Sorting Names

[MrWheyne]

Some popular gaming frontends allow for Sorting Names, which are hidden parameters used for customized sorting of game titles. This is interesting because sometimes games from the same series have different titles, or are displayed with roman numerals, or have different names between regions and some are only released in a specific region, but have unofficial translations that kept the original un-localized name.

Practical Examples:
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy Tactics

Using traditional alphabetical sorting, they are displayed in the wrong order:
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII

Other examples would be:
Final Fantasy Adventures II
Final Fantasy Adventures III
The Final Fantasy Adventures (I)

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

Sorting names could be added to the miyoogamelist.xml as a way to fix these inconsistencies and allow users to sort their games however they like by simply changing an internal parameter. This way we could still keep the correct display names and have them be sorted in the correct order. An update to the XML generation script could be pushed to automatically account for certain common occurences, such as removing articles (The Legend of Zelda > Legend of Zelda).

An example to how a modified file could turn out:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gameList>
    <game>
        <path>./Blood Omen - Legacy of Kain (USA).chd</path>
        <name>Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain</name>
        <sorting>Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen</sorting>
        <image>./Imgs/Blood Omen - Legacy of Kain (USA).png</image>
    </game>
    <game>
        <path>./Legacy of Kain - Soul Reaver (USA).chd</path>
        <name>Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver</name>
        <image>./Imgs/Legacy of Kain - Soul Reaver (USA).png</image>
    </game>
    <game>
        <path>./Final Fantasy IX (USA) (Rev 1).m3u</path>
        <name>Final Fantasy IX</name>
        <sorting>Final Fantasy 9</sorting>
        <image>./Imgs/Final Fantasy IX (USA) (Rev 1).png</image>
    </game>
    <game>
        <path>./Final Fantasy Tactics (USA).chd</path>
        <name>Final Fantasy Tactics</name>
        <image>./Imgs/Final Fantasy Tactics (USA).png</image>
    </game>
    <game>
        <path>./Final Fantasy VII (USA).m3u</path>
        <name>Final Fantasy VII</name>
        <sorting>Final Fantasy 7</sorting>
        <image>./Imgs/Final Fantasy VII (USA).png</image>
    </game>
    <game>
        <path>./Final Fantasy VIII (USA).m3u</path>
        <name>Final Fantasy VIII</name>
        <sorting>Final Fantasy 8</sorting>
        <image>./Imgs/Final Fantasy VIII (USA).png</image>
    </game>
    <game>
</gameList>

Obviously not every title needs a Sorting Name, so games without one defined would use their display names for sorting. This way we prevent redundancy and keep the file only as big as it needs to be.

As a QoL feature, two options in the context menu (Pressing SELECT with a game highlighted) or GLO menu (Pressing Y with a game highlighted) could be added: Change Display Name and Change Sorting Name, to prevent having to manually edit the XMLs, which can become a quite cumbersome task and might require other devices to optimally do so (such as a PC).