Losing high scores

[bigredsk10]

I am having trouble with my high scores in Q*Bert in Mame. Every so often, every three weeks or so, they get reset. This is after shutting down Mame and shutting down my computer multiple times.

It doesn't make sense to me because when I exit and reboot, the high scores are normally still there.  Q*Bert doesnt seem to use auto-save, so I don't know what the problem is

I can't think of anything that would trigger the high scores being erased. I don't know if anyone can help me but Im stumped and I figured it can't hurt to ask and see if anyone has any ideas. Sorry if Ive been a bit vague.

Oh, Im using the most recent Mame.

[SGT]

Are you using a version in which the hiscore patch has been applied?

[FrizzleFried]

Are you using a version in which the hiscore patch has been applied?

Don't take this as 100% fact but I seem to recall that Q*Bert doesn't support HISCORE.DAT... I don't know WHERE I read that but I am ALMOST positive I did,  in fact,  read that.

[SGT]

Don't take this as 100% fact but I seem to recall that Q*Bert doesn't support HISCORE.DAT... I don't know WHERE I read that but I am ALMOST positive I did,  in fact,  read that.

Looks right.  I looked in my hiscore.dat and there's no sign of QBERT.

[bigredsk10]

Nope, Im not using the hi-score patch. I haven't had the time to dig through the process of compiling Mame.

The problem is that the hi-scores will be saved for weeks at a time. I can shut the game down, reboot my computer, whatever, and the score will still be there when I start it back up. Except for every so often, for no reason that I can figure out, the scores are all gone.

I have a file in my nvram folder that is called Q*Bert. Does that mean that Q*Bert should be able to save scores without the hiscore hack? Maybe the problem is that the nvram file is becoming deleted or something. I guess Im not completely clear on what nvram is except that its some kind of memory...

Q*Berts a favorite on my machine so I thought it would be worth asking. I don't think I know enough to figure out whats going wrong.

[Tiger-Heli]

AFAIK, Q-bert saves high scores in NVRAM.

I don't know why it would lose the NVRAM unless either:

1) You updated to a later version of MAME.

2) You accidentally reset the game (F3).

[bigredsk10]

Nope, haven't done either of those things.

There isn't a shift key function on the ipac to reset is there? Maybe thats being hit by accident. I think I would notice if the game reset on me though.

[Tiger-Heli]

There isn't a shift key function on the ipac to reset is there? Maybe thats being hit by accident. I think I would notice if the game reset on me though.

Not by default.

I believe Centiped only saves the first 3 high scores to NVRAM, even though ten are listed, so if you use a build without high-score support, the last 7 scores are lost.  This is correct behavior according to MAME, so not really documented.  Perhaps Q-bert is the same, if it is only the lower scores you are losing.

Also found this on MAWS about Q-bert:

The first time you run the game, you should go into service mode, select 4. Options/Parameters with key F1, reset the High Score Table to have the high score table properly initialized.

But I don't think I have ever done this, so don't know that it matters.

[bigredsk10]

Thats interesting, I'll try that. Thanks for looking that up for me. I'll see if the scores last now.

In the meantime I've got a white board to write the score on.