Troubleshooting MAME High Scores

[Jason Carr]

21 minutes ago, exodus_cl said:

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.

 

What is your resolution and what are your DPI settings?

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, xevious1974 said:

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 45.56 kB · 1 download

 

1 hour ago, xevious1974 said:

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 76.34 kB · 1 download

Yeah, both those games are showing those weird characters, so that could be the problem. Are you able to successfully achieve high scores with other games? I'm wondering if somehow there's a culture/translation issue.

[Xpendable]

All I can say is my first new score uploaded, but NONE of my subsequent high-scores for this game uploaded.  And some of these plays was the #1 top score in Centipede.  Surely that should have uploaded, but it did not.  Based on what you have described, it ain't working right.  

[exodus_cl]

19 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

What is your resolution and what are your DPI settings?

40" Vertical monitor on the cab, 768px wide 1024px height, dpi/scaling config in w10 is at 100% (the minimum that it allows).

 

If there is a xaml/xml file where I could edit the font size, it would be great (community theme editor won't allow to edit those popup windows)

[Jason Carr]

12 minutes ago, Xpendable said:

All I can say is my first new score uploaded, but NONE of my subsequent high-scores for this game uploaded.  And some of these plays was the #1 top score in Centipede.  Surely that should have uploaded, but it did not.  Based on what you have described, it ain't working right.  

Again, we need to see the log file. I understand that it's not working on your system, but first off, please do your best not to make invalid assumptions, and secondly, we can't help fix it until we understand what's going on on your system. I am currently seeing some bugs with the MAME high score system and Dig Dug, but Centipede does not appear to have any issues.

[Jason Carr]

6 minutes ago, exodus_cl said:

40" Vertical monitor on the cab, 768px wide 1024px height, dpi/scaling config in w10 is at 100% (the minimum that it allows).

 

If there is a xaml/xml file where I could edit the font size, it would be great (community theme editor won't allow to edit those popup windows)

I see. I didn't expect/think about there being such a low horizontal resolution when I built that popup, unfortunately. Sadly there's not a way to change it currently with a theme, either. I'll see what I can do for the next release though.

[Jason Carr]

FYI all, we are working with Greatstone (the developer of hi2txt) to hopefully get any games that are bugged fixed. It's important to note that it's a tremendously difficult task to save high scores for every arcade game, because every arcade game is programmed completely differently, so that is no easy feat. On top of that, there may also be bugs for some games in MAME's high scores plugin (or the related hiscores.dat file). The majority of popular games seem to be working great though, so we'll take these issues case-by-case.

If you find an issue with a particular game, we should still look at the log file first and foremost, to determine if the issue happens to be an issue on your system, or if the issue happens to be with LaunchBox. Then if LaunchBox does not appear to be the issue (for example if hi2txt is just not reporting any updated scores), then we can report the issue to Greatstone so he can look into it. Greatstone has published these testing steps to help make sure that you have indeed actually found a bug with a particular game: http://greatstone.free.fr/hi2txt/doc/help.html

If after testing you're confident that there is a bug with a particular game, you can post it to this document here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vdv8YH4Pn3ti6I6cttCTClnk8Tml2MnlCGlPISaTEbE/edit?usp=sharing

Greatstone can then take a look at it to see if the game can be fixed. I'll update the first post of this topic with this info as well.

[exodus_cl]

3 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I see. I didn't expect/think about there being such a low horizontal resolution when I built that popup, unfortunately. Sadly there's not a way to change it currently with a theme, either. I'll see what I can do for the next release though.

That would be such a huge help! let me explain the situation for you to get the idea (and know that it's worth it):

As LCD in the 4:3 format do not go bigger than 19" nowadays, it's possible to add a vertical bigger LCD to be used as a "fake 4:3" more squared display to be able to play horizontal and vertical games in a good way (playing vertical shooters on a 19" 4:3 screen is pretty bad, so this a good solution to that... obviously the side parts of the screen are unused and hidden inside the cab, so I'm using a 40" 1366x768 lcd that gives me a 24,5 inch 4:3 screen when playing horizontal games and a nice 24 inch vertical screen for shooters!

The community theme builder came as a gift from heaven since now we can do themes for every screen size and resolution, but this little popup windows are still out of reach.

Again, I would be very thankful if you could do an adjustment to this!

[Xpendable]

20 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Again, we need to see the log file. I understand that it's not working on your system, but first off, please do your best not to make invalid assumptions, and secondly, we can't help fix it until we understand what's going on on your system. I am currently seeing some bugs with the MAME high score system and Dig Dug, but Centipede does not appear to have any issues.

I've been in professional software development for 21+ years.  I'm not making invalid assumptions.  Based on the description on how this is supposed to work, I can only tell you that it isn't working the way you described it should be working.  Sorry if you're offended that I'm telling you it isn't working right.  But it's not.  It's going to be pretty tough for me to get a new high score in Centipede because my score is already pretty high and it's really hard for me to get it higher than it already is.  I might not be able to do it even after playing for hours.  And honestly, I really don't have that kind of time.  Not really that worth it to me.   I can only tell you that I believe you've got an issue.  Your choice on whether you want to try to fix it or not.  I suspect others will be complaining sooner or later.  Eventually you'll find the issue.  Good luck.

