What's new?

Another cool update for Game Collector, bringing you a new super-quick way to add games to your database: a new Add By Platform tab in the Add Games from Core screen.

Just select a platform and it will show a full list of all games available on that platform. Now just checkbox the games you own (or want) and use the big Add button at the bottom.

The new By Platform lists is the perfect tool for platform completionists:
The list clearly highlights the games you already have In Collection or On Wishlist. Or use the Not in Collection filter to show only the ones you are still missing.

Using the “Not in Collection” filter:

Tip: use the search box on the toolbar to quickly filter the list:

Another cool update for Game Collector, bringing you a new super-quick way to add games to your database: a new Add By Platform tab in the Add Games from Core screen.

Just select a platform and it will show a full list of all games available on that platform. Now just checkbox the games you own (or want) and use the big Add button at the bottom.

The list also clearly highlights the game you already have In Collection or On Wishlist, making it a perfect tool for platform completionists.

Tip: use the search box on the toolbar to quickly filter the list:

Active subscription required!

To use the “Add Games by Platform” feature you need to have an active subscription for your Game Collector software (previously called “Update Plan ” or “Service Plan”).

The Game Collector software has allowed you to add your gaming hardware (consoles, controllers, etc…) to your database for quite a while. However, that has always been manual entry. Not surprisingly, one of the top feature requests for our game database solution has been the ability to add hardware automatically by searching an online database.

So… that is exactly what we created for you!

• First, we set up a separate database in our Core for gaming hardware, with all the right fields.
• Then, we created a in-house CMS tool for actually filling that hardware database.
• At that point, the big project started for our content managers: finding console and accessory information online and manually filling the database with as many consoles, controllers, light guns, etc.. they could find. All with descriptions, box images, device images, backdrop images, sometimes even YouTube promo videos.
• After many months work, our hardware database now lists 1500 console editions and just over 500 controllers.
• So it is finally time to release our new “Add Hardware from Core” feature!

Add Hardware

Find the new Add Hardware screen by clicking the Add Hardware button on the toolbar.

Add Hardware by title

This screen should be familiar to you as it works the same as the Add Games screen. Start typing the title of your hardware item, and pick it from the Search-as-you-type” suggestions.

Or refine your search by setting the type of hardware and picking a platform:

Add Hardware by barcode

You can also find hardware by scanning barcodes via the “Barcode” tab. Scan a bunch of hardware items and add them!

TIP: Use CLZ Barry to quickly scan a bunch of barcodes here!

Add Hardware Manually

If you can’t find your hardware item, you can click the “Not found? Add this hardware anyway” entry at the bottom, and add that to your collection.

Or just use the old menu Edit > Add Hardware Manually to do so.

Find Device and Box Image

Use the “Find Online” buttons in the Edit Hardware screen if you want to find a different device or box image!

Hardware in your collection

Hardware has been a part of our Game cataloging software titles for a while. You can edit a hardware entry the same as you can edit a game entry, and you can now add two images (device and box image) to them as well.

TIP: To quickly group on hardware, click the folder button and select “Games / Hardware”.

New: Sync your own back covers and audience ratings

Back Covers

With this big update for Game Collector we have another surprise for you: Syncing Back Covers!

We introduced a new checkbox “Custom Image” in the Edit screen for back covers of games. This checkbox will be automatically checked when you replace the Core image, e.g. by using Find Cover Online, by dragging and dropping or by using the Browse button to add a local image.

Once this Custom Image box is checked, that cover will automatically sync to and from the CLZ Cloud.

Same as with custom front covers, you can automatically check your database for custom images by clicking menu Tools / Maintenance / Auto Mark Custom Images.

Also, they will always stay marked as custom, so that even if you clear your cloud and sync everything again, they will re-upload automatically.

Audience Ratings

One of the top requested fields to be added to the sync is Audience Ratings… so this field now syncs to and from the CLZ Cloud.

What about the mobile apps?

We’ll be adding the audience rating and back cover fields to the sync of the CLZ Games apps (Android and iOS) within 3 months. Back covers (editing and syncing) will also be added to all Collectorz.com Movie, Book, Comic and Music products.

