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.

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@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.

I'd also like to hear some more detail about this to better understand your situation. Now that I think about it, instead of the whole batch file route, one could simply have a separate installation of MAME that they use for high scores. So two MAME emulators in launchbox, the one you've been using with all your custom cfg's, and another only mapped to global for arcade high scores. Just change the emulator on a per game basis when competing for high scores. A lot less steps than for batch files, and virtually no more work once its set up.

This is for Ms. Pac-man. The dip switches in Ms. Pac-Man only allow the advantage of 2 additional lives compared to default, and this same guy hasn't destroyed my score as with Dig Dug, which allows massive potential to cheat. Again, if this guy isn't actually cheating then no hard feelings, it just appears suspicious.

Even if people do you use game cfg's for controls, they could keep different versions of default.cfg's and store them in their own folders, effectively acting as the game cfg's but just for control mappings. Then they could use a batch file to load them before a game with the additional apps function. And I imagine only a small handful of people's high score compatible games would need that treatment in the first place. And perhaps there's a more elegant solution that uses that basic idea.

Good to hear, let me know how that goes! ?

@GreatStone First off want to say I love your work and greatly appreciate what you do! So I was wondering about contacting you, does hi2txt at free.fr really mean hi2txt@free.fr like an email address? Because I'm not sure how to contact you.

@Jason Carr 99% sure this guy is cheating with the dip switches or some other means, but probably the dip switches. Last time I looked he had a score of around 88,000, a far cry from the current score. If he's not cheating props to him, but nonetheless there is the issue with the dip switches. I understand that the dip switches are stored in the cfg. Is there any way to check the cfg for code relating to a change in the dip switches? If not, on a more extreme measure that may not be so extreme if well implemented and people are warned ahead of time if they turn high score sharing on, the game specific cfg file could be deleted upon launch of the game to insure everyone is playing with default dip switches. As long as people are using a global cfg and understand that they need a global cfg in order to upload high scores, it seems like a pretty simple way to stop dipswitch cheating. What do you think? Edit: This is for Dig Dug, in which the dip switch options allow huge potential for cheating. Ms. Pac-Man on the other hand only lets you cheat by having 5 lives instead of 3, a small difference, and the same guy is still behind me.

Same thing happened to me on Centipede. I didn't even get a low level high score in the game and I got a 151,515,151,515 score in the leaderboards.

Also noticed Centipede saves to both the hi and nvram folders, just like Dig Dug.

Yep, looks like starting fresh after each match is the solution to the myriad problems some games have. A batch script could be created that backs up files to an external location and then deletes the contents of the hi and nvram folders. Assign the batch file to a keyboard shortcut with autohotkey, or maybe even use launchbox's additional apps feature to run it upon exit of the game, and things become a lot less cumbersome.

@Jason Carr Alright, so I'm awful at centipede and didn't even get a low level high score within the game, and this happened... Debug 2020-04-16 07-50-31 PM.log