adding hi score data

[MrQuan]

G'day,

My Mamewah/Mame/ZSnes/Project64 PC is all hooked up and running like a dream.  Thanks in part to these forums for smoothing out most issues I had. 

Anyways, I have stumbled on a problem that I can't see a clear solution to...

I recently added the hiscore.dat file to my Mame directory from http://www.mame.net/hiscore.html (I downloaded the latest one - 20th February 2001), and this was working well for most of my games.  However, sfa3 (street fighter alpha 3) didn't create it's own .hi file and the documentation tells me this is because it isn't supported by hicore.dat.

My question is, is it possible to add hi score support for sfa3, and other games I find aren't supported?  The documentation explains about memory addresses etc, I understand this - but is there an easier way to do this without having deal with source code and stuff like that? - or even a newer hiscore.dat file somewhere else on the net?

Thanks in advance for your help. 

[mackem]

Try http://www.mameworld.net/highscore/latest.htm

[MrQuan]

Ahhh, thank you!  I knew February 2001 couldn't have been the latest!  I'll see if this supports the games I'm after.

[Pi]

Note that most modern games use Non-Volatile RAM (in its various flavors) to store configuration and hi-score data. So those don't need the hiscore.dat support, but they do need the folder called "nvram" with writing permission (iow, not read-only).

[MrQuan]

Cheers mackem, sfa3 and all of my other ROMs I tested now have high score functionality.

Note that most modern games use Non-Volatile RAM (in its various flavors) to store configuration and hi-score data. So those don't need the hiscore.dat support, but they do need the folder called "nvram" with writing permission (iow, not read-only).

Yeah, I noticed the NVRAM directory in my MAME directory, it has multiple files in there named after my ROMs, does that mean the NVRAM thing is working then? (I'm assuming MAME takes care of NVRAM without an additional .dat file?)

[Pi]

Yes, MAME takes care of NVRAM without an additional .dat file. The additional hiscore.dat is for games which didn't save hiscores in NVRAM or just that didn't have. Although MAME supports hiscore.dat, it's considered a hack and not part of faithful emulation.

[destructor]

Remember if you use NVRAM and you will want to record game (inp file) your game will not playback correctly. When you record (or playback) game, remove NVRAM file from MAME folder temporary or use option -nonvram (mameplus option, I don't know if it's in standard MAME too).