GreatStone

Nice one. I created an new issue in the GitHub tracker for it, and been able to reproduce it. It will be easy to fix.

ccastles has still a not-yet-understood behavior. It seems not able produce .hi/nvram files sometimes. If a .hi is generated and not working for hi2txt to extract data, I should be able to fix the issue if someone can provide me this .hi file and related hiscore.dat. If there is no .hi file generated, hi2txt cannot read anything and I will not be able to fix: this is something to report to the maintainer of hiscore.dat file (responsible of generating .hi files for each game). The error message "ERROR: unable to find a structure..." either says that the .hi file has not the size expected, or the hiscore.dat has not the memory location expected, or there is no .hi file: I should clarify it a little bit for sure.

Hello guys, Here is a summary of what I fixed these past days (only confirmed issues related to hi2txt hi/nvram conversion to text/xml): 2020-04-23 [FIXED] "**Ghouls'n Ghosts**" and its clones: scores are now ordered correctly 2020-04-22 game: fix "G-Darius Ver.2" (gdarius2) with a specific decoding different than gdarius, showing 5 different hiscores tables 2020-04-21 game: fix "Sagaia" (sagaia) to add an additional padding at the start versus darius2 2020-04-20 game: fix "Zero Team" (zeroteam) and "New Zero Team" (nzeroteam) to take only 4 bits for the score instead of 6 2020-04-19 game: fix "Space Invaders" clones are fixed: some of the 31 clones need the score to be *100, other *10, other *1 2020-04-16 game: fix "Power Spikes" (pspikes) decoding user name letters encoded differently than the default names 2020-04-15 game: fix "Dig Dug" (digdug) decoding all scores from nvram only as .hi file gets corrupted sometimes 2020-04-15 game: fix "Alpine ski" (alpine) using correct endianness for the score As written by Jason, I recently opened a GitHub public repository to ease the centralization of requests and bug report (see "issues" tab): https://github.com/GreatStoneEx/hi2txt-xml https://github.com/GreatStoneEx/hi2txt-xml/issues Also, if people want to contribute directly to provide fixed/new xml, they are welcome Again, this repository is devoted to what is related to hi2txt hi/nvram conversion to text/xml: no launchbox issue (what is after the hiscores decoding into txt/xml, so scores upload) no hiscore.dat issue (the creation of hi/nvram files) Best regards, and good gaming session!

@Shad8 Not yet. I have just created a new sheet ("Requests") in the Google Sheets document, already recording issues.

[FIXED] "Space Invaders" games family is fixed: some need the score to be *100, other *10, other *1. A nightmare to check all 31 clones spceking.xml spacerng.xml spaceattbp.xml spaceatt2k.xml spaceatt.xml spaceat2.xml sitv1.xml sitv.xml sisv3.xml sisv2.xml sisv1.xml sinvzen.xml invasionrza.xml invasionrz.xml invasionb.xml invasiona2.xml invasiona.xml invasion.xml invadrmr.xml invadersem.xml invaders.xml swipeout.xml spcewarla.xml spacewr3.xml spcewars.xml alieninv.xml searthie.xml searthina.xml sicv.xml sicv1.xml sinvemag.xml spacecom.xml supinvsion.xml ultrainv.xml sisv.xml searthin.xml cosmicin.xml galmonst.xml invader4.xml superinv.xml

[FIXED] Zeroteam: too much data was taken to decode the scores. I have attached a new fixed zeroteam.xml file to put into hi2txt.zip. zeroteam.xml

@HomerRamone As you can see in the log file, hi2txt is detecting only nvram files (nvram_4a, nvram_4b). But for this game, the hiscores are stored in the .hi file created with the help of hiscore.dat file description. As there is no .hi file detected, no score to extract. When I am playing with my own configuration, a .hi file is created from where I can extract all 250 scores: .\hi2txt.bat -r ..\mame\0.219\prog\hi\ccastles.hi It is working for me with mame 0.219, I will have a look into mame 0.220. Keep me informed

@Underoath13 That's the right email address And thanks for the appreciation!

