OK, we need some basic questions answered for compiling with hiscore. The "
unofficial hiscore.dat" site was not helpful with this either.
(why does he call it "unofficial", and his logo is spelled Highscore.dat?)1. Does hiscore support more games than Mame 118's savestates?
2. Why did the developers drop hiscore in favor of savestates?
3. Assuming someone is not currently using hiscore, what is the shortest compiling route? Can I start with Mame 118 source and apply hi_117u3.txt?
4. Are all the high score files stored in the /hi directory compatible, regardless of the version of Mame (assuming it's a version of Mame that supported hiscore, or a hiscore compiled version)?
5. Does the hiscore.dat file ever need to be updated?
6. Can you use a combination of auto-savestates and hiscore? I'm assuming no, because if the savestate is working properly, the game never exits, therefore never writes the high score to the /hi folder.
Personally, high scores are very important to me, and I want them in the latest mame. I can certainly compile a mame with hiscore support, but I wonder about the future. Say a year later, if I want a newer Mame, how much work will it be to skip up to the latest version? Do I need to track down all of these hiscore diff files forever?