Underoath13

Just looked and neither Ms. Pacman or Bubble Bobble even saved in nvram, and I have no recollection of them ever doing so. It's also possible that it's happened with other users but they just haven't reported it. And my MAME installation should technically be the same as on my other computer where I never ran into these issues, as its an exact copy and shouldn't have any different settings. EDIT: Now that I think about it, I pulled out all of the hi and nvram files on the original computer so I could start fresh, so I pretty much couldn't have run into this issue before. It's just now that I've played any games with previous files in those folders. So it's probably not machine specific.

@Jason Carr Well looks like my time has come already haha. Same thing just happened for Bubble Bobble. That score was from months ago. I just opened the game, beat a few enemies, and then let them kill me. I exited and my old score uploaded. Also the date is one day in the future, 05-02 instead of today 05-01, so that somewhat explains the Ms. Pacman thing. Also never did the "CNT" initals thing, don't know where that value came from. Debug 2020-05-01 07-58-50 PM.log

Understood, just thought I'd put that out there. And now that logging is on I'll be better able to help if it happens again.

It is official MAME. Must have been a time zone thing with it posting as today. But I did briefly open mspacman 2 or 3 times yesterday to test out an aspect ratio thing, so nothing to do with high scores. I probably never had the game open longer than 15 seconds so obviously didn't beat any high scores. Also haven't touched anything in the hi or nvram folders since fixing my computer. And logging is now on by the way, in case I run into anything else.

0.212

@Jason Carr So I recently fixed one of my computers a few days ago and just opened Launchbox on it. On this computer it had my all time mspacman score in the hi folder unlike my other computer where I moved that file so I could upload scores. Without even launching the game (it says 2020-05-01 and I definitely didn't open mspacman last night or today) it somehow uploaded my all time score from a month or two ago. My score I actually competed for on the leaderboards was about 71,000. So it looks like there's some kind of vulnerability that allows uploads of previous high scores. And no, I don't have a log file since I didn't have logging enabled on the recently fixed computer. Also I had opened Launchbox a few times since I fixed my computer and updated it from I think 10.11 to the current version about two days ago. It looks like it just happened.

Just finished testing 10 arcade games in the 10.14-beta-2 build with both dip switches on and off, and everything works as expected! Also didn't run into any non dip switch issues either, everything was perfect. Things are looking good! ?

Just wanted to repost my thoughts on the matter if anyone is on the fence: As long as it's made sure that things are tested and working properly I think it'd be best to restart with a clean slate. I don't mind losing my top spots at all. It'd be a shame to have some unrealistic scores floating around forever when it could have been prevented with a one time reset. Totally understand the nature of emulation keeps it from being 100% cheat proof, I can live with it if someone hacks there way onto the top spot, it would just be a shame to keep old scores around before one of the most important anti-cheat measures was implemented.

Will be testing a little later today

Was going to ask the same thing. As long as it's made sure that things are tested and working properly I think it'd be best to restart with a clean slate. I don't mind losing my top spots at all. It'd be a shame to have some unrealistic scores floating around forever when it could have been prevented with a one time reset. Totally understand the nature of emulation keeps it from being 100% cheat proof, I can live with it if someone hacks there way onto the top spot, it would just be a shame to keep old scores around before one of the most important anti-cheat measures was implemented. Anyway, super stoked that the dipswitch checking of the cfg is happening! Big thanks to anyone who worked on it! ?

default.cfg doesn't appear to be able to store any dip switch stuff, I was just worried about people settings game cfgs to read-only

Good to hear ?

Thought about this too. I also do the read only thing, which I'm sure a lot of people do. You can still delete read only files though. Not sure how editing them would work.

I second this. The very nature of high scores is competition, and allowing incredibly easy ways to cheat does kind of defeat the purpose. There will always be something someone doesn't like, but again, competition is the very nature of high scores, in which without it it wouldn't exist. Even when you try to beat your own high score, you are still effectively competing against yourself.

My concern with that is if one person cheats, many more may follow to keep up with the originally inflated score. Then next thing you know all the scores are inflated. THAT would be no fun at all. In order to keep the community somewhat competitive, even if not super serious, I think it'd be pretty important to stop dipswitch cheating. I think people who really want to compete won' have a problem at all with following a few extra steps and rules. Generally, people who care about high scores wont mind the extra steps, and people who don't really care about high scores won't be that upset about it. Of course, if cfg scanning could work that would be optimal, I just don't know enough about it to know if its possible or practical. Edit: And perhaps there's a possible way to delete dip switch specific code from the cfg, if that in any way would be easier than scanning the cfg and preventing a high score upload.