Today, a subtle addition to your Game Connect software, but one that can save you a lot of time if you’re always adding your games by barcode:

A new “Add [..] to Collection” button under the add queue, that lets you add all scanned games in one go. No more need to click the little “+” buttons for each entry.

Some other improvements:

At the same time, some other tweaks went live in your software:

• In the “fixed” area at the bottom of the Edit Game screen, we replaced the Owner field with the Location field.
  
  Through user feedback we found that the Location field is used by many more users, compared to Owner. Also many new users were not finding the field. So we figured the Location field deserved a more prominent spot in the Edit Game screen.
  BTW: the Owner field can now be found on the Personal tab.

• The User Rating field has received a make-over and can now be set using a nice sliding star thingie.

The Game Connect software has allowed you to add your gaming hardware (consoles, controllers, etc…) to your database for quite a while. However, that has always been manual entry. Not surprisingly, one of the top feature requests for our game database solution has been the ability to add hardware automatically by searching an online database.

So… that is exactly what we created for you!

• First, we set up a separate database in our Core for gaming hardware, with all the right fields.
• Then, we created a in-house CMS tool for actually filling that hardware database.
• At that point, the big project started for our content managers: finding console and accessory information online and manually filling the database with as many consoles, controllers, light guns, etc.. they could find. All with descriptions, box images, device images, backdrop images, sometimes even YouTube promo videos.
• After many months work, our hardware database now lists 1500 console editions and just over 500 controllers.
• So it is finally time to release our new “Add Hardware from Core” feature!

Add Hardware

Find the new Add Hardware screen by opening the menu and click “Add Hardware”

Add Hardware by title

This screen should be familiar to you as it works the same as the Add Games screen. Start typing the title of your hardware item, and pick it from the Search-as-you-type” suggestions.

Or refine your search by setting the type of hardware and picking a platform:

Add Hardware by barcode

You can also find hardware by scanning barcodes via the “Barcode” tab. Scan a bunch of hardware items and add them!

TIP: Use CLZ Barry to quickly scan a bunch of barcodes here!

Find Device and Box Image

Use the “Find Device image” and “Find Box image” buttons if you want to find a different image!

Add Hardware Manually

If you can’t find your hardware item, you can click the “Add Manually” button top right and fill in all details of the hardware item yourself.

Hardware in your collection

Hardware has been a part of our programs and Game Connect for a while. You can edit hardware the same as you can edit game, and you can now add two images (device and box image) to them.

TIP: To quickly group on hardware, click the folder button and go to Main > Type.

And the result:

New: Add your own back covers

With this big update for Game Connect we have another surprise for you: Back Covers! That’s right, a brand new back cover field you can modify yourself!

Use the “Find Back cover” button to find one, or upload one yourself:

New: Edit the Audience Rating field

Audience Rating is now a field you can edit yourself. So for all your games, you can edit and modify the Audience Rating field now, to anything you like.

We’ll be adding the audience rating and back cover fields to the sync of all other Collectorz.com game products in the next couple of weeks. Back covers (editing and syncing) will also be added to the Collectorz.com Movie, Book, Comic and Music products.

Based on user feedback we found out users were looking for and expecting a tool to find duplicate entries in their collection. Some way to find out if you’ve accidentally added multiple versions of the same game, but perhaps with a different format or barcode.

After quite a few requests and discussions with users about this, to find out how they got duplicates and what they would expect from such a Duplicate Finder tool, it’s here today: Find Duplicate entries in your collection!

New: Find Duplicate Games

Open the menu top left and select Find Duplicates to begin.

Then select which field to find duplicates on. You can find duplicates based on:

• Title
• Title & Platform
• Barcode
• Index

Click “Find Duplicates” and see what it comes up with. Use the blue “Keep” button to keep a group of duplicates, or use the red “Remove” button to remove a duplicate!

If you click “Remove all duplicates automatically”, it will remove all duplicate entries and will only keep 1 single entry (the oldest one) in your collection.

Tip: use the columns button, top right, to set up the columns you’d like to see!

