Autosave not working in MAME:-( - running game Ex

[empireguitar]

Hi All,

It's my first time back here after a while away. Firstly I'd like to say thanks again to the GameEx team for all the hard work and time they have put in to creating and maintaining the program.

I have Mame set up in GameEx and all is working finem however the version of Mame which i'm using is one of the newer versions, which doesn't support the hi-Score DAT of old. I did some looking around on the net and have read about teh new auto Save state option, whcih I would be fine with. In the MAME config, I put a "1" next to the "Autosave" and also a "1" next to the "slot". When I load a game it comes up a message saying "ASave state failed to load". Then when i exit ta game after playing for a bit and re-start the game from GameEx as I did before, it still hasn't saved a state:-( If I manualy plug in a keyboard and hit the save state button and select the slot, MAME saves an then automatically loadsteh save. What am I doing wrong?. i don't realy want to install another version of MAME, as my roms will be out of date. I would like to install a new version of MAME, so that I can play the Final Fight Boss hack on my cab for example though; could anyone recommend a commandline based MAME which has Highscore support (I may aswell check to see how many of my ROMS work on a new version while i am at it).

Just to be clear, my MAME config file is like this;

Slot 1

autosave 1

[bkenobi]

I could be wrong, but I don't think all games support save states. I used the feature a while back and some games would save and load correctly but others would not. I couldn't figure out what was going on at the time. I didn't really like the way it worked, so I stopped using it anyway.

[empireguitar]

  On 8/18/2010 at 1:21 PM, bkenobi said:

I could be wrong, but I don't think all games support save states. I used the feature a while back and some games would save and load correctly but others would not. I couldn't figure out what was going on at the time. I didn't really like the way it worked, so I stopped using it anyway.

It's strangeas the games i tested it wish (Cadilacs & Din's, Streetfighter 2: HF all let me save a state manualy and then it will autoload that state, however it won't automaticaly save a state upon exiting teh game as it should:-( why or why did the kill joy MAME devs remove highscore support?

[bkenobi]

You could always just add HiScore support back in by compiling using HK's MAME 64 Compiler.

[empireguitar]

  On 8/18/2010 at 6:10 PM, bkenobi said:

You could always just add HiScore support back in by compiling using HK's MAME 64 Compiler.

Thanks for your advice. My aim now would be to re-compile a version of MAME that I am currently using with Hi-Score Dat working, so taht that all my ROMS would work. (I'm using tha tonce I re-colpiled MAME with highscore support, i could just copy the .exe file over to my cab in place of my current one and it would all run as normal? (I would also ofcourse need to save teh hi-score dat in a "Hi" folder)??. i would also like the latest version of MAME recompiled with highscore support, so that I can just use that to play a few more recenty supported games such as the Final fight boss Hack (ffightjhk.zip?) (btw have anyone got any recomendations for any good games which have been released over the past year or so fo for MAME?).

Would I be correct in saying that i would be able to have two versions of mame running at teh same time with GameEx? (i.e; I could have my usualy slightly older MAME with my tons of ROMs and then also be able to select games and use the latest MAME?.

Many thanks for your help; it's nice to be tweaking my cab again; I was on the verge of selling it due to nearly having to find a new flat to rent. Now i won't have to worry about it for a nother 5 months or so before I will move.

[bkenobi]

Yes, you can compile any version of MAME that you can get source code for (which should legally be all versions). MAMEDevs provide older versions on a different page than the current release, but they are all available. This is not part of you question, but be aware that if you want to compile something REALLY old (v0.70 for example), you won't be able to use HK's compiler since the actual compiler has changed.

You can take the exe that the compiler generates and drop it in the same location that you currently have the mame.exe. If it's the same version, then yes it will work without any changes. If there is a version difference, you might need to alter your mame.ini.

GameEx can support different versions of MAME in a couple ways. There is support built in to use Zinc and Model2 emulators for supported games, but there is no built in second version of MAME available in the menus. You can create a new emulator for your second version of MAME and use it that way. If you want to take the next step, you can use the mameemumap.ini file to have those files show up in the same list and just play through your alternate version of MAME. If you want to go that route (I highly recommend that approach), you should check out Tempest's GUI which makes setting this up EXTREMELY simple.

[empireguitar]

  On 8/19/2010 at 1:59 PM, bkenobi said:

Yes, you can compile any version of MAME that you can get source code for (which should legally be all versions). MAMEDevs provide older versions on a different page than the current release, but they are all available. This is not part of you question, but be aware that if you want to compile something REALLY old (v0.70 for example), you won't be able to use HK's compiler since the actual compiler has changed.

You can take the exe that the compiler generates and drop it in the same location that you currently have the mame.exe. If it's the same version, then yes it will work without any changes. If there is a version difference, you might need to alter your mame.ini.

GameEx can support different versions of MAME in a couple ways. There is support built in to use Zinc and Model2 emulators for supported games, but there is no built in second version of MAME available in the menus. You can create a new emulator for your second version of MAME and use it that way. If you want to take the next step, you can use the mameemumap.ini file to have those files show up in the same list and just play through your alternate version of MAME. If you want to go that route (I highly recommend that approach), you should check out Tempest's GUI which makes setting this up EXTREMELY simple.

Firstly, apologies for my spelling mistakes etc; I am typing quickly when I should be working and also, for some reason the screen was messed up when I typed my previous postsand so I couldn't see what I was typing and couldn't see everythng if I previewed my posts first.

The version of MAME whcih I was to add high score support is not that old; it is a version from around the time the Mame Dev removed high Score support. The option which you recommended which would show all available games from both versions of MAME sounds like a great idea, although it sounds a littel complicated... (will check it out though).

Also, you mentioned Zinc support; I did start a topic before to get zinc workin gon my cab and I could never get it working:-( (I would love to be able to play Tekken at full speed - the pc in my cab isn't powerful enough to run it full speed in MAME:-( - I will probably have to re-visit that post to get it working (likewise - I would like to get PinMame/Visual Pinball working correctly).

One off topic point; previously you kindly provided me with a patch to re-mapp Esc to L or R (I think), as I couldn't exit my Gens and SNES emus. I have GameEx shelled on my cab now; would it be possible for the pc to run that patch on start up?Thanks:-)