Troubleshooting MAME High Scores

[Jason Carr]

47 minutes ago, Morris Schaffer said:

Hi folks.  Twice this has happened to me now.  Leaderboards in Launchbox (and obviously thus also Big Box) no longer appearing even though they 100% worked yesterday and before.

I've got a premium account, under cloud I can see I'm connected to the database, and both check boxes are ticked under tools options integrations Mame.  Needless to say, I'm using Standalone Mame, version 0.230 64 bit, but I also have a MAME core installed under Retroarch.  Or 'had' since I removed it but that didn't solve the issue either.  Funny thing is that in Big box when I select a game and I enter in the menu where I can select 'play' for instance I still also see 'select Retroarch' as an option even though I removed the mame core.  Maybe a conflict of sorts?  Still, why would leaderboards work for an extended period of time and then suddenly cease to?  Furthermore, selecting 'MAME High scores supported' in the drop down menu and selecting 'yes' in Launchbox results in a 'no results were found' message.   even though I've got lots of games that support high scores.  And like I said, it worked yesterday and the days before.  I did install a new version of Launchbox yesterday (11.17), but I doubt that's got anything to do with it.  I also disconnected from the database and re-connected, but it's of no use.

At this point it looks like I'll have to import all 420 arcade games again.  Still, this is hardly solving the issue at the root.  

Any idea what this could be?  Thanks!

Here is the list of what we check in order to determine if a game supports MAME high scores:

• The game application path field must end either in .zip or .7z
• The game's default associated emulator's application path field must be either mame.exe or mame64.exe
• The game's default associated emulator's name must contain "MAME"
• The game's associated platform name or platform Scrape As value must be Arcade or MAME
• The LaunchBox\ThirdParty\hi2txt\hi2txt.zip file must exist (installed by the setup)
• That hi2txt zip file must contain the game's ROM file name
• The ROM file name must not be on our short list of exclusions (broken games)

[Morris Schaffer]

19 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Here is the list of what we check in order to determine if a game supports MAME high scores:

• The game application path field must end either in .zip or .7z
• The game's default associated emulator's application path field must be either mame.exe or mame64.exe
• The game's default associated emulator's name must contain "MAME"
• The game's associated platform name or platform Scrape As value must be Arcade or MAME
• The LaunchBox\ThirdParty\hi2txt\hi2txt.zip file must exist (installed by the setup)
• That hi2txt zip file must contain the game's ROM file name
• The ROM file name must not be on our short list of exclusions (broken games)

Hey man thanks.  But of course I fixed it now and it was something really stupid.  Under emulators, Mame was not set as the default emulator for Arcade platform.

[invada]

Hi there! 

I'm having problems with Lode Runner. I just beat the top score and it didn't upload

Here is my log. Thanks in advance!

Debug 2021-12-06 06-54-57 PM.log

[neil9000]

27 minutes ago, invada said:

Hi there! 

I'm having problems with Lode Runner. I just beat the top score and it didn't upload

Here is my log. Thanks in advance!

Debug 2021-12-06 06-54-57 PM.log 24.95 kB · 0 downloads

Looks like Launchbox tried twice, but both times hit this error,

"ERROR: Wrong ROUND value (0x0C) encoding detected: it can be due to a temporary corrupted .hi or nvram file", so it may be file corruption on your end, would need someone else to test the same game though to compare.

I do see other peoples scores however, so it is working for others.

[invada]

Yeah, strange. And the high scores are saving properly in the game. I'll try deleting the hi and nvram files and have another go.

[invada]

Just tried another game (Lode Runner II) and it worked fine. So I guess like the error says maybe my hi score files are corrupted somehow. Bummer! Will try update MAME then try again. I'll post back if/when I figure out how to fix it. Thanks.