Another big step forward for our cloud-based Connect software, making it even more customizable:

The columns in List View are now resizable. That is, you can now change the width of the columns by simply dragging the dividers between the column headers. Hover your mouse over the divider and it will turn blue, then drag it make the column wider or narrower.

TIP: double click the divider to make the column auto-size to its’ current content!

See it in action:

Do you prefer the automatic column widths, the way it was before? No problem, just go to the Settings screen and enable the “Size columns automatically” settings.

Changed:

• Bigger buttons for the find cover screen and options screen,

Fixed:

• Filter Screen: Drag/Drop of pre-set filters could give an Access Violation error
• Duplicate Finder:
  • Updated the standard set of columns (you can also pick your own using the column button top right)
  • After searching for duplicates twice, the screen could show “0 found” even if it found duplicates
• When running the program on 2 or more screens with different DPI settings, you could get a “List Index out of Bounds” error
• You can now bypass the “Lock File” warning if it appears on start up
• Add buttons in the Add Screen are now disabled while data is being downloaded to prevent an Access Violation

Based on user feedback we found out users were looking for and expecting a tool to find duplicate entries in their database. Some way to find out if you’ve accidentally added multiple versions of the same game, but perhaps with a different platform or barcode.

After quite a few requests and discussions with users about this, to find out how they got duplicates and what they would expect from such a Duplicate Finder tool, it’s here today: Find Duplicate entries in your database!

New: Find Duplicate Games

Click menu Tools > Maintenance > Find Duplicates to begin.

Then select which field to find duplicates on. You can find duplicates based on:

• Title
• Title & Platform
• Barcode
• Index
• All Fields

Click “Find Duplicates” and see what it comes up with. Use the blue “Keep” button to keep a group of duplicates, or use the red “Remove” button to remove a duplicate!

If you click “Remove all duplicates automatically” the program will remove all duplicate entries and will only keep 1 single entry (the oldest one) in your database.

Tip: use the columns button, top right, to set up the columns you’d like to see!

We already worked on this area in the previous update, but we were still not completely satisfied. So more tweaks to the Add button in the Add Games from Core screen today:

Tweaks to the Add button:

• All Collection Status values are now available, including “For Sale” and “On Order”!
• The little popup menu now indicates the selected value with a checkmark.
• The Add button itself now says “Add to Collection” or “Add to Wishlist”.

Screenshot from the Add button in Movie Collector:

Fixed:

• Flashing starting the program (especially visible on very big screens)
• Selected x from x items in the status bar and the total items at the top now have a bit more space
• Clicking the add button twice didn’t give an “Already in collection” warning
• Opening the program in full screen on a secondary screen didn’t work
• Add Screen: On high DPI screens, search results could take up too much space

With the big feature updates behind us (multi-collections, image syncing, 64-bit support, Flex template, etc…), it is time for some smaller tweaks that were requested by our loyal users:

• More compact toolbar layout, to save screen space
• No more annoying Add to Collection / Wish List popup in Add Games screen
• New “Transparent” styles for the Flex template, to show off your backdrops

Read more

We’ve made several tweaks to improve the trial mode experience and fixed a freeze problem:

• Trial mode improvements:
  • Bigger “+ Add Games” button on the default toolbar.
  • Improved “My CLZ Account” messaging when logging in with a CLZ Account.
  • New hints to Sync with CLZ Cloud after adding some movies.
  • Removed the ugly blue “hint box” that appeared when starting with an empty database.
• Fixed:
  • Occasional freeze/hang problems after a period of program inactivity.

Fixed:

• Automatically syncing cover images could happen too often
• Edit Screens:
  • While using Next/Previous, the cursor position wasn’t always retained
  • After scanning an image, some of the buttons would sometimes not be enabled

Right after the release of v19, we started receiving reports from users that their image scanners would not be found when using the 64-bit version. Other users reported that the web-cam scanning would not work anymore.
A temporary work-around has been to use the 32-bit version of version 19.

In the meantime, our Windows developer Joe has been working hard to get both of these problems resolved and we are happy to report that both have been fixed in today’s version 19.0.5:

• 64-bit version now uses WIA to connect with image scanners. When acquiring, make sure to select the WIA driver for your scanner, not TWAIN.
• Scanning barcodes with your webcam scanner is working again.

