MAME Hi-Score Display - A plugin for BigBox

[JoeViking245]

MAME Hi-Score Display - A plugin for BigBox

View File

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MAME Hi-Score Display - A plugin for BigBox

Use this plugin to view a games high scores from BigBox’s Game Menu.

Features

• Creates a menu item called “View Hi-Scores” that allows you to display high scores for most games in your Arcade platform directly in BigBox.

What's needed

• (3) files that are included in the downloaded zip file (the plugin)
• Version 3.0 - One file that is included in the downloaded zip file (the plugin)
• 2 lines of text added to the "TextGamesView.xaml" file for your current BigBox Theme
• MAME configured to save high scores
• Saved high score files (These are automatically generated by MAME once it’s configured to save them in the "hi" and/or “nvram” subfolders of your MAME emulator)

What it won't do

• Show high scores for games using emulators other than MAME.
• Show high scores for games in LaunchBox.
• MAME is not built to save high scores the same way (or at all) for all arcade machines, so not all games are supported by this plugin

Contributors
@jayjay – The one who came up with the idea and did all the hard stuff.
@JoeViking245 – The one who helped with all the easy stuff.
@fromlostdays – The one who made these instructions easier to follow. 

A HUGE Special Thanks goes to GreatStone’s utility “hi2txt”.  This utility converts MAME’s high score files into a readable format which ultimately makes this plugin possible!!
http://greatstone.free.fr/hi2txt/index.html

 

Installation and setup instructions:

Step 1: Installing the Plugin
Step 2: Editing your BigBox Theme to add support for the Plugin
Step 3: Making sure MAME is set up to save high scores
 

Installing the Plugin:

• Download the plugin, Mame_Hi_Scores (v5.0.0).7z from the LaunchBox download section
• (If not using 7zip) After you’ve downloaded the zip file, be sure to unblock it in Windows by right clicking it, selecting Properties, and clicking Unblock
• Open the zip file and extract/copy the "Hi_Scores" folder into ..\LaunchBox\Plugins
  • i.e.   D:\LaunchBox\Plugins\Hi_Scores\Mame_Hi_Scores.dll

 

Editing Your BigBox Theme to add support for the Plugin:

As of version 5.0.0, this step is no longer required.

If you are updating from a version PRIOR to v5.0.0, you will need to UNDO THE CHANGES made to your TextGamesView.xaml file!!!

(just delete the 2 lines that were added, and save.)

Spoiler

You just need to add two lines of text, each in a specific place, in one of the theme’s .xaml files so that your theme can display the Hi -Scores. This should work for all themes.

• Go to the "Views" folder of the theme you are using and find the file "TextGamesView.xaml".
  • e.g.  D:\LaunchBox\Themes\my_current_theme\Views\TextGamesView.xaml
• Right click on "TextGamesView.xaml" and select Edit

• Insert the following line after the last existing "xmlns" entry located near the top of the file:

xmlns:hsc="clr-namespace:Mame_Hi_Scores;assembly=Mame_Hi_Scores"

   It will look similar to this:

• Now scroll all the way down to the bottom of the document.
• Insert the following line* just above the text "</Canvas>":

<hsc:Hi_Scores Height="{Binding Source={x:Static SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight}}" Width="{Binding Source={x:Static SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth}}" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center"/>

*NOTE: The word “canvas” may show up multiple times in the document. You’re looking for the last instance of it, at the very bottom of the text just above </UserControl>. Also note that the indentation of the line doesn’t matter. The above is one single line of text, so be sure and copy and paste the entire line. Depending on your text editor, it may ‘wrap around’ and look like two lines, which is not a problem. 

 It will look similar to this:

• Save and close TextGamesView.xaml .

•  

 

Setting up MAME to save high scores:

Using a recent official MAME release –

• Spoiler

   

  • By default, plugins are enabled in MAME.  You can verify yours by looking at the “mame.ini” file located in the root MAME install folder.
  • Open “mame.ini” and scroll down to (or press Ctrl + F and search for) “Scripting Options”.   “plugins” should be set to 1.  If it’s 0 (zero), change it to 1.

  

  • Next, open “plugin.ini” also located in MAME’s root directory and change “hiscore” to 1.

   

   

If you have an older release of MAME, you may need to do the following steps instead.

