Request File Hashes Fields Be Required Upon Movie File Submission

[ShinobiWannabe]

When syncing or judging it would save a lot of time to have the file hashes for the files up front. There are some users that include them, but others that don't. Right now it is optional and could be included in the submission files or within the Catalog.

Also while including the file hashes for the files is included in https://tasvideos.org/SubmissionInstructions#CommentsAndExplanations, it would be far better to require the info at the point of submission. It is also doubtful most submitters even read the full submission instructions for that.

Feel fields that could capture the hashes on the submission screen might be a good way of doing this. Or maybe some kind of wizard.

[Masterjun3]

I added the label that this requires staff consensus, because "adding a new required field to one of the most important features of the site" is a big decision in my opinion.

[CasualPokePlayer]

I'm not sure I exactly understand this proposal.

With the current state of the code, there is already a submission field for the game hash. This is automatically extracted from the movie file. Most movie files will have a hash, and the most popular movie formats (bk2, fm2, ltm) have hash extraction in their parsers. This could be slightly improved (some parsers of less used movies, like dtm, could have hash extraction added) but otherwise this allows for most movies to have a hash as a submission field, and such a hash would be usually reliable, much more so than a user provided hash.

If the proposal is just to add a field for the user to provide a hash, then such a field may as well be autopopulated by the movie hash extraction (although, implementation wise this might be tricky anyways as the movie isn't actually parsed until you click Submit). At which point, for most movies, the user doesn't actually have to do anything, and everything functions the same as the status quo. This only then differs in the case where the hash is not present in the movie file, which is an extremely small amount of cases. This could be a slight improvement maybe, although such might be better to add after going through parsers and adding hash extraction to all possible cases (dtm is probably the biggest cases where it could be added here).

Of course too, this feature could be useful if it's made in a way that allows for multiple file hashes to be put in. Except there's no way to mandate a user to put in multiple hashes, you don't know how many relevant file hashes there should be put in. You're trusting the user regardless, so any additional movie file hashes would need to be optional. If multiple files are relevant, other information like the directory structure and specific file names might also be relevant, at which point the submission text is better for such info.

Also, considering we have automatic extraction of hashes in movie files, the submission instructions are a bit outdated. They probably should mention the site already extracts the hash from the movie file, and maybe recommend putting in hashes if there are multiple files present.

[ShinobiWannabe]

CasualPokePlayer you are right about the auto hash capture from the movie files. I do see a lot more on the bench that have them then those that do not. I have been looking at a lot of the older submissions lately which do not have the auto hash filling in and was thinking the issue was larger than it really is. Multi hash would be helpful for more complex games than ones with just a single file. So as you say it would be on the user to provide the right structure and file hashes, and afaik there is no database to verify those of off too. Had a thought while writing this about the user running some sort of file to create a text file of the structure with file hashes, but that would also be a headache getting people to run it even if it existed. Just trying to find a way to make it easier to capture all the file hashes data from the user so that syncing and running these games is easier.

Edit: Something though to tell what files they have would have up front would have been really helpful in this case where the author actually had some custom stuff loaded up. https://tasvideos.org/9744S

[vadosnaprimer]

There are scripts that print hashes and dir structure
https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Topics/22813