My hi-scores are not being recorded in FBA. I noticed there’s a “Hi-score ON/OFF” switch in the core options for most of the Capcom titles. Mine is always ON, but it does nothing. I tried downloading “hiscore.dat”, copied the file to the ROM and save folders just to be sure, but still no luck.
This is the x64 version. Any workaround?
Someone more knowledgeable might be able to answer this better.
Real arcade machines from back in the day didn’t have nonvolatile storage. When you turned of the machines, the high scores were reset. This isn’t true for more recent cabinets, but it is definitely true for most arcade machines from the 80’s and early 90’s. As a workaround, MAME standalone can be compiled so that it will automatically perform a save state when you quite the game, so that in a software sense the cabinet is always “on”.
It does look like MAME and FB have options for those features, but I have always had trouble with them also. It might have something to do with the way save states are handled in retroarch.
Thanks for the explanation.
As far as I have noticed, MAME is keeping high scores of all my Neo Geo games, but it isn’t doing it for CPS1/CPS2. I haven’t tried Neo Geo on FBA. So idk, it’s probably possible. The toggle I said wouldn’t be there if it isn’t, right?
as i understand it, the way the hiscore.dat works is to include the memory addresses where the hiscore values are stored for each game, then it just dumps out the memory in these locations, every time they are updated, and loads them back in when you load the game. this way, you can have hiscores saved even for games that had no permanent saving.
now, the issue for fbalpha is that this functionality has to be turned on in the code for every game driver that uses it without issue. for some games it’s on and working, for others it isn’t. if you give me an example of a game you want to save a hiscore in, i can look at the code and tell you if it should work or not.
btw, the hiscore.dat (use ONLY the version available here: https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/tree/master/metadata) has to be the correct version, and placed in your content (roms) directory.
Hey man, thanks for the detailed reply. I tested the file you pointed to in a couple of games, placing it in the same folder as my roms as you said, and didn’t have luck though.
Tried with FBA v0.2.97.40, games Cadillacs & Dinosaurs (dinou) and X-Men vs Street Fighter (xmvsfu).
Latest fba core should work with any version of hiscore.dat
Sorry for reviving an old topic, but. Where does the hiscore.dat file should be copied for it to work with FBAlpha?
I have resolved this issue.
Go to Settings > Savings, then turn ON “Auto Save State” and “Auto Load State” parameters. After that come back to main menu and go to Configurations, there move to “Save Current Configuration” and pres A button (accept).
Now, every time you close a core a new savestate will be created. When you load a core, this savestate will be resumed automatically.
If you don’t like to resume automatically, only turn off the “Auto Load State” parameter, or press reset in quick menu.
I think this method is the easiest and fair way to have high score support for everygame.
Notice that the core in use should be compatible with savestate function.
It’s not the recommend way and might cause issues.
Really? Can you be more explicit about these issues. Because it’s my current setting.
I’m thinking that a risk exist if I had a wrong setting which wont be able to load any game with this ‘solution’.
Maybe it is safer to turn on “Auto Save State” and keep “Auto Load State” OFF, and load state manually after game/core load.
If you change settings in core options, the new settings will be ignored if they need a restart, worst case scenario it could cause a crash if the new settings are somehow not compatible with the content of your savestate.
Also, it’s generally not needed, popular games generally support high scores through the official hiscore.dat method, and if some of the games you actually play don’t, i don’t mind fixing it as long as the list is kinda short.
Thanks for the explanation.