FBNeo high score saving trouble

mrmadcatz

Hello!

I was told to post here by a kind individual replying to my
post about issues with saving hi scores for Columns 2.

@barbudreadmon identified that it might be the hiscore.dat seeing “Columns 2: The Voyage Through Time” as a clone of Columns 1. Not sure if there is anything I can add to my hiscore.dat to fix the issue.

3/8 UPDATE - I just tested using both lr-mame2003 and lr-mame2003-plus using the respective versions of columns2.zip. Both seem to be experiencing the same issue of the Hi-Score not saving. I'll get a high score on the board, wait to confirm it's saved, exit emulation, re-enter and wait for the scoreboard to show only to see it reset back to the default scores.

mrmadcatz

Hi there. Just checking in: was this, in fact, the right place to post this with regards to Columns 2 not saving it's Hi-Scores?

@mrmadcatz said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

Hello!

I was told to post here by a kind individual replying to my
post about issues with saving hi scores for Columns 2.

@barbudreadmon identified that it might be the hiscore.dat seeing “Columns 2: The Voyage Through Time” as a clone of Columns 1. Not sure if there is anything I can add to my hiscore.dat to fix the issue.

3/8 UPDATE - I just tested using both lr-mame2003 and lr-mame2003-plus using the respective versions of columns2.zip. Both seem to be experiencing the same issue of the Hi-Score not saving. I'll get a high score on the board, wait to confirm it's saved, exit emulation, re-enter and wait for the scoreboard to show only to see it reset back to the default scores.

WeirdH

@mrmadcatz It is. If there's no reply, just be patient. If there are multiple issues that need looking into, devs will most likely not fix and report them one at a time. Also, high scores are pretty low priority.

mrmadcatz

@WeirdH thank you for that context and clarification. Someone else pointed me here in such a way that I thought replies would be faster or more immediate. Thanks for resetting those expectations for me.

WeirdH

@mrmadcatz Well, sometimes they are, but devs have lives too, so it's not a given.

mrmadcatz

@WeirdH Devs having lives is something I am well aware of. Thanks again.

barbudreadmon

@mrmadcatz some clarifications : i already gave you informations on how to fix the hiscore.dat file at https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/274526, this file isn't part of our project so we (the FBNeo team) won't handle issues related to its content being wrong, good luck.

mrmadcatz

@barbudreadmon thank you. I guess I got confused because someone else pointed me to this thread full of people listing games that aren’t saving and replies from you and others saying “fixed,” but I’m guessing this isn’t necessarily for the libretro core.

Thank you for clarifying.

barbudreadmon

@mrmadcatz said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

I’m guessing this isn’t necessarily for the libretro core

I don't understand what you mean, again hiscore.datis from a totally separate project hosted at https://highscore.mameworld.info/, it's not part of FBNeo or libretro.

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon shangonnot saving score.

Also, weirdly, scores that get entered, appear to show up in the wrong category. Maybe this is a bug in the game? For instance, you can choose a difficulty after inserting a coin: 'beginner - junior - senior - expert'. I choose 'beginner', I play to game over, I enter initials. Game goes back to attract mode, but shows my freshly entered score in 'junior' high score list instead of 'beginner'...

Of course, after exiting and relaunching game, everything is reset to default names and scores anyway, but still. Weird.

sirhenrythe5th

I also found another one: moomesa.zip

barbudreadmon

@WeirdH said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

shangon not saving score.

Yes, because this romset doesn't have an entry in hiscore.dat, pretty much the same situation as aligator above where the parent has no entry while some of its clones (like shangon2) apparently do.

@WeirdH said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

Maybe this is a bug in the game?

Well, that driver was originally written by barry harris, the infamous guy who illegally sold FBAlpha to a company. He wasn't the best programmer around and left us with a lot of crap, some of his drivers had to be literally rewritten from scratch after he left. I believe Dink fixed many issues on that driver over the past 3 years, but i can't vouch barry didn't left another easter egg. Is it acting properly in current MAME ?

@sirhenrythe5th said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

I also found another one: moomesa.zip

Done

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

Yes, because this romset doesn't have an entry in hiscore.dat, pretty much the same situation as aligator above where the parent has no entry while some of its clones (like shangon2) apparently do.

