Why doesn't 1942 save highscores while other games do?

[Alex F.]

That's basically my question.  I use MAME .228 and BigBox.

Other games like Marble Madness, TriSports or Megatouch 7 apparently have no problem saving, remembering and displaying high scores. So what's the deal with (e.g.?) 1942? Are there others as well maybe?

I tried to mess around with the mame.ini and some hiscore plugin.ini which I had read about on this board, and then 1942 indeed saved and displayed high scores, but this had the strange effect of making 1942 stutter and totally unplayable. As soon as I removed it it was back to normal.

Does anybody have an idea? Thanks in advance!

[neil9000]

  On 4/15/2021 at 9:26 PM, Alex F. said:

That's basically my question.  I use MAME .228 and BigBox.

Other games like Marble Madness, TriSports or Megatouch 7 apparently have no problem saving, remembering and displaying high scores. So what's the deal with (e.g.?) 1942? Are there others as well maybe?

I tried to mess around with the mame.ini and some hiscore plugin.ini which I had read about on this board, and then 1942 indeed saved and displayed high scores, but this had the strange effect of making 1942 stutter and totally unplayable. As soon as I removed it it was back to normal.

Does anybody have an idea? Thanks in advance!

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It does save scores, are you using the correct rom for it, 1942.zip?

[Alex F.]

I do!  There are  a number of versions available, but  I have "Revision B" running (1942.zip).

I just tried other versions in Launchbox but as soon as I exited the game back to Launchbox and launched it again it was back to virgin zero, no matter what version I tried.

What could I do? Any help is appreciated!

Edited April 16, 2021 by Alex F.

[JoeViking245]

Try deleting the "1942.hi" file.  It's located in the "hi" sub folder in your MAME directory.   i.e.  D:\MAME\hi\1942.hi   Then play the game again.  Be sure to beat the default hi score (40,000?) to see any changes.

If your other versions of 1942 (like 1942a.zip) are acting wonky also, they deleting their hi files as well (1942a.hi).

You might also look in the nvram folder for sub folders of the same name as the game.  ( D:\MAME\nvram\1942\ ).  Though there shouldn't be any [for 1942].  But worth checking.

Also, if the high scores are saving fine for other games (Marble Madness etc.) then your mame.ini, plugin.ini settings are fine.

If 1942 is still acting up, look for its ini (if it's there) and cfg (though this file shouldn't cause an issue) file and remove those.  D:\MAME\ini\1942.ini   D:\MAME\cfg\1942.cfg

[Alex F.]

Thank you so much for your kind answers so far. I really appreciate it.

I tried everything you wrote about nvram or cfg. files but no luck.

I also tried some other games, like 1944:TLM, Tiger Heli or Xevious and all of them don't save any high scores.

Other games, like Klax, save high scores! 

I'm at a total loss here.

Do I need special versions of files like plugin.ini, mame.ini or hiscore.dat? Where do you have them? Are they there from the beginning or can they be downloaded from somewhere or do they have to be modified?

I assume you don't have any high score problems, do you?

Man, MAME can be a real b****!

 

[JoeViking245]

  On 4/16/2021 at 5:18 PM, Alex F. said:

Do I need special versions of files like plugin.ini, mame.ini or hiscore.dat?

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The 2 ini files, no.  You should only need to set "hiscore" to "1" in plugin.ini.  Which you said when you did, it did save your scores (at least for 1942).  But it caused game stuttering.  

I can't see the hiscore plugin causing the game to stutter.  The game on it's own is tracking scores during game play.  And then when you go to exit the game, the plugin reads what the game 'tracked' and saves it to the hi file (or in some cases the nvram folder).  I'm not saying that it's not what's causing the stuttering.  It just seems odd (to me) that it would.

[Alex F.]

Well, after trying virtually everything, setting every "hiscore" or "plugin" setting to 1 in every .ini file with no effect whatsoever, after activating the hiscore plugin in MAME and creating a "hi" folder etc.  (NOTHING - maybe MAME just doesn't like me), I finally found a workaround solution by setting the "Automatic save / restore" feature to 1 for every game that doesn't save the scores!

The only thing left and my last question here for you would be: Is there any way to not display the MAME notifications, especially the "Autostate successfully loaded" box directly after launching a game? Somehow I don't think so and it's really a very minor thing for two seconds but I'm asking anyway. Thank you very much again in advance.

[JoeViking245]

  On 4/18/2021 at 11:49 AM, Alex F. said:

Is there any way to not display the MAME notifications, especially the "Autostate successfully loaded" box

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Your thinking is correct.  There isn't [an easy way].  The hard way is to modify the source code and compile your own.  But that would be more a of a pain than it's worth for a momentary popup notification.