MAME autosave

[Zobeid]

I found the autosave function works well for keeping high scores in games like Pac Man. . .  but it doesn't work with some of my favorites like Lady Bug and Cosmic Avenger.

I can manually save and load states in Lady Bug, for example.  I get a message telling me it's not officially supported -- but the load and save appears to work fine.  It just won't do it automatically using autosave.

Is there any way to override this, or trick MAME into autosaving?  And why is save and load not "supported" in these games when it appears to work with no apparent problem?

[pkellum]

There is a way to trick it using custom command options for the game in your front end, but I haven't tried it in ages.

[TheShanMan]

From my understanding, whenever save states change in newer mame versions you risk your saved states being unusable and therefore you lose your high scores. Plus it only supports a relatively small set of games. If saving high scores is your goal, it's better to compile your own mame using the hiscore diff, and hiscore.dat.

[Jdurg]

From my understanding, whenever save states change in newer mame versions you risk your saved states being unusable and therefore you lose your high scores. Plus it only supports a relatively small set of games. If saving high scores is your goal, it's better to compile your own mame using the hiscore diff, and hiscore.dat.

True, but if you have MAME set up in your cab why would you update the version?

[MKChamp]

From my understanding, whenever save states change in newer mame versions you risk your saved states being unusable and therefore you lose your high scores. Plus it only supports a relatively small set of games. If saving high scores is your goal, it's better to compile your own mame using the hiscore diff, and hiscore.dat.

True, but if you have MAME set up in your cab why would you update the version?

The same reason why there 'are' updated MAME versions released. Improvments, new games, bug fixes, new functionality, more accuracy (like in eliminating samples), etc. etc.
Also, if you are like me, you are anal in wanting the 'latest' and 'greatest' of everything...even if it might not be better than a previous version...I have that OCD issue where I have to have the highest number in a build...125 is higher than 124...125u1 is a little higher than 125....
And the last reason for me is if I don't upgrade, my cab starts to become untouched. I 'tinker' more than play.

[Jdurg]

Point noted.  I too am the same way with wanting the newest of everything.  I guess I'm just waiting for a point where MAME is emulating what I want the proper way and then will just manually update drivers and whatnot as certain drivers are updated.  I typically use my own custom build of MAME that doesn't really follow any numbering version.  It's just that once my cab is built, I'll probably not update MAME unless something massive happens.