Troubleshooting MAME High Scores

[Gaelion]

Love this new HiScores community feature!
Working great for me so far.

[exodus_cl]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

Most likely you just don't have things enabled properly. See the first post of this topic. Also make sure you're running version 10.13 of LaunchBox.

The best thing is to attach the log file for those games (see the first post of this topic). That way I can look to see where the issue lies (either with hi2txt or with LaunchBox) and we can get it fixed.

Thanks! I reinstalled everything from scratch and now it's fine, the update to 13 messed something up on my end I think.

___

Now I installed it on my second computer and got this MAME error, any idea? (it's exaclty the same config)

 

EDIT / PROBLEM SOLVED:

I copied the plugins folder from computer A to computer B and now it's working ok.

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by exodus_cl

[Shad8]

@Jason Carr

Little update, below my log file, maybe can help:

2020-04-15 07:45:33 PM RomPath after M3U build: L:\LaunchBox\Games\MAME\turfmast.zip
2020-04-15 07:45:33 PM MameHighScores.Prepare Successful: Saving pre-game scores.
2020-04-15 08:13:57 PM Processing hi2txt output for turfmast:
RANK|SCORE|NAME|COURSE
1|-7|MAS|WOODY
2|-3|M!K|SEASIDE
3|-1|AAA|G.CANYON
4|EVEN|XYZ|FUJIYAMA
5|+1|R0Y|WOODY
2020-04-15 08:13:57 PM MameHighScores.Parse: Uploading score 1 for rom file turfmast and name R0Y...

This is my score:

1|-7|MAS|WOODY

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, Underoath13 said:

This one is for DigDug.

Here's the log from when it happened. First I moved my original nvram so I wouldn't have to beat my own high score to upload. . Then I got 14,240 and let myself die to test the upload and it worked. Then I went right back in without deleting any files and got 131,990. Both scores were in the game simultaneously. When I exited, my score in the leaderboards was still 14,240. As far as I can tell in the log file, it just never detected my second score.

Debug 2020-04-14 03-20-41 PM.log 189.91 kB · 1 download

Yeah, the problem appears to be either with MAME or with hi2txt. When I play Dig Dug and get a high score, a digdug.hi file does appear in my MAME\hi folder. So if that's not happening, then it could be that your MAME is not configured correctly or not working properly. Do you have that file?

1 hour ago, Underoath13 said:

This is the one for Rainbow Islands.

Debug 2020-04-14 11-30-50 PM.log 238.79 kB · 0 downloads

I believe this suggests that there's an issue with hi2txt for Rainbow Islands. I'll follow up with Greatstone about it.

[Jason Carr]

21 minutes ago, Shad8 said:

@Jason Carr

Little update, below my log file, maybe can help:

2020-04-15 07:45:33 PM RomPath after M3U build: L:\LaunchBox\Games\MAME\turfmast.zip
2020-04-15 07:45:33 PM MameHighScores.Prepare Successful: Saving pre-game scores.
2020-04-15 08:13:57 PM Processing hi2txt output for turfmast:
RANK|SCORE|NAME|COURSE
1|-7|MAS|WOODY
2|-3|M!K|SEASIDE
3|-1|AAA|G.CANYON
4|EVEN|XYZ|FUJIYAMA
5|+1|R0Y|WOODY
2020-04-15 08:13:57 PM MameHighScores.Parse: Uploading score 1 for rom file turfmast and name R0Y...

This is my score:

1|-7|MAS|WOODY

Thanks @Shad8. Unfortunately though things are just not going to work correctly for turfmast, because of the negative scores. Currently it thinks a score of 3 is a better score than -7. So for that game, things are just not going to work. I can look into seeing what we can do to fix it, but that one is certainly an interesting outlier.

[Underoath13]

13 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Yeah, the problem appears to be either with MAME or with hi2txt. When I play Dig Dug and get a high score, a digdug.hi file does appear in my MAME\hi folder. So if that's not happening, then it could be that your MAME is not configured correctly or not working properly. Do you have that file?

