Will High scores be saved permanently using MAME emulator ?

[cranker]

I have MAME on an arcade PC and High scores are saved exactly as they would be on the original arcade machine. Is this a feature that is included in the emulator or does it have to be added ? Having High scores is a very important feature to me for arcade games. I did not do the set up myself so i have no idea. I hate when there are high scores and they get erased when the game is turned off !!!

 

[PoisonedV]

of course they will.

 

[Shikaku]

My question is, can hiscores be saved and downloaded onto a server?

 

[cranker]

This is why I love arcade games. Most of the other ports of these games to various systems do not save high scores when the machine is turned off which is the whole point in most of these games and it's what gets you wanting to play them over and over.....otherwise what's the point? Thanks for the response

 

[Etinin]

My question is, can hiscores be saved and downloaded onto a server?

Erm, I bet there would simply be too many frauds if that were done unless some overcomplicated (and still hackeable) verification scheme was made.

 

[Tobriand]

I doubt MAME will save scores permanently, though. If you kill your directory with roms in, it's unlikely your scores would persist when you re-copied the same roms to a new directory, simply because saves tend to be in the same place roms are. But you'd have to be rather careless to lose them, I think.

 

[truekaiser]

My question is, can hiscores be saved and downloaded onto a server?

twin galaxys does it, but you need to set the high score with the following conditions.
1. in person.
2. on a certified original arcade machine.

so that means any mame score is not accepted.

 

[Flack]

of course they will.

Actually, depending on which version of MAME gets ported, they may or may not be saved.

Early versions of MAME did not save high scores.

Middle versions of MAME were hacked to use a "hi score" dat file. All game ROMs were modified to write their high scores to the hi score.dat file. This worked really well but the MAME developers decided that this went against the spirit of MAME. The goal of MAME is to preserve ROMs and to get hi score.dat to work they were modifying the ROMs, so this technique was removed from MAME.

As of the last year or so, MAME has been using save states to save high scores. I assume most people who dabble with emulators know what save states are, but if you don't, basically it's where an emulator "freezes" a game in time and then allows you to later resume the game right at that point. So the way this works in MAME now is when you first play a game, it is like you are turning it on for the first time. When you quit the game, its state is saved. When you load the game the next time, it reloads the save state and picks up where you left off. It's like the game was paused and never lost power. The problem with this technique is that not all ROMs support save states. On those games, you are SOL.

Saying "of course they will" is incorrect. It depends on the version of MAME that is ported, and how that version handles high score saving.

 

[dinglebery]

that actualy depends on the game and witch version of mame gets ported ... depending on witch version theres .difs you can find on line for hi score suport as well as bypassing the warning prompt (in later versions ) some of the very latest versions of mame dont use the .HI file support anymore as games are being converted to a virtual nvram save state . so once youve run a rom mame esentualy does a savestate when you exit it and then restores it next play. so this might wind up being a DIY thang depending on how the porting goes.

as far as online hiscore support theres a project in the works at the BYOAC website for that but its very complicated and wont see completion for quite some time (in a nut shell each game has its own hiscore format and the community is working on some middleware app to translate everything into a set standard for use across the net)

so honestly alot of that depends on witch version of mame gets ported and how much work the porter cares to do...

 

[PoisonedV]

of course they will.

Saying "of course they will" is incorrect. It depends on the version of MAME that is ported, and how that version handles high score saving.

exactly.

 

[cranker]

I am mostly interested in the 70,s and 80,s arcade games where high scores are very inportant and really the point of most of the games. I am hoping that the person who does the port can use a version of MAME that does save high scores permanently on these particular games. Having "save states" is very useful for most other types of games but not as much for arcade type games like pac-man, galaxian, robotron....etc....where high scores are most of the reason to keep playing.........(having both would be nice) Well here's hoping that this is something that everyone wants and that the person who ports it can implement...................pleazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

By the way, anyone know who is doing the port of MAME if anyone at the moment ?

 

[dinglebery]

smile well you need to understand a bit about what mames actualy doing and how there useing "save states".. short wise thier version gives you exactly what you want saved high scores for your games. and the whole proccess is trasparent to the user.. they arnt saveing the game thier saveing the state of the hardware like the machine never turns off, so you get the benifits of saved high scores as well as unlockables on certain games.

problem is Mame's focus over the last few years isnt about playing games its about acurately emulateing the hardware , weather its a benifit to playing or not so most of the very latest mame versions can reduce modern pcs to smokeing bits on alot of games that worked flawlessly in previous versions do to the extra hardware being emulated ..

dont get me wrong Mame is awsome for what it is but if your looking just to play the arcade games your more than likely going to need to look into ports of final burn mess zinc ect (think ive seen all of those being ported too)

i realy cant say much else till i know who porting what versions of those apps .. i am planing on makeing a unified front end if its needed for the arcade sector but i wont even start till after release and some emus see the light of day so i can see how they work and command lines ect ect..

 

[ish420]

I hope netplay can be added to all the emulators being written for the Pandora. We can set up a lobby of Pandora owners who want to play each other. Adhoc would be cool but I'm the only person of all my friends who will get a Pandora so that's pretty much useless.

 

[slaherman]

Here is a newbie guide of how to save high scores:
I gonna base it on the mame i downloaded..

1.
Download MAME32 FX 0.126 from here:
http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/arcade/mame.html

2.
Install it and get your roms in...Go to default game options and do it like this ( dont enable save game stats on exit).

3
Then place a diff file in the diff folder (the 126 diff):
download from here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=64298.0
It should look like this when placed in folder: (remember to change the txt to diff)

4.
Then download and extract the files: hiscoredat.zip and mame0113u2.zip (extract in the the same folder as mameuifx32.exe)
Download the two zip files here: http://www.mameworld.net/highscore/download.htm
It should look like this when done:

You are now ready to play..even Burgertime saves high score.. I have only tried it with this version of mame and since I'm a newbie myself I dont know if it works with another versions...

You can also do it like this:
http://www.mameworld.net/highscore/nvram.htm