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jasonbar:
Follow-up to the "save states" discussion:

How do I set MAME (or MaLa, my front end) to use the save states feature? (yes, I checked the Wiki & couldn't find an answer...)

:]

Thanks,
-Jason

severdhed:
i just started using the mame 117 with the save state feature..from what i have seen, it isnt automatic.  if you want to create a save state, by default you hit "L Shift and F7".  it then asks you to choose a slot (or something) you then press a number button.  you can load that state by pressing F7 and specifying which slot you used. 

if you dont create a save state, then when you close the game and come back in, it is just like it used to be

(you can change the key combo by hitting TAB and changing it)

jasonbar:
Ah, thanks.  I thought they had save states going way back when (going back at least as far as my MAME32 0.82...yup...just confirmed it).

Anyway, what would be handy (for me, in my opinion), is to set up a macro that not only exits the game when I push the "Exit" admin button on my control panel, but also goes through that key sequence to save a slot automatically upon exit, and then have my FE spit out the correct macro sequence every time you launch a game.

Is this possible?  (yes, I realize you'd always save to & load from state 1, but I think I'd prefer to always load & save from 1 slot, and then, if I really wanted to save more games, I could do that manually w/ other slots)

My setup: I-Pac4 will have the "Exit" button mapped to it--can the I-Pac4 spit out a key sequence (probably w/ pauses) when I press a key?  My FE is MaLa--can it also send a macro upon launching each MAME game, *after* the game has launched?

Thanks,
-J

Jouster:
I never needed to tell it to save the state for a game...but I never quit a game while I was in the middle of game play.   I did once quit while it was still in 'Enter your Initials' for a high score...played something else...came back and entered my initials.  You may need to config save states in MAME...but I don't know where you would go, I'm sure MAME wuold have an option for it or directions.


--- Quote from: pacman-jam on July 25, 2007, 05:17:05 pm ---that sounds cool except for starting games where you left off.. I don't want my mates coming around and starting games mid way through and running away with my score.
--- End quote ---
There is an easy way to prevent that...don't quit mid-game.  Just play through to the end.

Jouster

u_rebelscum:
If you want automatic save states, enable the -autosave option. 

The biggest 'problem' with savestate is -autosave only works for games that have the savestate flag is set to "supported", which does not match the games that hiscore.dat supported.  The second problem is savestates don't always cross between versions numbers of mame.

The 'problems' with hiscore.dat include: it's a hack that adds a feature the original game didn't have (that doesn't help decode, test, or emulate), can cause errors that wouldn't happen if hiscore.dat is not used, doesn't always cross between version numbers of mame (even though it currently has a better record than savestate), and isn't supported in official mame.

MameDev moved to savestate since it can help find, repeat, & fix bugs, supports everything hiscore.dat does and more, and hiscore.dat is a hack and has caused so called 'bugs' that weren't bugs in emulation and wasted dev time trying to fix them.  They implemented savestate in the core and said hiscore.dat would be dropped but both would be included to give time for savestate to be added to the games (just like hiscore.dat, each game has to / had to have the feature added).  After over a couple years of savestate and almost of year of autosave in mame, hiscore.dat was finally removed.  (However, one of the reasons it was done was because very few games had savestate added; it seemed like if hiscore.dat supported a game, noone bothered adding savestate, IOW the hiscore.dat was slowing down support for savestate.)


This history is from a person (me) that doesn't care that much about seeing my high score stay between times I play (although I'm not against it), that looks at the source, (very rarely) helps debug, and compiles my own.  So I'm pretty pro-savestate, but know that it doesn't cover all the games and isn't as steady as hiscore.dat ATM.  Just to let you know my slant.  Others here are pro-hiscore.dat.  [shrug]

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