GreatStone

@JoeViking245 Challenge or not, ikaruga is now part of hi2txt

@BothEyesShut As the author of hi2txt, how to not appreciate such kind words ? And having @JoeViking245 tagging me here sounds like a challenge to support ikaruga: so, I am able to launch the game with mame, it is very very (very) slow, but I managed to make a hiscore and the nvram/sram content generated seems to be easy to decode! Is it playable for somebody on a powerful machine? Does it worth to support it in hi2txt with such mame status?

@filarenas3 @JoeViking245 @Jason Carr After a lot of trials, it appears that recent mame versions have modified the dumped content related to "special items counters", for whatever reason. I have slightly modified the 'bublbobl.xml' file (describing how to decode the game hiscores .hi file) to fix it, as it is sharing the same XML than 'bublboblr' It will be part of the next release. I also attached the new file here in case you want to have a working version right now (LaunchBox should have a hi2txt.zip file somewhere, where all xml files are stored). Thanks, @filarenas3, for reporting the issue bublbobl.xml

@JoeViking245 I will have a look at this bubkboblr" specifically: thanks for the issue report In the last versions of hi2txt, I have added some checks to try to detect when nvram are full of scrap (and it is happening sometimes with mame) to avoid sending irrealistic score to the globbal ladder.

@Snakeystew Do you know which exact LaunchBox version have been used? I am curious because the last beta is embedding the last hi2txt release that should forbid this behavior.

@Jason Carr A generic algorithm remains possible: when you parse hi2txt output, if SCORE+NAME columns are detected (and user configured one or more preferred NAME), take NAME into account. If only SCORE is detected, upload SCORE as it is implemented now, not taking into account any user configuration.

@Jason Carr I let you decide, obviously. Personally, I am more frustrated by a garbage score coming in the community table, than having to play again to beat my score: I find it more "fair" and "enjoyable" for the global community (better to miss something than corrupt the scores), as we see that emulation or hiscore plugin are not 100% accurate and will never be.

@Underoath13 Bubble Booble: Sometimes, some mame games doesn't record anything into the nvram until a hiscores is done So, launching hi2txt before the session gives you nothing or all scores with value 0, then after the session, a hiscores table full of scores != 0 ("default" one after 1 play) + the new hiscore of the player in the middle => nothing I can do here and surely, not a big issue as default scores are rarely very high @Ateb Blazing star: The log shows no hiscores saved by mame It happens: mame emulation and/or hiscore.dat saving system are not 100% accurate. So, no new score hi2txt can decode here, only default one. => mame issue for this game, except if you have desactivated nvram saving in some mame ini files (ex: mame.ini => nvram_save 1, nvram_directory nvram) => nothing I can do @Elhora @Ateb Andro Dunos, Metal Slug, Gradius, Blazing star, airass: no updates of score sometimes? It happens: mame emulation and/or hiscore.dat saving system are not 100% accurate. => if LB log files shows decoded scores; but not your last hiscores inside, mame was not able to save it. => Nothing hi2txt can read here, if the nvram/hi files are not updated by mame or hiscore plugin. @Elhora altair: no updates of score sometimes? Seeing the log... TRACE: data taken from file: G:\LAUNCHBOX\Emulators\Mameui64\nvram\altair\nvram TRACE: structure simple elt: UNKNOWN (226 bytes read on 256) ERROR: Wrong SCORE value (0xF212) encoding detected: it can be due to a temporary corrupted .hi or nvram file 2020-05-05 07:45:33 PM MameHighScores.Parse: No new scores found to upload! ...the new "corrupted data detection system" is working and has been able to skip a corrupted nvram/hi files. It happens: mame emulation and/or hiscore.dat saving system are not 100% accurate and sometimes record garbage. => except detecting garbage and preventing upload of them, nothing hi2txt can do here. => And that's a good news to avoid uploading garbage scores @BlackKnight1965 any mame derivative (like GroovyMame) is supported by hi2txt as soon as the hiscores files are saved in hi/ and nvram/ subdirectories. I will let Jason comments on LB side. @Elhora fireshrk Seeing the log... 2020-05-06 09:44:45 PM RomPath after M3U build: G:\LAUNCHBOX\Emulators\Mameui64\Roms\fireshrk.zip 2020-05-06 09:48:08 PM Aborting MameHighScores.Parse: No high score or nvram files found. ...shows no hiscores saved by mame It happens: mame emulation and/or hiscore.dat saving system are not 100% accurate. So, no new score hi2txt can decode here, only default one. => mame or hiscore plugin issue for this game => nothing hi2txt can do here @Jason Carr LB Improvement request (important one): log also hi2txt traces when you call it before the play session, so that we can better understand the potential root cause (mame, hi2txt, LB) LB Improvement request (less important, but for robustness and less database maintenance): let the user specify the mame NAME (3 letters) he will enter (or more than one, why not) everytimes he made a hiscores and LB should only deal with lines having such NAME. it will fix a lot of strange situations. Ouf... What a debugging marathon this night