If you have been using the 32-bit version as a workaround, please switch to the 64-bit version again (this is a choice during installation).

Then, please let us know your findings, is everything working again?

Fixed:

• Custom Image checkbox wasn’t always checked in certain situations (e.g. unrecognized barcode screen, drag/drop image on the details panel)
• Images for items that don’t have a cover in Core didn’t upload automatically
• Images for items that don’t have a cover in your CLZ Cloud didn’t upload automatically
• Got rid of a couple of access violations in the main, filter and find cover screens
• Edit Screen: Covers tab: tabs weren’t high enough
• Import from Other Database:
  • Added 2 progress bars to keep track of the import
  • In rare cases you could get an empty extra collection tab after an import
• Fixed a rare “Range Check Error” happening for big databases

You can now manage multiple sub-collections within one account. The collections will appear as little tabs at the bottom (e.g. like in Excel), so that you can easily switch between them.

Create and manage collections

Open the menu top left and click “Manage Collections” to:

• Create new collections
• Rename existing collections
• Remove collections
• Change their order (drag and drop)

Note: the CLZ mobile app currently does not support multiple collections yet (coming soon!). For now, you CAN sync multiple collections to the mobile app, but they will appear mixed together, as ONE database.

New: Notes as a column

The Notes field can now be added as a column in List View:

(example screenshot from Movie Connect)

Stability

We have fixed various stability issues in the program to get rid of some more access violation errors that were happening for a couple of users. We also fixed a problem where “File > Open Database” didn’t refresh the main screen to show the opened file.

• Got rid of some Access Violation errors
• “File / Open database” could show an empty screen

32-bit and 64-bit option

We’ve found that when running our program in 64-bit mode, some 3rd party external devices will not work or talk to the program such as:

• TWAIN image scanners
• Some barcode scanners
• Webcams (for barcode scanning)

If you run into issues where you your TWAIN image scanner, or your barcode scanner won’t connect or work, this is usually caused by the drivers of these devices which are not 64-bit compatible, and thus can’t talk to your Collectorz program.

We’re trying to look for a way to make them talk to the 64-bit version, but for now, to work around this, redownload the software from your CLZ Account page and during installation choose to install the 32-bit version!

New:

• The resizable panels in the add screen now have the same design as the ones in the main screen.

Fixed:

• iPad: Wrong initial panel layout in the main screen when the app is started in landscape mode.

Fixed:

• Add Screen: previews of results could sometimes not be loaded.

A useful update of your app today, that is, if you are using the app on an iPad:

All panels in the main screen (folders, list and details) are now resizable using draggable separators between the panels, so that you can customize the layout to your own liking.

New:

• Image Viewer popup: The option “Resize picture to window” now resizes the window when browsing through the images of that item.
• Added new tool to automatically check the checkbox of front covers when they are “custom covers” (found in Tools > Maintenance menu)

Fixed:

• “Search as you type” suggestions on your own collection did not always work.

We removed the auto marking of custom front covers during the conversion from older versions to V19 as it could take very long for large databases and/or images stored on networked drive.

Coming up in build 3: a separate tool to automatically mark custom images.

This version also contains a fix for the details templates that weren’t displaying correctly on displays with high DPI settings.

• All panels in the main screen (folders, list and details) are now resizable using draggable separators between the panels, so that you can customize the layout to your own liking.
• The resizable panels in the Add screen have been updated to use the nicer look of the draggable separators.

Fixed:

• Atari Lynx had the Sega Master System logo as platform icon.
• Added Completeness / hasBox / hasManual fields to the field defaults screen.

Game Collector version 19 has arrived! Here’s what’s new:

• Manage multiple “collections” within one database file
• Automatic Cloud-syncing of your own “custom” images
• A new super-adaptive “Flex” template for the Details Panel
• 64-bit version for 64-bit Windows versions

Read on for the full details:

Read more

Another useful addition to your software today, as we added a Quick Search box in your folder panel.

Especially useful for those long folder lists, e.g. when using Platform as the folder field. Just type a few letters of the platform name and the folder list will instantly “filter down” to the matching platforms, while you type!

See it in action: