The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Front End Support => MaLa Frontend => Topic started by: esplinter on September 08, 2009, 10:13:02 am
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Hi all,
I have been reading mala docs, mala wiki and searching this forum and I haven´t found anything related to this, so it seems that what I want is not possible but just asking the experts to be sure :)
I would like to show the hiscore for each game in the mala layout together with the videos, rom name, times played......etc
I haven´t found any layout like this or any documentation explaining how to do it. ¿anyone knows if this is possible?? ¿any link to documentation about this?? ¿maybe with a mala plugin??
I haven´t read documentation about mala plugins but I thought maybe this could be done by a plugin. ¿anyone who knows about mala plugins could guide me just to know if this could be achieved with a plugin?? I know a little bit about programming so if this is possible at least I will give it a try.
many thanks in advance for any help or orientation.
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Yes i agree a hi-score would be super, I wote for it! (if there's any thing like voting) But it would be great.
There some other things that i woul like to see solved first though. Like the layou clutter that many emu's make when you quit them (and yes i know thers a tick in the config to solved this but i dose not work.
Henrik
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Like the layou clutter that many emu's make when you quit them (and yes i know thers a tick in the config to solved this but i dose not work.
Henrik
Works on my system. Just goes blank and then gone.
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yeah..i'd love to see this ability added to MALA. i don't know how feasable it is, but it would be awesome to show the hi scores in the layout.
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hi
I have found some info about hiscores in mame.
http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:Features#Why_doesn.27t_my_favorite_game_save_my_high_scores.3F (http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:Features#Why_doesn.27t_my_favorite_game_save_my_high_scores.3F)
it seems that games that originally supported to save hiscore can also do it in mame but many others games don´t save hiscore. mamedevs also mention -autosave parameter but........ "however, only a subset of MAME's games fully support save states, so this approach is not a perfect solution."
This way I don´t know where hiscore values are saved in hard disk and maybe it can be different for each game so it seem difficult to get the hiscore value for each game and show it in the mala layout.........at least it seems difficult for me with my little knowledge about how mame works.
Also found an other option to save hiscores using the unofficial hiscore.dat
http://highscore.mameworld.info/ (http://highscore.mameworld.info/)
this way we create a folder named "hi" in the mame folder and we get a file called "romname.hi" for each saved hiscore. this files are "data", not text, not sure in which format. This approach seems easier as mala could search this folder to get the file .hi for the current rom and show it in the layout. Not sure how this .hi file could be readed.
The bad thing is that hiscore.dat is not supported in official mame releases (I don´t know why) but only supported in other mame modifications as mameplus.
This is the info that I have found about hiscores............ maybe any developer who knows better about how mame and mala works can say if hiscores in mala are possible...........
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i, like alot of us i think, use custom compiled versions of mame with the hiscore.dat patch applied. maybe not everyone does this, but i think that method is pretty common.
not all games support it, but alot do.
it would be awesome if there was a way to pull that data from the .hi files and display it in MALA, but i'm sure that isnt exactly easy to do.
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it would be awesome if there was a way to pull that data from the .hi files and display it in MALA, but i'm sure that isnt exactly easy to do.
[nothink]
If the .hi files were there it should be relatively easy for a plugin to grab the highest score out of the .hi file. Getting them to display in the frontend is a mystery to me.
[/nothink]
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I just installed CPWizard, and it displays MAME highscores when I pause a game, so it's definitely possible to "extract" that information. As stated in other posts, I'm also running a custom-compiled MAME that includes the hiscore patch.
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you should take a gander at this thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=83614.0
In that they've started a project to save/restore hi scores in a text mode, even being able to send them via a website.
I'd think you could utilize this application to get the hi score itself extracted out as plain text, then it should be easy to inject into a mala layout.
that does tie you directly to that project's ability to get hi scores out of whichever games they have decoded, but it's a start. Increasing the user base of any chunk of software often inspires more people to get involved, thus more hi scores will become available. it's a win-win.
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Yep, It could be great if someone makes a plugin for mala that run hitotext.exe [romname] and show the hiscores, like gameex, hyperspin or cpwizard.
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Yep, It could be great if someone makes a plugin for mala that run hitotext.exe [romname] and show the hiscores, like gameex, hyperspin or cpwizard.
it doesn´t seems too hard.....is there any documentation about coding mala plugins??
is there any website to see the MaLa roadmap?? maybe this feature is already planned....some other mame FEs already have it.....
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Appreciate this is an old thread, but wondering if there was any results in this?
Could I save high scores in a text file and then use MALA to pull this text into the layout anyway?