Some Games not Doing High Scores anymore, others are :)

[rtkiii]

I doubt this is really a GameEx problem but I know how knowledgeable you fellas are so I thought I'd start here. I was playing Q-Bert with Alli, my 4 year old and she finally got 1000 points and we entered her name. We backed out and played one or two other games before she says "Dad, can I play Q-Bert again." so we go in and find that her high score is now gone.

I did some quick testing and in short it will not save any new high scores. Even though it has 8 or so of mine from the last I played a few months back. I then tried City Connection and that is not saving high scores either(but I'm not sure if that ever does) as a last test I tried a game I had not played(cannot remember the name) and it saved both high scores after exiting the game.

Back in the day I went through all the hiscore setup needed to get them to stay and it has worked fine for all games that were supported. Anyone seen this before?

I did try resetting the scores on the Qbert Settings it self but even those do not clear out.

[hansolo77]

I'm not completely sure here, but I believe the problem is related the the hiscore file. Did you recently upgrade MAME? The .diff needs updated too when you compile. Also, if you're using MAMEUI, check and make sure you have a check in the box that says to use/save high scores. Other than that, I'll leave somebody else to help you with. I've noticed a few of my games don't save either, but I've just sorta ignored it.

[tthurman]

You have enable hi scores set to yes?

Are you compiling mame with a high score dif?

Probably a good idea to post your ini and log

[tthurman]

Good call Han.

You can grab it here rtkiii

[DazzleHP]

I'm not completely sure here, but I believe the problem is related the the hiscore file. Did you recently upgrade MAME? The .diff needs updated too when you compile.

Good call indeed. A few other things to consider:

If you have updated your MAME build and you have included the latest hiscore.diff that tthurman posted earlier, in your build:

You can grab it here rtkiii

...you will also need the latest hiscore.dat (in your root MAME directory):

highscore.dat

along with the following base directories:

MAME\hi

MAME\nvram

Now comes the hard part - explaining things In laymen's terms, newer MAME builds can read (it's a lottery) previous high score files but more often cannot write them. Even with the right support files as outlined above, more often than not you will need to start over, ie delete your old .hi files and nvram contents. You can of course back them up/move them/rename them so they are preserved for nostalgic reference, but mostly you should delete all of your scores for each new MAME build for maximum compatibility. This is probably the reason why you can see some old scores but no new ones are getting written.

It's a lottery really with each new MAME release, which games will be affected and which will be fine. It's just the nature of the beast :S

[rtkiii]

I have not updated MAME, nor do I plan too. Too much work

I am used to some games not working but i'd say 95% of them saved up until this issue arose. I use a compiled version of mame(v143 is popping out to me) and it has worked for at least 2 years.

Maybe I should grab the latest highscore.dat

[tthurman]

I have not updated MAME, nor do I plan too. Too much work

I hear ya man! I held off for a good while after this last setup, but got the great idea to take things to .161.

It's amazing really, almost to the degree where starting over would be more appealing than replacing everything.

Did you verify enable high scores setting was yes? Just seems suspicious that it suddenly changed so dramatically. Would be odd, but perhaps it toggled. Stranger things have happened with this hobby before!

[rtkiii]

Did you verify enable high scores setting was yes? Just seems suspicious that it suddenly changed so dramatically. Would be odd, but perhaps it toggled. Stranger things have happened with this hobby before!

I did not have time last night but if it were unchecked wouldn't all games not save scores anymore? In my case some still save and others that used to...do not. I'll still give it a look over but just trying to make sure I understand.

[Adultery]

Doesn't it depend on the game?

[rtkiii]

Doesn't it depend on the game?

Yeah...but the game in question(Q-bert) did work before and now it is not adding new scores. Still have not had time to test

[hansolo77]

Maybe something got corrupted somewhere. If I remember correctly, the way the high scores are saved are an extra file (romname.hi?). You might lose what you have saved, but maybe that file got corrupted? Try deleting it and see if it recreates a new one that works. I'm not at my home machine, but if the "romname.hi" file isn't in the /rom path, it might be in a /hiscore path. Also, check the file attributes. Maybe something changed it to read-only and now it won't update. Also, if the rom itself stores it, maybe some MAME configuration (not GameEx) got screwed up and the rom could be bad? Try replacing the rom. Don't know if any of these suggestions will work, but it's worth a shot to try.