I tested shangon2, but it also doesn't save scores.

Well, that driver was originally written by barry harris, the infamous guy who illegally sold FBAlpha to a company. He wasn't the best programmer around and left us with a lot of crap, some of his drivers had to be literally rewritten from scratch after he left. I believe Dink fixed many issues on that driver over the past 3 years, but i can't vouch barry didn't left another easter egg.

I noticed this in the error of the 'wrong category': it already happens at the difficulty select screen. When you choose 'beginner', the game starts the 'junior' stages. Everything is just one place over where it should be. Selecting 'expert' lets you play the 'beginner' stages. Both shangon and shangon2behave the same in this.

Is it acting properly in current MAME ?

I just have MAME2003-Plus to test at the moment: it will only play the bootleg dump shangonb, which has very noticable graphical glitches. It DOES, however, select the right stages at the difficulty select screen, AND it saves high scores (even though inputting a name is glitched beyond usability).

Don't know how helpful this is, but it's what I found.

barbudreadmon

@WeirdH said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

I noticed this in the error of the 'wrong category': it already happens at the difficulty select screen. When you choose 'beginner', the game starts the 'junior' stages.

Are you saying you end up in africa after selecting europe ? I don't have that behavior here O_o

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon It does. And selecting Africa starts Asia stages, Asia starts America and America starts Europe.

EDIT - did a little more testing: shangonle behaves the same way with the stage order. I also tried regular hangon, which doesn't have a stage select, but also doesn't save hiscores, despite being present in hiscore.dat (at least, if I'm reading it correctly).

This is on FBNeo built from source on March 19th on an RPi 3B+.

(And I just checked: regular hangonalso doesn't save scores in MAME2003-plus.)

barbudreadmon

@WeirdH Hmmm what kind of controller are you using ? I'm wondering if it could be some kind of input issue where pressing start also triggers brake on your setup. Does pressing start somehow brake when you are driving ? Eventually you could also check that through the input test in service menu. I can't think of any other explanation for your issue atm.

It was normal for hangon to not save hiscores (support code was missing, now it should be ok). Idk for shangon and clones, the entries in hiscore.dat might be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time (i remember the toutrun entry from the same driver being broken until ~2 years ago).

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

@WeirdH Hmmm what kind of controller are you using ?

Dragonrise usb encoder, with a bunch of arcade buttons attached.

I'm wondering if it could be some kind of input issue where pressing start also triggers brake on your setup. Does pressing start somehow brake when you are driving ? Eventually you could also check that through the input test in service menu. I can't think of any other explanation for your issue atm.

Good call! This is exactly what's happening, according to the test menu. Is there a way around it, or is it some quirk of the encoder?

EDIT: just did some fumbling around with the controls in RGUI. My start button (L2 button trigger) somehow always registers as 'brake', even when it's not even assigned to anything. So naturally, when assigned to 'start 1', it registers as both functions simultaneously. I don't recall seeing this behaviour in any other game.

barbudreadmon

@WeirdH said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

Is there a way around it, or is it some quirk of the encoder?

The core registers inputs as different buttons (by default, start for start, and L2 for brake), so if 2 inputs are being triggered by pressing 1 button on your setup, this is something about your settings or encoder.

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon Okay, I thought that whatever customized control you configure in RGUI would override the core default (I had mine saved as game keymap shangon.rmp for instance), but I guess it doesn't work like that...?

By the way, my start button (still L2) also registers as brake in regular hangon, but it doesn't cause a selection hiccup there. Also had a custom hangon.rmp saved.

Anyway, I'll do some mucking about with my autoconfigs and inputs and the like to see if I can find a way that works for me. Thanks for thinking with me on this.

barbudreadmon

@WeirdH said in FBNeo high score saving trouble:

I guess it doesn't work like that...?

No idea, i never use remapping, it might be a retroarch bug.

Edit: yeah, probably a retroarch bug, i can reproduce it, remapping L2 or R2 doesn't seem to work properly, my 2 cents would be that it has to do with the fact those are special buttons that can be used as both analog and digital.