Mame is not saving my high scores!

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:02 pm

Can anyone help me here? Mame is not saving my high scores after I am done playing. I have to use a save state so my score isn't wiped clean when I exit the rom. (It does help me skip the long rom checks though)

I am using Mame32 0.95, if that helps.

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:05 pm

If it's a game that supports high scores, then make sure that the directory path is correct. If it's not, then check to see if you have hiscore.dat. If you don't, get it. It will allow some games that didn't originally save high scores to save them.

Post by **Icarus** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:08 pm

Get the Unofficial Highscore .dat File. Unpack it into the same directory as your MAME executable file.

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:12 pm

Icarus wrote:Get the Unofficial Highscore .dat File. Unpack it into the same directory as your MAME executable file.

I had an older file from a CD-R full of arcade roms (mostly good shmups like the Raizing games and Dodonpachi). I'll try this updated file and see what happens.

UPDATE: Yes! It works! Fired up Batrider, played poorly so I can get an entry in and quit, checked the hi folder, and bam! There's a hi score file for Batrider! Thanks for the link!

ASK · Post by **ASK** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 6:26 pm

FatCobra wrote:Yes! It works! Fired up Batrider, played poorly so I can get an entry in and quit, checked the hi folder, and bam! There's a hi score file for Batrider! Thanks for the link!

Just make sure never to press F3.

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 8:41 pm

ASK wrote:
FatCobra wrote:Yes! It works! Fired up Batrider, played poorly so I can get an entry in and quit, checked the hi folder, and bam! There's a hi score file for Batrider! Thanks for the link!
Just make sure never to press F3.

Why? All that does is reset the machine....oh.

Smraedis · Post by **Smraedis** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 10:45 pm

FatCobra wrote:
ASK wrote:
FatCobra wrote:Yes! It works! Fired up Batrider, played poorly so I can get an entry in and quit, checked the hi folder, and bam! There's a hi score file for Batrider! Thanks for the link!
Just make sure never to press F3.
Why? All that does is reset the machine....oh.

..and the scores usually

unsane · Post by **unsane** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:43 am

http://www.mameworld.net/highscore/ and its hiscore.dat haven't been updated in 7 months... Is that still what everyone uses to save scores (especially for games that don't save to nvram and don't work with save states)?

Basically, does the old hiscore.dat still work fine on Mame 0.114-0.120?

Mortificator · Post by **Mortificator** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:56 am

No, support for highscore.dat was removed back in '05 or '06. I know it's not in versions 1.09 and onwards.

MAME devs are psychotic. On one hand, they spend an enormous amount of time acquiring PCB, dumping ROMs, emulating drivers, and cracking encryption to make playing thousands of arcade games possible. That's awesome. But they also like to pretend that MAME isn't for playing games, it's for preserving arcade systems accurately. And since you can't keep the high score after the power's turned off in old games, highscore.dat supposedly compromises that accuracy. Even though it's optional.

Other features like save states and graphic filters have been discussed as possibly getting the axe in the future. For the sake of accuracy.

But highscore.dat already works with pretty much any game you're likely to play, as long as you use an older MAME version. If you use a newer MAME, you'll have to go with save states or a quill and papyrus. And games that can save non-volatile RAM are always capable of keeping their high scores.

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:18 pm

Don't the unofficial MAME builds still support hiscore.dat?

dmauro · Post by **dmauro** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:21 pm

Oh this is cool, I didn't even know you could do this without using save states. Thanks for the link!

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 6:01 pm

ASK wrote: Just make sure never to press F3.

Just go into general controls and unmap 'soft reset' (delete key) and just bind f3 to plain reset. That just closes and opens the game again.

bsidwell · Post by **bsidwell** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 6:49 am

bcass wrote:Don't the unofficial MAME builds still support hiscore.dat?

Apparently. I'm using Plus Plus K 118 and hiscore.dat works fine.