[Jason Carr]

18 minutes ago, Xpendable said:

I've been in professional software development for 21+ years.  I'm not making invalid assumptions.  Based on the description on how this is supposed to work, I can only tell you that it isn't working the way you described it should be working.  Sorry if you're offended that I'm telling you it isn't working right.  But it's not.  It's going to be pretty tough for me to get a new high score in Centipede because my score is already pretty high and it's really hard for me to get it higher than it already is.  I might not be able to do it even after playing for hours.  And honestly, I really don't have that kind of time.  Not really that worth it to me.   I can only tell you that I believe you've got an issue.  Your choice on whether you want to try to fix it or not.  I suspect others will be complaining sooner or later.  Eventually you'll find the issue.  Good luck.

All I'm asking for is a log file. I understand it's hard to achieve a high score, and that you're upset because it didn't register. We have hundreds of people using the system without issues, including with Centipede. Your invalid assumption was that it's broken for everyone, and perhaps for all or even most games, which you misjudged. Doesn't matter whether you're a developer or not. Even developers make mistakes. I certainly know that one well. But anyways, thanks for the report.

For everyone else's sake, please don't use the same incorrect logic here.

[Jason Carr]

FYI, Greatstone was able to figure out the issue with Dig Dug, so I'll be putting out a new beta shortly with the an updated version of hi2txt to fix that particular issue.

Edit: If you want to fix it sooner, replace your LaunchBox\ThirdParty\hi2txt\hi2txt.zip file with the one I've attached here.

@Underoath13

hi2txt.zip

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, Emulate said:

Nothing works for me...

Please see the first post of this topic.

[xevious1974]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

 

Yeah, both those games are showing those weird characters, so that could be the problem. Are you able to successfully achieve high scores with other games? I'm wondering if somehow there's a culture/translation issue.

Resolved!
I hope this can help other Gamers

I can save the others high scores without problems.

So I have tried to change my aka.

In pspikes (Power Spikes)I have inserted only AAA and in baraduke (Alien Sector) I have inserted ...  (In this game I was inserting the alien face smile in the AKA).

Inserting those chars I have successfully saved my new, and better, scores.

Maybe you are right, in process there is a sort of translation of the chars in others. 

Thank you!

[Jason Carr]

16 minutes ago, Emulate said:

 

alright so I figured it out, the system doesn't update actual current high scores it only overwrites new high scores so those of us with actual super hard high scores will never be on the leader bored... its a broken system.

 

4 minutes ago, Emulate said:

hmm seems to be working now after a while, maybe its cuz I just updated my lisence new high scores post now but current high score will not it seems.

It will only upload your newly-achieved high scores. That's part of our anti-cheat system. No, it's not a broken system. It also has nothing to do with your license because the high scores do not require a license for LaunchBox Premium. If you have any further issues, please read the first post of this topic.

[Jason Carr]

2 minutes ago, xevious1974 said:

Resolved!
I hope this can help other Gamers

I can save the others high scores without problems.

So I have tried to change my aka.

In pspikes (Power Spikes)I have inserted only AAA and in baraduke (Alien Sector) I have inserted ...  (In this game I was inserting the alien face smile in the AKA).

Inserting those chars I have successfully saved my new, and better, scores.

Maybe you are right, in process there is a sort of translation of the chars in others. 

Thank you!

Ah, interesting. That is good to know. I'll look into that.  I didn't even realize weird characters like that were possible to input.

[AnonymousMOS]

My savestates have stopped loading on game start.  I hope this isn't something wrong with my MAME installation and it has been disabled by the Community Highscore addition.

[Jason Carr]

10 minutes ago, Ranthalion75 said:

My savestates have stopped loading on game start.  I hope this isn't something wrong with my MAME installation and it has been disabled by the Community Highscore addition.

If you enable saving high scores, it disables save states, because of course that enables all kinds of cheating. You should be able to use save states again if you disable uploading high scores.

[AnonymousMOS]

10 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

If you enable saving high scores, it disables save states, because of course that enables all kinds of cheating. You should be able to use save states again if you disable uploading high scores.

Awesome.  That's what I thought, but wanted to make sure.  ?

[xevious1974]

What happens if I put more lives in machine configurations, or I lower the difficulty level or grant more time and so on? It is not a cheat, because it is a board configuration.

[Underoath13]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

FYI, Greatstone was able to figure out the issue with Dig Dug, so I'll be putting out a new beta shortly with the an updated version of hi2txt to fix that particular issue.

Edit: If you want to fix it sooner, replace your LaunchBox\ThirdParty\hi2txt\hi2txt.zip file with the one I've attached here.

@Underoath13

hi2txt.zip 1.05 MB · 0 downloads

Fantastic! And props on the quick turnaround time, I really appreciate it ?