Having an issue with high score saving lr mame 2003 plus

mahoneyt944

All my games using mame 2003 plus are not loading the .hi or .nv file (though I only have .nv files right now) that's located in:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003-plus/hi
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003-plus/nvram

When I exit the game ".nv" files are being made in the directories above but when I re-enter the emulator the high score is not loaded back. This seems like a simple config issue or perhaps I'm missing something as my other emulators are saving just fine. I reinstalled lr mame 2003 plus already with no success. what am I missing here?

mahoneyt944

I'm also using tapper to test

mitu

The .hi files are the hiscores. Note that not all games support hiscores in Mame 2003. Can you try with a simple game, like pacman ?

mahoneyt944

@mitu well I tested with donkey Kong and it's working. So is there a way to get tapper working? The high scores are there as long as I don't exit. But once I do they are gone. External .dat?

grant2258

it would require an update to the driver to work. You would need to request it to be added.

mahoneyt944

@grant2258 through GitHub?

grant2258

that would be the best place any active devs there could pick it up is worth try. You could also try fbneo its updated more frequently and probably works with the hi scores not tested it for this game though.

mahoneyt944

well I tested some other games like Tron. Now what's interesting is Tron does not save a .hi file either, but it does save a .nv file and the high scores are reloaded from the .nv file. I tested this from creating a highscore on another pi setup of mine and copying the tron rom and .nv file to the pi setup I'm working on currently. The high score loads up this way for Tron.

Tapper also creates a .nv file instead of a .hi file so I assume it's high score would be loaded though this as well. It's also worth noting that these are both Bally midway games that need the mame 2003 plus updates to work properly.

sirhenrythe5th

@mahoneyt944 fyi: Mame does save nvram-files as well as *.hi since Nicola Salmoria invented it in 1996 - so this is no special behavior of MAME for Raspberry Pis ☺

mahoneyt944

@sirhenrythe5th
what I was getting at is, since Tron uses the .nv file for it's high score and does not make a .hi file ---which high score is working, and tapper is creating a .nv file and not making a .hi file just like tron....is it reasonable to think that tappers high score will be apart of the .nv file?

Both games are Bally midway so I would think they were similar in some ways at least. If so, the .nv file is being created currently and not saving the high score within it.

If this isn't the case what is being saved in the .nv file it's making?

dankcushions

scores via nv files were/are apparently unreliable: https://highscore.mameworld.info/nvramtest.htm

grant2258

This is an easy fix thankfully tested it and it works.

here is the original code

https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/blob/master/src/drivers/mcr3.c#L428-L436

notice this saves videoram instead of nvram as is described here https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/blob/0134c428b75882aa474f78dbbf2c6ecde49b97b7/src/drivers/mcr3.c#L35-L39

change the nvram handler to the code (linked above) to what paste below and it will work as expected. This is something i always meant to look into but never found the time.

static NVRAM_HANDLER( mcr3 )
{
unsigned char *ram = memory_region(REGION_CPU1);

	if (read_or_write)
		mame_fwrite(file, &ram[0xe000], 0x800);
	else if (file)
		mame_fread(file, &ram[0xe000], 0x800);
}

Like i said before in this case the driver needs an update nothing more nothing less. The problem here is the nvram was pointing to the wrong place in the memory map.

mahoneyt944

@grant2258

Thank you. Is this change official or do I need to edit manually?

Could you link me the updated mame2003_plus_libretro.so to replace mine?

My editor keeps crashing when I open it :(

mitu

@mahoneyt944 said in Having an issue with high score saving lr mame 2003 plus:

Could you link me the updated mame2003_plus_libretro.so to replace mine?

You can't edit the mame2003_plus_libretro.so file directly, the source needs editing and then re-compiled to produce the new mame2003_plus_libretro.so.

mahoneyt944

@mitu

Yeah I kind of figured so when I saw the jumbled mess inside the file lol. Is anyone willing to compile this update and post it?

arcadez2003

https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/pull/780

mahoneyt944

@arcadez2003

Thank you, does anyone have it compiled so I can update my system manually? Getting ready to back up my pi but wanted to get this fix in there before I do.

Riverstorm

@mahoneyt944 - You'll probably need to download from source from within the RetroPie Setup menu to get the latest commits. Basically where you installed the emulator, there should be two options, download from binary or download from source.

mahoneyt944

@Riverstorm

The change made isn't official yet to update from source. That's why I was hoping someone could compile it

grant2258

Ill provide instructions for you to compile it im assuming you have a pi3 if not change the platform to rpi2.

There is things to keep in mind one you should have mame2003-plus installed via retropie so everything is setup. The code below will compile mame for you at the bash prompt via ssh or f4 depending on your preference.

git clone https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro.git
cd mame2003-plus-libretro/
wget https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/pull/780.patch
git am 780.patch
make -j8 platform=rpi3

copy the binary over that is made over the old one and be sure to delete the source directory when finished.