would be good if patches did a preinstall check. Maybe the autostart.sh script can check the tar file for a specific file, e.g. "regamebox-patch"
function patch_handling() blindly calls tar -xzvf $PATCHDIR/$file for every patch_ file in $PATCHDIR.
Better would be something like "tar -tf $PATHDIR/$file | grep regamebox-patch" and only install if that file exists.