[invada]

Updated to MAME 0238 64bit, including romset. I decided to just leave the .hi where they are, as I noticed the new version of MAME has a new location:

"MAME\hiscore\ldrun.hi"

So I got a new new high score and it's got the same error. Not sure I'll be able to get as high again lol! 😭

I checked the nvram folder and there isn't one for "ldrun". So I'm struggling to figure it out. The only other thing I see is "MAME\cfg\ldrun.cfg" but there's not much in this file. I'll delete it anyway to see if it fixes anything.

I suppose long story short,

MAME has to be OK because I am able to update scores for ldrun2, so that rules out config issues stopping all high scores. Which means it's specific to "ldrun", I'm wondering if high scores are broken for ldrun in hi2text. Last seen working last month. 

 

Debug 2021-12-07 06-37-41 AM.log

[Merovingio]

I have been playing Bubble Bobble and my score has not been added to Hiscore. I have played the Japan rom version 0.1 and USA version 1.0 and in neither of them my score is added.
I have tried several games and they all work. So it must be something specific to Bubble Bobble, because all other games work fine with MAME. @jason carr

Edited January 16, 2022 by Mongu

[lovelaika]

Hi there, I think there's a non-genuine #1 high score posted for Metal Slug X. I reported a similar incident (a score of 55,555,555) back in April and it was removed, though I don't remember if it was the same person. I'm pretty sure there's no way to get a score that high without cheating, so would it be possible to have it removed?

[erling1000]

Hi there...

Blazing Star hiscores doesn’t work for me. Works for you?

I can do the Hiscore, (just started playing it, 428.000 ish) but every time I do it, no entry in LB Mame Hiscore panel.

Looking in MAME directories it shows that a saveram file is saved in NVram directory when leaving the game. But no blazstar.hi file in Hiscore directory is to be found. Other games do the right thing.

Anybody knows what is up?

Using LB 12.7 and MAME 0239

 

[Trace Katral]

High scores are not working for me at all. They were fine before 12.7

[erling1000]

I made a hiscore in Cyvern … (Japan)

my score was 221.000 ish and I entered my initials ERL, but LB Leaderboard says I scored 1.000.000 and entered AAA (as did another player).

Weird 😧

[BothEyesShut]

Hi LaunchBox community, thank you and much love in advance,

Can't get high scores to upload. Debug log says "MAME appears to have cheats enabled". .Ini file shows a 0 there, so no. 

MAME .224

D/L MAME Leaderboards is checked.
Upload Your MAME High Scores is checked.

I am logged into the Launchbox Games DB.

Autosave is not enabled in my MAME configuration.

MAME is my default emulator; no other emulators are configured for Arcade.

I've triple checked for other instances of MAME on my PC. All deleted, compy rebooted. Still no dice. I'm just out of ideas. Help pl0x?

 

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, BothEyesShut said:

Debug log says "MAME appears to have cheats enabled".

Is it saying that every time on all games? 

Are you getting 'local' high scores? As in, you get to put your initials in (say at 4th place) and next time you load the game it still shows you in the #4 slot?  Does your custom command line have anything extra in them? In you Emulator settings and/or in Associated Platforms for Arcade .  Or in the override when you edit the game, go to the emulation section and check the box for Custom command-line parameters?

[BothEyesShut]

23 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

Is it saying that every time on all games? 

Are you getting 'local' high scores? As in, you get to put your initials in (say at 4th place) and next time you load the game it still shows you in the #4 slot?  Does your custom command line have anything extra in them? In you Emulator settings and/or in Associated Platforms for Arcade .  Or in the override when you edit the game, go to the emulation section and check the box for Custom command-line parameters?

Thank you JoeViking, ever so much, I got it working but I don't know how. 

For posterity in case it helps anyone else, YES, I was getting local high scores no problem, and had been from the beginning. Custom command line had nothing extra neither in Emulator settings nor Assoc. Platforms under Arcade. I don't know if it was like that on all roms. Would've been smart to check, but I didn't.

The last thing I tried before it started working was:

I went into MAME directly and purposely changed cheats to ON -- they definitely showed OFF in the menu at first --  then OFF again, and saved the config. 