Thanks for looking into my issues. And yes, digdug.hi is in fact being generated in the hi folder, but it appears to be useless. I can move or delete that file and nothing changes. But moving or deleting the nvram does change the high score. Do you think you could check if that also happens on your end? This seems to be the first time I've seen a game save in both the hi and nvram folders. Not sure why. 

[Underoath13]

Also just tested another game that saves to both the hi and nvram folders, Bubble Bobble II. However this one is the opposite case of dig dug, where the only file that matters is the .hi and not the nvram. Hi score data only saves in .hi, and multiple high scores in the same game upload to the leaderboards no problem. I've attached the log file, maybe there's a significant difference between how the two are handling high scores despite both saving to both the hi and nvram folders.

Debug 2020-04-15 02-54-58 PM.log

[Cauptain]

Hello @Jason Carr I posted how to do using Reteoarch in my Faceboo group, Projeto Launchbox.

 

Hi-Scores working on Launchbox + Retroarch. Easy !!

Follow the step by step:

1 - Update the LB version to 10.12

2 - Update Retroarch to 1.8.5

3 - Update the core MAME to 0.220

4 - Download and run the MAME 0.220b emulator

5 - Go to the MAME folder and copy the PLUGINS folder and paste it into the Retroarch \ System \ mame folder

6 - Create user and Log in to the CLOUD (Connect to Launchbox game database)

7 - Enjoy !!!

Hi-SCORE Updated 16.04.2020



Claudio

[xevious1974]

I hope it is correct to post here.
High score is working, but for the rom pspikes.zip (power spikes) is not updating. I have seen another game that does not update, but I dont remember the name, it is a cave game.

 

 

Anyway I love this function!!

[Jason Carr]

19 hours ago, Underoath13 said:

Thanks for looking into my issues. And yes, digdug.hi is in fact being generated in the hi folder, but it appears to be useless. I can move or delete that file and nothing changes. But moving or deleting the nvram does change the high score. Do you think you could check if that also happens on your end? This seems to be the first time I've seen a game save in both the hi and nvram folders. Not sure why. 

Strange, I am able to replicate that weirdness with Dig Dug. MAME for some crazy reason just doesn't seem to be updating the high scores file. I'll talk to Greatstone to see if he knows anything about that.

18 hours ago, Underoath13 said:

Also just tested another game that saves to both the hi and nvram folders, Bubble Bobble II. However this one is the opposite case of dig dug, where the only file that matters is the .hi and not the nvram. Hi score data only saves in .hi, and multiple high scores in the same game upload to the leaderboards no problem. I've attached the log file, maybe there's a significant difference between how the two are handling high scores despite both saving to both the hi and nvram folders.

Debug 2020-04-15 02-54-58 PM.log 133.74 kB · 0 downloads

Yes, as far as I am aware, this is how it's supposed to operate.

[Jason Carr]

6 hours ago, Cauptain said:

Hello @Jason Carr I posted how to do using Reteoarch in my Faceboo group, Projeto Launchbox.

 

Hi-Scores working on Launchbox + Retroarch. Easy !!

Follow the step by step:

1 - Update the LB version to 10.12

2 - Update Retroarch to 1.8.5

3 - Update the core MAME to 0.220

4 - Download and run the MAME 0.220b emulator

5 - Go to the MAME folder and copy the PLUGINS folder and paste it into the Retroarch \ System \ mame folder

6 - Create user and Log in to the CLOUD (Connect to Launchbox game database)

7 - Enjoy !!!

Hi-SCORE Updated 16.04.2020



Claudio

Hi Claudio, this puzzles me. Have you confirmed that you're actually able to upload high scores that way? Because looking at the code, I'm not sure how that could ever work.

[Jason Carr]

5 hours ago, xevious1974 said:

I hope it is correct to post here.
High score is working, but for the rom pspikes.zip (power spikes) is not updating. I have seen another game that does not update, but I dont remember the name, it is a cave game.

 

 

Anyway I love this function!!

Thank you @xevious1974. If you find any games like that, please post the log file and we can review. Greatstone is also going to provide troubleshooting and game-specific error reporting here shortly for games that have issues.

[xevious1974]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

Thank you @xevious1974. If you find any games like that, please post the log file and we can review. Greatstone is also going to provide troubleshooting and game-specific error reporting here shortly for games that have issues.

