First Time Poster Who Had Score Removed (Cloak and Dagger)

[GriggiP]

I'm assuming I did something wrong, but I followed the instructions to the letter and my score posted originally.

It has since been removed, and E-mail to zwaxy has been unanswered (so far).

It was for a Cloak and Dagger score of just over 300,000 (2nd place).

There are no dip switch adjustments to this game, so I played the default.

Is there a common newbie error that I may have committed? It played back fine for me.

Any help appreciated,
G

PS -- Not to be a dick, but it would be nice to get an E-mail explaining WHY when the score gets removed rather than having to go this route.

[Frankie]

Well, it seems to me that Skito explained in the description why the recording was zeroed. It says in the rules that you must delete your NVRAM directory before recording.

Bye.

[GriggiP]

Thank you. I couldn't find any reason.

Just out of curiosity, what does the NVRAM have to do with gameplay?

G

[mahlemiut]

NVRAM generally contains game settings and in some cases high scores, and it usually loaded into RAM at boot time. As games tend to use a RAM checksum to seed random numbers, any difference in RAM can throw off a game.

[GriggiP]

Thank you again.

G

[BBH]

PS -- Not to be a dick, but it would be nice to get an E-mail explaining WHY when the score gets removed rather than having to go this route.

Well, seeing how your email address wasn't made public, Skito had no way of emailing you in the first place.

[GriggiP]

I noticed that afterwards and altered my future posts.

Sorry.

G

[Chad]

thanks guys for answering the questions in my absense. GP: Believe me it's better to be kicked in the pants about this issue now than make the recording of your life and find out later that an nvram issue makes it unplaybackable.

I'm usually a little more aggressive in zereoing scores than anyone else just so this issue can get the volume it deserves. Still, We all warmly welcome you to upload as much as you like provided your inps playback under the rules.

[cosumel]

As I've lost some of my life's best recordings, I have made a way to stop this from happening.
I don't know if anyone else uses bat files to record their games, but I find it the easiest.

text of "r.bat"
@echo off
cd\games\mame
rd cfg /s/q
rd nvram /s/q
mamepp %1 -record %1
dir inp\%1*.*

The last line is to list my scores for that game as I rename my inp zipped files with the name and score. This is to see if I beat my old score.

[Chad]

cool bat, depending on if you use old mame versions to record games and some other issues you might add these before recording.

del memcard\memcard.000
del hiscore.dat

memcard is an old neogeo thing that sometimes messes up old mame neogeo games and hiscore.dat is being currently blamed for gunbird recording strageness.

[GriggiP]

If I delete the NVRAM file each time before I record a game, will I be OK?

I noticed that Cloak and Dagger recreates a new one after every time I ESC out to record the inp. (I'm using MAME for Win32 .37 Beta 13.)

If it doesn't, then I'll start playing Thief again. It doesn't create an NVRAM file.

G

[GriggiP]

Never mind. I just deleted the directory. Duh.

Can anyone tell me the default settings for Thief?

The link to Mark's site doesn't work.

G

[mahlemiut]

Deleting the game's .cfg will give you default DIP switch settings, so using a batch file to move or delete .cfg and .nv files (like the one already mentioned) will always give you MAME's default DIP switch settings for whichever game you use.

[GriggiP]

OK.

I just posted a better score. Let's see what happens.

G

[GriggiP]

It confirmed!! Woo-hoo.

Thanks everyone for all the assistance.

G