High Scores not saving in FinalBurnAlpha

Evert

Hi all, I need some help. I have build an arcade machine and put a Pi in to run it all (running retropie 4.1). Kids are having a blast, but I am unable to set it up in a way that the high scores are saved in FBA games. I have tried it with saving the hiscore.dat file on the fba rom folder, I have also tried it in the fba config folder, but it's not working.
According to this it should work, but it's not: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/lr-fbalpha

Any suggestions?
Thanks

dankcushions

@Evert hi scores aren't supported for all games in FBA. which are you trying ?

Evert

Hi mate, I've tried 1944, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Street Fighter III 3rd strike. None work.
Is there a list of which ones work and which ones don't?

Evert

I've opened the hiscore.dat in notepad and there is a listing for SFA2 and SFIII:

sfa2:
sfa2u:
sfa2ur1:
sfz2a:
sfz2ad:
sfz2al:
sfz2alb:
sfz2ald:
sfz2alh:
sfz2alj:
sfz2b:
sfz2br1:
sfz2h:
sfz2j:
sfz2jd:
sfz2jr1:
sfz2n:
@:maincpu,program,ffdf6a,ad,00,01

;sfiii3:******street fighter III 3rd strike: fight for the future (usa, 990608)
;sfiii3nr1:******street fighter III 3rd strike: fight for the future (japan, 990512 no cd)
;sfiii3n:******street fighter III 3rd strike: fight for the future (japan, 990608 no cd)
sfiii3:
sfiii3n:
sfiii3nr1:
sfiii3r1:
sfiii3u:
sfiii3ur1:
@:maincpu,program,2016e4c,18d,1c,04

HemiJJ

I am having the same issue with galaga and galaxian. My roms are in the arcade folder, but this should work. I tried setting the rights as root and pi. Any ideas?

HemiJJ

It is working now! I did an "upgrade all packages" first, but somehow this created a megadrive folder under my rom\genesis folder with a symlink back to the genesis folder. As you may guess, Linux was not happy and the result was a pi that would just throw a symlink error at boot and give me no keyboard at the Pi. I thought it was maybe rights related so I reset all the rights under the "/home/pi" "/opt/retropie" and "/etc/emulationstation" folders to the pi user using command "sudo chown -hR pi:pi (folderpath)". I had to do this using a wired connection to the pi (no wifi at this point) and Putty from my Windows PC. Still no go.

Examinig the error closer, I determined it was the folder causing the issue, so I backed up the roms in the Genesis folder, deleted both the Genesis and Megadrive roms folders, and created a new Genesis folder. After restoring the Genesis roms, the Pi booted the Pi and all was happy.

I quickly copies the older hiscore.dat per the instructions here https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/lr-fbalpha and tested a quick game of Galaxian... success! The high score was saved!

Now sure if it was rights or the upgrade all packages, but one of them fixed it. Hope this helps someone out.

Impman66

@hemijj

Where are your *.hi files saved now. I have an issue with fbalpha where the files are being saved in the location you mentioned bios/fba folder, which also contains the hiscore.dat file. But it as if they are not been read when the game is started. I have them for Pacland, and Pacman plus gngt.
But everytime I power off the pi and the restart to play again, the high score table reverts back to the default.
When I moved them all to the ROMS/FBA folder, the high score table just became corrupted. I have been through countless threads trying to find a solution, but so far everything I try fails.
I have now updated package after the high score table screw up, but still not reading those *hi files, sorry I am a total noob to this, but do the *.hi files and hiscore.dat files need to be moved from the bios directory into another, and if so can I do it wirelessly.
Interestingly, I can check the hi folder in the MAME2000 and MAME2003 folders and they have .hi files in, one for QBert which does have the high scores recorded AND it isn't mucked up.
If I move the complete fba folder from the BIOS directory to the ROMS directory, by using cut and paste over the wireless network will this work or just screw everything up again?

mitu

@impman66 What version of lr-fbalpha are you using ? The most recent one will save it in the ROM folder. The hiscore.dat should stay in the BIOS folder.

Impman66

I am on 0.2.97.42 version which I hope is the latest as I downloaded from source today.
will check if it has saved a high score I just got on Pacland, let me see....Nope no pacland.hi file in there, but do have a pacland.state file and pacland.state.auto file in there.
But will persist. Will just reboot and see what occurs.

Thanks anyway

mitu

@impman66 Which folder are you using ? arcade or fba ?

Impman66

@mitu I am using Arcade, do I need to put all my roms for fbalpha in the fba folder, and would deleting the *.state and *.state.auto file help, as I think previously I setup retroarch to save autosave on exit.

mitu

@impman66 Ok, so if you have the ROM in the arcade folder, the .hi file should be found under arcade/fba. I don't think the save file (or the auto-save) should impact this.

Impman66

@mitu said in High Scores not saving in FinalBurnAlpha:

@impman66 Ok, so if you have the ROM in the arcade folder, the .hi file should be found under arcade/fba. I don't think the save file (or the auto-save) should impact this.

Hi Mitu, thanks for this, have just obtained a couple of hi scores on different games and neither one has saved a .hi file in the location stated, I thought that pacland was a game that saved hi scores, I also did Pooyan, previously the hiscore for this produced a file in the bios/fba folder, I know as I deleted it along with pacland as this (reading other threads) could have become corrupted.
So I know both should produce a ,hi file but aren't doing so. Could there be a config conflict causing issues?
I have a couple of .hi files in MAME2003, yet those games are in the Arcade folder too,

mitu

@impman66 When did you last update lr-fbalpha ? Did you update from source or binary ? The fix for hiscore location was pretty recent (https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/issues/171), it might not be included with the binary update. I updated from source - before that the .hi file was saved along with the hiscore.dat, in the BIOS folder.

Impman66

@mitu I updated from source as a few have recommended to do so. I will shut-down the pi completely and go again. I have deleted the state and state.auto files just in case.
I will also move the Pooyan rom to fba folder and test to see if that works, all this may hopefully help others. Fingers crossed.

Impman66

OK put Pooyan rom in FBA folder within Arcade folder first - no .hi file was created. However, after getting a couple of high scores, it did create a new fba folder that had nothing in it.
I then tried putting it directly into the fba folder within the ROM directory. Again no .hi file produced but a new fba folder was created, with nothing in it.
Knocking it on the head tonight as it is getting late.
Thanks for all help @mitu

dankcushions

@impman66 said in High Scores not saving in FinalBurnAlpha:

I think previously I setup retroarch to save autosave on exit.

i would turn that off whilst investigating this issue

barbudreadmon

@impman66 lr-fbalpha is storing .hi files in the same folder than .nv and .fs files, which is the fba subfolder of what is defined as savefile_directory in your retroarch.cfg (default to the rom folder if nothing is defined, i don't recommend this), the folder is created by the core if it does not exist.

I guess you made sure hiscores are enabled in the core options so if the folder/files are not created, the only think that comes to mind is that you don't have the write permissions for that folder. What's the output for "ls -l path/to/the/folder" ?

Impman66

@barbudreadmon Ah, really don't know to tell the truth, as I say I am a complete beginner, how do I enable hiscores in the core options, and how do I find the output for "ls -l path/to/the/folder" . Hopefully, these posts that you and @mitu have been helping me with will help lots of others.
Thanks in advance

BobHarris

@impman66 If all else fails, you can just use a savestate to store your highscores. I actually quite like it; for example in Street fighter iii i keep several savestates for sets of highscores on different challenges (difficulty,number of rounds stuff like that).