I kinda newbie question..

[Steve]

I'm no newbie but this is a sort of Amiga Emulation related newbie type question. Can someone list all the Tosec naming conventions and what they mean. I'm talking about the extensions they use like:

Cr = Cracked

That's about the sum of my Tosec knowledge.

[TikTok]

Heres a snippet I nicked from a file which came with one of the Tosec dats:

[a] Alternate version
[b] Bad dump
[cr] Cracked
[cr Crack Group] Cracked by Crack Group
[f] Fixed
[f save] - fixed to allow saving
[f copier] - fixed for use on a copier
[f NTSC] - fixed for NTSC systems
[h] Hacked
[h Hacker Group] - Hacked by Hacker Group
[m] Modified
[m Modifier] - Modified by Modifier
[o] Overdump
[p] Pirate (non-licensed)
[t] Trained
[t Trainer Group] - Trained by Trainer Group
[t +5] - Plus five trainer
[tr] Translation
[tr Fr] - Translated to French
[tr En] - Translated to English
[u] Underdump
[!] Verified Good dump

Hope that helps

[TikTok]

Come to think of it, I think the "M" flag means something different for Amiga games - something to do with multiple languages or I believe (e.g Worms is "M3" because it has French, German and English options). Also remember that a "Bad" dump is not nessecarily bad; they just haven't found them to work on emulators (yet).

Certain other ones such as "P" don't apply to the Amiga either.

TikTok already gave away most of the relevant info, I'd just like to rectify one little error: the [m] flag doesn't have a different meaning in the Amiga dat; there are actually two "m" flags, one with square brackets for modified disks (i.e. disks that have a saved game on it) and one with round brackets for games with multiple language support (i.e. M3 for a game where you can choose between 3 languages).

The [b] flag is indeed used for games we can't get to work, but sometimes this is due to faulty emulation, not actual errors on the disk.

sheesh. I never take notice of the brackets....I never knew I had to!

LOL... you know, the intricacies of TOSEC renaming are a science in its own right. The square brackets are for dump-related info (concerning the nature of the disk dump, e.g. good/bad dump, cracked disk etc.) while the round brackets contain game-related info (independent of the dump quality, e.g. release year/publisher).

[Twistin'Ghost]

OK, I have one for you. What about a game that has an intro stating "cracked by xxx" [cr xxx] and then immediately following is an intro that says "supplied by TRSI", for example. Does this get labeled as h, m, or what? Castle Master 2 is an example where the game is cracked by Agile and then a second intro follows that it was supplied by Scoopex.

[Steve]

Wow. It's actually pretty complicated this Tosec naming stuff. However I'm still a little confused. What do these mean (taken from the PE200 website).

(y) -
(alt) - is this the same as altered. I guess it is.
(multi) - I guess this means multi language as well

How come PE2000 use a different convention?

Also (for any beginners reading) some others that PE2000 uses are:

[de] - German Only
[AGA] - Amiga 1200 only

[Twistin'Ghost]

Yeah, those are all old. Y is history; alt has been replaced with [a], [a2], etc.; multi has been replaced by [M] or [M4], depending on the number of languages supported. PE2000 is way outdated.

Despite the improved flags, much improvement is still needed. I use the current naming conventions only because it helps me sort out 1) dupes, and 2) who cracked/trained what. As Cody points out often, this would be better suited in a database with abbreviations in the filename, but it's likely that a future revision of the dats will allow alternate namesets, which is neccessary for buring to CD and/or using these files on a real Amiga.

I use clrmamepro, which converts the filename and then rezips it with the same name, however I have downloaded a lot of TOSEC-named zips that have the old names still on the ADF, so I dunno if they were hand-renamed or if one of the other renamers only modifies the zip filename. Also, clrmamepro reports a lot of zips it finds as being invalid, which is just not true, so I dunno what's up with that.

Yes, there is a landscape of confusion on this stuff and even TOSEC renaming is becoming as much work lately as hand-checking everything.

And speaking of renaming, once I am finished with the rebuild of my collection, I plan on making a huge list of corrections to the TOSEC lists, but in the meantime, here's a few really nasty ones for Morph72:

Mission X - Raid 2 (1991)(Fez)[cr Ami Sector One].zip
Monty the Wolf (1997)(A.S.P.)[cr Ami Sector One].zip

These seem pretty obvious, since they are PD games and Ami Sector One/Bernd are not crackers.

Also:
Mick & Mack - Global Gladiators (1993)(Virgin)[cr Prodigy](Disk 1 of 2).zip

and all other cracks/disks of this game...the actual title of the game is Global Gladiators, sans the Mick & Mack part. This is the case on all of the platforms it was released to, even if the title screen indicates otherwise (the title screen actually says "Mick & Mack as the Global Gladiators"...)

And hey, speaking of that game:
Mick & Mack - Global Gladiators (1993)(Virgin)[cr Black Cat][d](Disk 1 of 2).zip

what the heck is [d]?

One final note:
Grand Monster Slam in the dats is listed as Monster Grand Slam, which is incorrect. As you can see on the attached screen, the game itself calls it Grand Monster Slam after the title screen.