Recording problem.

[Larcen Tyler]

When I tried to record my input, it said three times, 'The system cannot find the file specified.' then it began recording as normal, but when it finished, it gave me the file not found message again, and the input file was just '.inp'

I also tried to play it back, but it wouldn't work.

What I tried doing was this:

record starforc

And then:

playback starforc


Since I haven't used DOS in years, can someone help me out here?

[Chad]

are you in the mame directory? if c:\games\mame is your mame directory, locate the directory from dos like this (the '>' is just the prompt don't type that.)

> c:
> cd c:\games\mame

where did the .inp file show up and did the playback command playback your recording?

"system cant find file" might be dll missing? but if the recording worked i dunno. if you gave the gamename right after record and playback (with a single space after) that really should work. can you do this after you record and then "Mark" the text and copy and paste the result back here?

> type record.bat

[Larcen Tyler]

First off, here's the .bat file:

@echo off
move cfg\%1.cfg cfg\%1.bak
move hi\%1.hi hi\%1.bak
move nvram\%1.nv nvram\%1.bak
move diff\%1.dif diff\%1.bak

mame %1 -record %2.inp %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

move cfg\%1.bak cfg\%1.cfg
move hi\%1.bak hi\%1.hi
move nvram\%1.bak nvram\%1.nv
move diff\%1.bak diff\%1.dif
---

Secondly, the input file went to the 'inp' directory, but just labelled the recording as '.inp' And when I tried to play it back, it didn't work.

What I typed was 'record starforc' and then 'playback starforc.'

[mahlemiut]

A second parameter will give you a filename (it will add .inp for you).

For example:

Code: Select all

record sf2 sf2

which will record the input of the game sf2 to the file sf2.inp. You can call the inp file whatever you want, it doesn't have to be same as the game's shortname. You can also add a further 7 parameters which will be fed directly through to MAME, so look up the MAME docs for more info (or use mame -showusage).

[Chad]

Barry, this might help the situation so you can be able to type "record sf2" and it will use the first parm as the file name if it's blank

set FILNAME=%2
@if .%2.==.. set FILNAME=%1

[mahlemiut]

That would also make it difficult if you got used to that and wanted to add an extra one-off switch.

Personally, I'd rather it remain simple, and so that it can be easily converted into a Linux script also. Anyone is welcome to use their own batch/script files if they wish. Or if that's too difficult for them, use a frontend, there are plenty out there.

[Chad]

If you want to add another forced option, the scripter can push the filename to the last optional parameter. I figure you want to keep it simple for the people that are unfamiliar to scripts (one parameter usage) more so than the people that do.

[mahlemiut]

Simpler way would be just to change %2.inp to %1.inp. And possibly add %2 before %3 also.

[Chad]

just trying to remain backwards compatible to any scripts that were assuming the second parameter. I'm just bored, it sucks there haven't been many uploads in a few days...

[The TJT]

just trying to remain backwards compatible to any scripts that were assuming the second parameter. I'm just bored, it sucks there haven't been many uploads in a few days...

Must be the weather

[Larcen Tyler]

I got it figured out. Thanks for the help folks!

CORRECTION: I can't get playback to work. It worked fine for my StarForce game, but when I tried viewing a Buggy Boy Jr. replay, it said it couldn't open it, despite the fact it's the same WolfMAME as I'm using.

What I'm doing is this:

MAME starforc -playback starforc.inp

And it works fine.

But when I try it with BuggyBoyJr it just gives me a fatal error saying it cannot open the file.

[Chad]

thanks for trying to learn command line stuff, over all it does give you much more flexibility (i also agree there needs to be a player that will automatically download the mame version you need and playback a recording, i've been planning on doing this for a (decade?) while but need more time.)

If it's getting an error that you can't open the file, its possible that the file isn't exactly named the name you though it was. confirm this by checking the command line you are using

MAME buggyboyjr -playback buggyboyjr.inp

by checking the inp directory listing in windows explorer (or command line)

dir c:/mame/inp

if you find buggybjr.inp then you might be able to correct a typo.

[mahlemiut]

The batch file used in current WolfMAME releases adds the .inp extension for you, as recent MAME versions don't give a crap about the extension. MARP requires a .inp file in the zip to be able to upload it however. So just remove the .inp from the commandline, and it should work. It was added so that the functionality of the batch file was the same compared to older releases.