@HomerRamone I will need the exact mame version, if you use the embedded hiscore.dat, and the list of the games rom name (like 'ccastles'). hi2txt is checking that the hiscore decoding algorithm is based on a hiscore file it knows, by checking if the .hi file or nvram file have the expected size, AND if the hiscore.dat used describe the memory location has expected. In other words, if hiscores file size doesn't match the size recorded into hi2txt.zip:<game>.xml, AND/OR if game:<memory location> inside hiscore.dat doesn't match the one recorded also into hi2txt.zip:<game>.xml, hi2txt will complain that it cannot process the file. Very often, if either mame that have changed the way it is dumping nvram, or hiscore.dat the way it is dumping the .hi file, or a previous .hi corrupted file. Activating debug mode of hi2txt is giving some clue about what is going wrong (call "hi2txt.exe -rd ..." instead of "hi2txt.exe -r ...", but I do not know how/if LaunchBox allows to customize this call). Give me more details, and I will investigate for all these games. Regards.

gorf: hi2txt is merging the 2 decoded hiscores tables ("3 ships" game, "6 ships" game, depending on the credits you enter). RANK|SCORE|SCORE 6C 1|1550|5660 2|1200|0 3|1100|0 4|0|0 5|0|0 Is LaunchBox able to decode such txt output? One possibility can be to change the way hi2txt is displaying the scores by separating the 2 tables: # 3 SHIPS RANK|SCORE 1|1550 2|1200 3|1100 4|0 5|0 # 6 SHIPS RANK|SCORE 1|5660 2|0 3|0 4|0 5|0 There is also a note inside hiscore.dat file with a warning: ";gorf:* resetting screws up 2 scores and top score" So, resetting game in mame is not recommended at all Note that I am not able to reproduce a "frozen" .hi file: it is updated correctly each time I relaunch mame to play. If you have any "procedure" explaining how to reproduce it each time, it will help a lot. Regards.

[FIXED] pspikes: very interesting game, for which the letter entered by the player is encoded differently than the one set by default. An improved xml file is ready, attached here, and will be part of the next hi2txt release. Please, test it to see if your name is now correctly displayed with this new xml file (hi2txt.zip file embedded into LaunchBox to be updated with this file inside). pspikes.xml

Hello guys Centiped hiscores files analysis: centiped shows 8 top scores. mame is storing natively a nvram file (named earom) containing only the 3 top scores. embedded hiscore.dat file into mame hiscore lua plugin is describing how to store the 5 remaining scores. depending on what you do (by removing file, making a high score in the first 3, or one in the 5 last, or no hiscore at all), we can have any of the following results: 1 nvram file + 1 .hi file 1 nvram file only 1 .hi file only With 2 files, hi2txt will extract 8 scores: RANK|SCORE|NAME 1|25569|ABC 2|24610|ABS 3|23385|ABT 4|22158|ABU 5|21821|ABV 6|20272|ABW 7|19476|ABX 8|18864|ABY With nvram only: RANK|SCORE|NAME 1|25569|ABC 2|24610|ABS 3|23385|ABT With .hi file only: RANK|SCORE|NAME 1|| 2|| 3|| 4|22158|ABU 5|21821|ABV 6|20272|ABW 7|19476|ABX 8|18864|ABY In this case, it is recommended that a front-end calls hi2txt without checking .hi file or nvram file existence, as hi2txt is able to find them if called with "-r <mame_install_folder>\hi\<game>". A front-end must also be able to deal with the 3 possible outputs (all 8 scores, 3 top scores only, 5 lower scores only). If it can help, I can improve the "5 lower scores only" output like this: RANK|SCORE|NAME 4|22158|ABU 5|21821|ABV 6|20272|ABW 7|19476|ABX 8|18864|ABY Another possibility is to not take into account the .hi file (whatever will be written or not inside) when decoding centiped hiscores by hi2txt, and extract only the 3 top scores from the nvram, if this file content is more stable. Anyway, if the .hi score stays "frozen", it is perhaps not a big deal as you still have the possibility to make a hiscore in the first 3 Currently, all my tests is showing an updated .hi file (as any new hiscores changes the lower 5 scores), so I am not yet able to reproduce the issue. Still trying... I am also not able to "freeze" the nvram file, and the 3 top scores are always saved if I make a new one. If you have any "procedure" explaining how to reproduce it each time, it will help a lot. Regards.