the program after a fresh installation.
• Access Violation when closing the program.

Fixed:

• Delete Orphan Images tools didn’t account for images linked in the Links / Local Files tab.

Webcam barcode scanning

Use your webcam as a barcode scanner, to add or find games by barcode.

• Scan barcodes with your webcam
  Just use the live camera view to point your webcam at a barcode
  and let our software detect the barcode that is in view.
• Use the webcam scanner to add games by barcode
  Pop-up the scan window and scan game barcodes,
  either using Direct Search or scanning into the Queue.
• Or use it in the main screen to find games by barcode
  Scan a game barcode while in the main screen,
  to quickly search your local database by barcode.
• Works best with auto-focus or manual-focus webcams
  Fixed focus cameras will not work well (or at all).

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