@sundogak sinistar: at the star: "sinimmortals" hiscores (=alltime hiscores): all set to 0 by the game itself "today's" hiscores: not 0, but not saved by mame then, when player is making a hiscores: "sinimmortals" hiscores: updated correctly, decoded correctly on my side "today's" hiscores: not saved by mame => I do not see any glitch here, difficult to say more without seeing a log with trace ON as well as the nvram file @Cronos74 samsho: unsupported game, never decoded the nvram file for it or its clones. => expected behavior to not find any "XML description" (which means no XML file provided by hi2txt explaining how to decode the nvram file saved by mame) @Cronos74 afighter: score is stored in nvram AND .hi files, on 4 bytes each nibble must be a number [0-9], so max score is 99 999 999. last release of hi2txt (1.12) is detecting, in this case, if any nibble is different than [0-9] (ex: corrupted nvram with some 0xFF, leading to a very very big score), and do not display anything so, theorically, it cannot be 2 704 151 200, in any case. => are you sure that the last hi2txt release is used? => difficult to say more without seeing a log with trace ON as well as the nvram+.hi files @Jason Carr Just for you information.

@Jason Carr When do you need the new hi2txt build (fixing issues detected in the past days by users and preventing uploading wrecked scores) for the integration into LaunchBox? The more time I have, the more fix I put inside, but it is already better than the current public one.

@Jason Carr I recommend to use "-trace -r ..." instead of "-rd ...": debug mode is adding traces AND additional fields found in the .hi file that can potentially break your parsing. -trace is only activating the traces. My bad...

@Jason Carr Is there a way for @nicr4wks to modify the way hi2txt is launched to call it with "-rd" argument instead of "-r"? It will display a lot of debug messages allowing us to understand what is going on. Also, how can we see in the log how hi2txt is called, to be sure?

@Blitz Mary I am nearly happy to see this A good testcase with all needed info, and a way to test the coming hi2txt release: when using my new hi2txt local build with this .hi file, I am able to catch the crap content and reject the file, preventing any upload to LaunchBox server. > hi2txt.exe -r C:\Downloads\pacland.hi ERROR: Wrong SCORE value encoding detected: it can be due to a temporary corrupted .hi or nvram file @Jason Carr Golden Axe itself separate the 3 scores: even if you do multiple very high scores with Tyris, and one low score with Ax, the game will keep 1 for Ax, 1 for Tyris (and 1 for Gilius). There is no sense to combine them in one table. Perhaps one character is easier to play with, some games have tables per difficulties, etc. It make sense to fight for hiscores on each separate table, IMHO

@Elhora inside LaunchBox installation, there is a hi2txt.zip file: overwrite the existing xml with this one

@Elhora Golden Axe is special: currently, the "score" is displayed as a "strength". consequently, launchbox cannot detect this as a score. I have modified the xml to display also Tyris and Gilius strength, and renamed the column SCORE. As soon as LaunchBox will be able to handle more than one hiscores table per game (@Jason Carr?) (3 tables for Golden Axe, one per character), it will be possible to be loaded. @andyco47 rallyx and nrallyx xml have been improved so that a "SCORE" header is now available for LaunchBox to read goldnaxe.xml rallyx.xml