Troubleshooting MAME High Scores

[InvaderJim]

On 9/28/2025 at 5:53 PM, InvaderJim said:

After disabling my Windows Defender Firewall my high score uploads started working.  Then I re-enabled my firewall and expected it to fail (which would require me to add a rule explicitly allowing the BigBox program access to the Internet), but much to my surprise my uploads continued working.  I.e. all I did to fix my issue was to toggle my Windows Defender off then on again without making any other changes.

Only a week after implementing this I had an impressive Pooyan score that failed to upload!  😢  This time I whitelisted BigBox in Windows Firewall by following these steps:

1. Search the start menu for "Allow an app through Windows Firewall"
2. Click the "Change settings" button followed by the "Allow another app" button
3. Browse to BigBox.exe
4. For thew newly added "BigBox Launcher" app check (enable) both the "Private" and "Public" network boxes
5. Click the "OK" button to exit the firewall settings windows

Now my my high scores are uploading again.  Hopefully it stays fixed this time.

[JCDigits]

hey guys new here. just started getting into the mame high score leaderboard. i cant seem to post a high score on gauntlet for whatever reason. iv messed with the dip switches and post scores on exit but i cant get anything working. anyone else have this problem? 

[InvaderJim]

On 10/6/2025 at 10:04 PM, InvaderJim said:

Only a week after implementing this I had an impressive Pooyan score that failed to upload!  😢  This time I whitelisted BigBox in Windows Firewall

 

Sorry for the noise, I no longer think my Windows firewall had anything to do with my issues.  My high score uploading has been working error free for a couple weeks now, even after I removed my BixBox firewall rule.  The fix was upgrading LaunchBox/BigBox from 13.5 to 13.24.  I performed this upgrade because I saw these high score fixes in the changelog:
    Version 13.21 - Released April 24, 2025
        Improvement: MAME High Score logic is now more robust, and the following games are now working thanks to the hard work of our community: Batsugun, Bubble Bobble, Dig Dug, Mushihime-Sama Futari Black Label - Another Ver, Viper Phase 1
    Version 13.23 - Released August 21, 2025
        Fixed: A specific crash related to the MAME High Score system is now caught with error handling, and logging has been added to help identify the root cause

[InvaderJim]

On 10/15/2025 at 3:29 PM, JCDigits said:

hey guys new here. just started getting into the mame high score leaderboard. i cant seem to post a high score on gauntlet for whatever reason. iv messed with the dip switches and post scores on exit but i cant get anything working. anyone else have this problem? 

My high scores are now working reliably in other games, but when I just got a high score in gauntlet2p, it wasn't even saved within Gauntlet after I exited and restarted Gauntlet.  I.e. I don't have a LaunchBox Gauntlet high score problem.  I can't get Gauntlet itself to retain my high scores.  I'm using Mame 0.239.

Note, I'm pretty sure changing any dip switch settings will prevent LaunchBox from uploading your high scores (assuming Gauntlet itself saves them), so reset your game back to default dip switch settings.