LR-MAME not saving High Scores
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I just upgraded my RPi in my Arcade1up cabinet to Retropie 4.7.1 Buster, so I could get the latest version of MAME running - specifically for the discrete sounds/no samples version of Donkey Kong.
it's all working great, except it doesn't save hi scores. Apparently at some point recently, MAME switched over to some kind of LUA based plugin system for things like Hi Score saving. But the LR-MAME build in Retropie isn't set up for this, and doesn't include the plug-in files needed or the paths.
I've googled a ton, and read a bunch of descriptions of how to get it working, but they are all incomplete. None of them detail where the files/folders need to Go.
anyone else run into this?
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@jsm i believe dkong emulation in MAME didn't change much over the past 5 years, so you might want to try mame2016.
Or you could build mame standalone from sources, i heard it works pretty well on pi (at the very least it worked with sdl2 on pi1/2/3), and imho current mame doesn't benefit much, if any, from the libretro api.
On a sidenote, i like the samples-based emulation better.
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mame2016 crashes on Dkong right after the attract screen loads. Same with Mame 2014 and 2015.
I did install standalone MAME from the "experimental packages" in REtropie and its' completely unplayable, like 2 frames per second on a RPi 3b+
It's a shame because LR-MAME runs Dkong Perfectly, otherwise.
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@jsm said in LR-MAME not saving High Scores:
mame2016 crashes on Dkong right after the attract screen loads.
hmmm that's weird, there is no mention about a crash fix between 0.174 and now at http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/dettaglio_mame.php?game_name=dkong&lang=en, and i'm also unable to reproduce this crash so i believe it might be an issue specific to your setup.
@jsm said in LR-MAME not saving High Scores:
2 frames per second on a RPi 3b+
i don't think it's supposed to happen either, maybe you should ask help at https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-and-mame-standalone
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My mistake - Donkey Kong runs in MAME2016 without crashing - but the audio is terrible. Crackles and pops and skips all over the place. It's clearly struggling to play at 100% speed.
as for standalone MAME - I spoke too soon. It works just fine, and no audio skipping in-game. High Scores save as well. However - it does slow to a crawl when you press the TAB key to bring up the MAME menu - this was where I thought there was a problem wiht the whole emulator - because I had to reconfigure controls on first launch and hitting TAB to config killed it. Also - since it's not Libretro, it can't use Libretro's shaders, so I had to enable the terrible looking scanlines.png option in the MAME.ini. There are no other shader/scanline options that work on Retropie. Enabling GLSL or BGFX options in MAME.ini causes it to fail to launch or play at a crawl of 2 fps.
All of that aside - it still doesn't address my actual question - how do you get Hi Score saving working SPECIFICALLY in LR-MAME? This is one of the things that drives me nuts about trying to report bugs in Retropie or Retroarch on these forums. I've spent months configuring my CAB to get it to as close to Arcade accurate as possible on all the games I like to play. I found this bug, so I came here to report it, and see if there was a fix. The latest version of MAME provides the best results for Sound accuracy, doesn't crash, and plays great - but the problem is the high score system in LR-MAME seems to have been left out. That is the question I was asking, not looking for "Did you try this other janky emulator that has even worse problems?"
So while I appreciate your suggestions - I want to know how to fix this emulator, not suggestions of other ones.
Thanks.
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@jsm said in LR-MAME not saving High Scores:
Crackles and pops and skips all over the place. It's clearly struggling to play at 100% speed.
Make sense, i remember they did something some time ago to reduce cpu usage for this discrete sound stuff. Now some of those games don't require a high-end system to run.
@jsm said in LR-MAME not saving High Scores:
I want to know how to fix this emulator, not suggestions of other ones.
I won't be able to help you with that, good luck !
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@jsm on a sidenote, i found this guide, but i guess you already know about it and it doesn't work
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@barbudreadmon Tried all that. Problem is - it doesn't give the specifc folder paths that the various plugins files/folders need to go in for a Retropie build, so it's just guess work. There are like 5 different "mame" folders where it could all go. I tried all of them, but it doesn't work.
On another forum I had people telling me the default setting for saving high scores in MAME was to use save states - but that's crap, because if you reset the cabinet, it wipes out the high scores, just like if you powered it off. The whole point of the high score saving feature is that it's persistent, even when you reset.
In the end - I created an alternate version of the scanlines.png in photoshop file for the standalone MAME that ends up looking identical to the Retroarch Shader in LR-MAME I was using, so my problems are solved for now.
Just seems like a big oversight to not add the plugins components for things like hi Score to the LR-MAME build since MAME went to that system quite some time ago.
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@jsm said in LR-MAME not saving High Scores:
Just seems like a big oversight to not add the plugins components for things like hi Score to the LR-MAME build since MAME went to that system quite some time ago.
well, i tried to make you use something else because i know that's the most broken mame core, we are talking about a core that'll enter an infinite loop without providing any useful error when using the wrong romset here, and it has been like this for quite some time now... so i don't expect hiscores to be a priority if anyone is even working on improving that core...
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