*Note that while it didn't work immediately after, I *had deleted* at least five other old MAME installs all around my PC about an hour before, so it's possible MAME was picking up an old .ini file from somewhere, I guess? And maybe that was still in a cache or something when I tested it and it didn't work? 

I don't know. But hopefully the above helps someone with my issue in the future.

Thanks again Mr. JoeViking for such a prompt response. Best support forum on the Internet.


 

Edited February 8, 2022 by BothEyesShut

[rommaster]

Hi Guys,

I'm not sure that my setup is picking up new hiscore games properly, can anyone shed some light on how this works or if there's a refresh I need to run? I have one rom as an example but now I'm worried there's more I'm missing out on.

Last year support was added for pang3 (https://github.com/GreatStoneEx/hi2txt-xml/issues/27)

In LB if I browse to the arcade platform and view this game I can see it supports hiscore and I can view leader boards etc. In BB if I browse to arcade platform then select pang3 it does not show any leader boards or score support.

I have an auto playlist "MAME High Scores Supported = True" so I can filter supported games, pang3 does not show in this playlist in BB or LB.

Any ideas? Thanks!

[neil9000]

7 hours ago, nicr4wks said:

Hi Guys,

I'm not sure that my setup is picking up new hiscore games properly, can anyone shed some light on how this works or if there's a refresh I need to run? I have one rom as an example but now I'm worried there's more I'm missing out on.

Last year support was added for pang3 (https://github.com/GreatStoneEx/hi2txt-xml/issues/27)

In LB if I browse to the arcade platform and view this game I can see it supports hiscore and I can view leader boards etc. In BB if I browse to arcade platform then select pang3 it does not show any leader boards or score support.

I have an auto playlist "MAME High Scores Supported = True" so I can filter supported games, pang3 does not show in this playlist in BB or LB.

Any ideas? Thanks!

I have Hi Scores showing here, so it does work.

Only things i could suggest is to go to the Hamburger menu and cloud, and make sure you are logged into our game database, as this is where scores are uploaded/downloaded to/from.

Secondly head to tools/options/integrations/mame and make sure you have these boxes checked.

And finally under tools/options/visuals/game details, and make sure you have those checked to actually show in the UI.

[rommaster]

8 hours ago, neil9000 said:

I have Hi Scores showing here, so it does work.

It works for me too, but only in launchbox. BB does not show any score information for this rom.
Other roms have scores working fine across both applications.

[Jason Carr]

On 2/20/2022 at 12:24 PM, nicr4wks said:

It works for me too, but only in launchbox. BB does not show any score information for this rom.
Other roms have scores working fine across both applications.

I am skeptical that it would be possible for a specific game in your collection to be working in LaunchBox, but not Big Box. Are you sure you're not using a different version or a different ROM file? The code is the same for this whether you're running LaunchBox or Big Box, so that doesn't really make much sense.

[Jason Carr]

On 7/23/2022 at 9:01 PM, Frondator said:

For me, some games just will not upload high scores. Launchbox high scores seems to be problematic on a per game basis, so most games work for me, but games like Bubble Bobble (version 5.1 and 1.0 U.S.) and 1944: The Loop Master simply will not log high scores. I have no idea why the difference since most games do, Aliens or Alien vs Predator for example, always work and other games, even when they support high scores, do not accept my high scores. Even with a low high score, the weekly, monthly, yearly should pop up--something should register, but no dice with some games. That's just my experience. Good feature otherwise.

The high scores unfortunately will never be perfect. There will always be games here and there with issues. This is due to the nature of high scores within MAME, and the fact that the processing to retrieve those high scores is different between each game (and sometimes even between MAME versions). The hi2txt project is what we use in order to read the scores, and @GreatStone (the developer of it) does an amazing job with it. But it will always be a work in progress, because of the nature of the beast.

If/when you run across an issue, you can report it here: https://greatstoneex.github.io/hi2txt-doc/

Keep in mind that it will probably be a while though before it can be fixed.