C.Stallion
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2020 5:08 am

How to transfer high scores from MAME 0.168 to 0.226?

I've been out of the MAME loop for a while, and I recently updated from MAME 0.168 to 0.226. I am trying to transfer in my high scores, however it doesn't appear to be working. Before, I would normally just copy/paste hiscore.dat and the "hi" folder into the root directory of the newest version of MAME. Looking closely at 0.226, I see there's a "hiscore" folder in the "plugins" folder, which is new to me. Therefore, I'm guessing things are done a bit differently now. Does anybody know how to transfer high scores from much older versions of MAME into the newest ones?
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Tafoid
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Re: How to transfer high scores from MAME 0.168 to 0.226?

C.Stallion wrote: Sun Dec 13, 2020 1:02 am I've been out of the MAME loop for a while, and I recently updated from MAME 0.168 to 0.226. I am trying to transfer in my high scores, however it doesn't appear to be working. Before, I would normally just copy/paste hiscore.dat and the "hi" folder into the root directory of the newest version of MAME. Looking closely at 0.226, I see there's a "hiscore" folder in the "plugins" folder, which is new to me. Therefore, I'm guessing things are done a bit differently now. Does anybody know how to transfer high scores from much older versions of MAME into the newest ones?

There are no guarantees, of course, but you should have pretty good success using the older .hi files. The files located in the .hi folder with that extension should be able to be copied over. The hiscore.dat, howeve, will work best if you use the file provided with your MAME install.

You must make sure you have plugins enabled via the UI to activate high score usage.
From game selection menu in UI, select PLUGINS > toggle HISCORE SUPPORT to ON then make sure you save your settings.

Keep a copy of the .hi files and old .dat file old stuff in case of problems - they don't take that much space especially if in a compressed file (.zip/.7z/etc)
C.Stallion
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2020 5:08 am

Re: How to transfer high scores from MAME 0.168 to 0.226?

Tafoid wrote: Sun Dec 13, 2020 3:29 am There are no guarantees, of course, but you should have pretty good success using the older .hi files. The files located in the .hi folder with that extension should be able to be copied over. The hiscore.dat, howeve, will work best if you use the file provided with your MAME install.

You must make sure you have plugins enabled via the UI to activate high score usage.
From game selection menu in UI, select PLUGINS > toggle HISCORE SUPPORT to ON then make sure you save your settings.

Keep a copy of the .hi files and old .dat file old stuff in case of problems - they don't take that much space especially if in a compressed file (.zip/.7z/etc)
Bingo, that did the trick! So I guess there's no more need for that additional hiscore.dat file in the root directory, and I needed to activate "High Score Support" in the plugins options in mame64.exe (as well as bring my "hi" folder over). I'll remember that from this point forward. Thank you!

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