 

Ok, I'll do it!
But...where I get the log file? Ehm, sorry, I am totally newbye

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, xevious1974 said:

 

Ok, I'll do it!
But...where I get the log file? Ehm, sorry, I am totally newbye

Please see the first post of this topic.

[xevious1974]

14 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Please see the first post of this topic.

ehm sorry.
Here the log files for pspikes

I insert xew like AKA in hi-score, but I see in the log it writes different chars...maybe it is the problem?

Debug 2020-04-16 06-39-55 PM.log

[xevious1974]

Also baraduke

 

But someone have recorded an high score on it, so I think I am doing something wrong

Debug 2020-04-16 06-39-55 PM.log

[exodus_cl]

Can anyone tell me what file should I edit in order to reduce the text size of the hi score tables? in lower resolutions it looks bad.

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by exodus_cl

[Xpendable]

On 4/14/2020 at 6:00 PM, Jason Carr said:

I've done all my testing with the hiscore.dat files that come with MAME. I've tested a couple of different MAME versions though, including 0.219, which was the latest during development. But I'm not entirely sure if you can mismatch versions of MAME with different versions of that file.

Yes, in order for high scores to be uploaded, the leaderboard inside of the game has to change, which will force MAME to update the high scores file for the game. We originally had enabled uploading previous high scores, but unfortunately that opens up all kinds of new methods to cheat, so we had to disable that. Unfortunately your best bet, if you want to get on the community leaderboards is just to delete the existing high scores file. That should reset your local scores (can always back it up if you need).

The logs show that it can't find a high scores file for Galaga. Can you check your MAME\hi folder for a file named galaga.hi? If MAME doesn't create that file, then we can't use it to track your high scores, so that's the first step in figuring it out.

This is a problem.  In Centipede, I already have every hi-score slot with the same initials of JLT.  Earlier today there was one slot that didn't have JLT on it, and I got a high-score that overrode that one and it uploaded to the Game Database.  Since then I've broken the top record on my Centipede, which is over 33700 but because JLT was already on the top score, it does not upload to the Game database.  That's a problem.  That means you're new top scores will NEVER upload unless you use different initials then what was on the previous top slot.  Kinda seems to defeat the whole purpose of having hi-scores.  Can you fix this to upload the highest score regardless?  Otherwise it's a lot of wasted effort and time when it ain't going to update anyway.

[Jason Carr]

2 minutes ago, Xpendable said:

This is a problem.  In Centipede, I already have every hi-score slot with the same initials of JLT.  Earlier today there was one slot that didn't have JLT on it, and I got a high-score that overrode that one and it uploaded to the Game Database.  Since then I've broken the top record on my Centipede, which is over 33700 but because JLT was already on the top score, it does not upload to the Game database.  That's a problem.  That means you're new top scores will NEVER upload unless you use different initials then what was on the previous top slot.  Kinda seems to defeat the whole purpose of having hi-scores.  Can you fix this to upload the highest score regardless?  Otherwise it's a lot of wasted effort and time when it ain't going to update anyway.

This doesn't seem to be happening for every game, and wasn't coming up in our testing, so I'm not sure exactly why it's happening now. My guess is that it's only affecting certain games. We're looking into it.

[Jason Carr]

15 minutes ago, Xpendable said:

This is a problem.  In Centipede, I already have every hi-score slot with the same initials of JLT.  Earlier today there was one slot that didn't have JLT on it, and I got a high-score that overrode that one and it uploaded to the Game Database.  Since then I've broken the top record on my Centipede, which is over 33700 but because JLT was already on the top score, it does not upload to the Game database.  That's a problem.  That means you're new top scores will NEVER upload unless you use different initials then what was on the previous top slot.  Kinda seems to defeat the whole purpose of having hi-scores.  Can you fix this to upload the highest score regardless?  Otherwise it's a lot of wasted effort and time when it ain't going to update anyway.

I just set a new score for Centipede without issues, so it sounds like there's some kind of an issue with your setup if you're experiencing that issue with Centipede. We should look into the log file.

Reading deeper into what you've said above, I'm also not sure if you're understanding how things work. Just because the initials are already in the system does not mean that new scores will not upload.