•  

Spoiler

 

• Go to this website: http://www.mameworld.info/highscore/download.htm and download a copy of the file hiscore.dat that corresponds to your version of MAME.
• The file (hiscoredat.zip) will need to be unzipped. Place the file hiscore.dat in your MAME/Plugins folder
• Open up your MAME.ini file in a text editor. In newer versions, this file will be in the same directory as the MAME.exe
• Press Ctrl + F and search for “Scripting Options”
• Next to the word Plugins, type “1” no quotes
• Next to the word Plugin, type “hiscore” no quotes

It will look like this:

 

 

Congrats! You’re all setup! Now that you’ve setup the plugin, why not give it a try?

How to use:

• Start BigBox
• Go into the "Arcade" Platform
• Select a game
• Near the bottom of the Menu (if the selected game has a high score file saved) you'll see "View Local Hi-Scores" 
• Select "View Local Hi-Scores" to see your high scores for that game!

To close the Hi-Scores window (options): (new v5.0.0)

• Press the button (or button combo) you have mapped to Close Active Window
• Press Enter (keyboard)
• Press Escape (keyboard)
• Click the X in the upper right corner (mouse)

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• Submitter
  JoeViking245
• Submitted
  11/10/2019
• Category
  Third-party Apps and Plugins

 

[DOS76]

Okay 1st off thanks to all 3 of you guys for collaborating on this plugin nice to see the community working together to make things happen. Now to a quick question I downloaded the plugin and had WinRAR extract everything to the plugins folder then I went and unblocked all 3 files. So what do I do with the zip file itself does it stay zipped, do I extract it to its own folder or do I have to extract everything to the root folder. Also is there anyway to get this to work with LB and not just BigBox?

[JoeViking245]

Thanks @DOS76!  It's been a fun project, for sure.

The 'inside' zip file will stay as is.  Nothing is needing to be done with it.  

[ed20910]

Great plugin. I can get it to work with bartop and neon deluxe themes. For some reason on unified refried, it doesn't focus the hi score window on top. I can tell it loads. If I switch to another theme from refried, the hi score window is there on the new theme and I have to close it.  Any idea why? 

[jayjay]

55 minutes ago, ed20910 said:

Great plugin. I can get it to work with bartop and neon deluxe themes. For some reason on unified refried, it doesn't focus the hi score window on top. I can tell it loads. If I switch to another theme from refried, the hi score window is there on the new theme and I have to close it.  Any idea why? 

This plugin will work with the base unified refried. But to make it work with all the addons is going to be a chore to say the least.

Inside unified refried "Views" folder, there is another folder named "TextGamesView", inside this folder is 600 xaml files. To make this plugin work with the unified refried addons all these xaml files will need to be modified using @JoeViking245 instructions. Obviously that's not viable. Any other themes that include this "TextGamesView" folder. Will have the same issue.

When I get some time I'll try and look into it but off the top of my head Im not sure what we could do about this.

 

At the moment the best option is to undo the changes made to unified refried Textgamesview.xaml. You won't be able to see the hi-scores menu item when using unified refried but better not seeing it then seeing it and not being able to use it.

Edited November 10, 2019 by jayjay

[ed20910]

25 minutes ago, jayjay said:

This plugin will work with the base unified refried. But to make it work with all the addons is going to be a chore to say the least.

Inside unified refried "Views" folder, there is another folder named "TextGamesView", inside this folder is 600 xaml files. To make this plugin work with the unified refried addons all these xaml files will need to be modified using @JoeViking245 instructions. Obviously that's not viable. Any other themes that include this "TextGamesView" folder. Will have the same issue.

When I get some time I'll try and look into it but off the top of my head Im not sure what we could do about this.

 

At the moment the best option is to undo the changes made to unified refried Textgamesview.xaml. You won't be able to see the hi-scores menu item when using unified refried but better not seeing it then seeing it and not being able to use it.

Thanks for the reply.  I forgot Refried used the addons.  I got it to work properly by modifying the Arcade.xml in the Textgamesview folder. Using the Platforms view, arcade games now show high scores.  Using the platform categories view, the high scores work as well. I dont have any arcade playlists so i couldnt test.  I think you would only need to update the arcade related platforms.  Especially if you actually break out Mame into specific platforms.  Still a lot of work but i got mine working and know what i need to do for any others that dont work right. THANK YOU!  One thing you may want to add to the instructions, if someone updates their theme, they will have to redo the modifications.  I know the themes typically tell you that will happen when you update ,but may not hurt to put it as a note or warning. 

[jayjay]

Nice one @ed20910 thanks for letting us know.

 

And yeah it a bummer about updating themes. We'll been trying to add the hi-scores to the custom fields at some point. At least then wouldn't have to modify the xaml's.