Mr Driller MAME nightmare... HEEELP!

MasterFygar

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(no, don't worry, I don't mean MAME as in ripping a real cab apart to replace with a PC. I mean MAME as in playing it on my laptop pulling my hair out)

Okay, so here's the lowdown. I broke the Mr. Driller 500m world record today. I was overjoyed, and when I watched the .inp file, the replay went completely smoothly.

But then I open up CamStudio to record the game and something odd happens. On the time I record it (third play of the .inp file), the replay starts to deteriorate. Near the end Mr. Driller goes insane and starts running around in circles wildly breaking blocks and kills himself three times in about five seconds.

Uh... yeah.

So I'm like "oh well, it'll work fine next time" and I close CamStudio and try running it about 10 more times. Now it wouldn't even register in the replay that I had put the coin in!

So naturally I freak out until I realize I had no backup and whatever happened to my inp file happened forever.

In my fury, I play an unusually aggressive run of the game, expecting to lose faster. Instead I beat my previous score my 2000 points. Overjoyed, I watch the .inp twice to verify that it works (it DOES!!!) and then I quickly make a backup of the .inp file in a zip folder. Then I play back the .inp ONE LAST TIME to make sure that nothing had happened the second before I copied it over. It plays fine. Phew.

So to document it, I again open the newest version of Camstudio and try to record it.

It goes fine until I hit the semifinal layer (400m out of 500m). Around 420m Mr Driller spazzes out again, killing himself in a ridiculous way another three times.

That's okay, I think. I have a backup. So I quickly make a new copy of the backup zip and then unzip the original into a new folder, rename it, and run it.

...no good. The EXACT SAME THING. Which confuses the hell out of me, because that file hadn't been TOUCHED by MAME since I put it in there, working.

Every time, this happens. No matter what I name the files, this happens. Every. Single. Time. Eventually it goes slightly longer without spazzing out. But then it just repeats at THAT spot every time.

I'm kind of freaking out now. No way am I going to be able to top that score, but I'm not about to submit a faulty recording to TG and get booted from the records board. I'm so sure that my backup file should be fine. But when I extract it, it isn't fine. And though I can't explain it, I feel like I have to do SOMETHING. I don't want to go down with this ship!!!

Has anybody been here before!? Is there something that I'm overlooking, that will make the file run fine!? Should it run fine on the TG rep's computer because whatever inexplicable event happened on my computer twice now never happened, and the file should logically be unchanged!?

I'm sorry if this is the wrong section, but most of the MAME stuff I find in a search shows up here, and I'm getting kind of desperate. I know nothing of its inner workings and I'm fairly new to the record scene where I know many of you are old pros. So if anyone has any advice as to how to fix it, or to even just say "it's not going to ever work, forget it," please speak up. I know I'm trying too hard to fix something that probably can't be fixed, but I've worked so many times to break that record, getting so many 'perfect' games and still falling short from the time limit bonus being under the record's, so I don't want to let the proof that I did it go down without a fight.
 
Did you remember to delete the .hi and .nv files before recording or playback? That memory may provide a seed for a random number generator.
 
I'll check on that, thanks! I read somewhere on the TG forums that my version of MAME (WolfMame .106) doesn't save those files, but I can't think of any other explanation.

EDIT: Nope, none of those. Oh well =( Thanks for the idea though.
 
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I recorded it on the setting "draw every frame," and it has been set to that since. I've tried it set to 3 every 12 and automatic, no difference sadly. :( I'm... really at a loss as to what happened. My other playbacks of Mr. Driller run fine still, but every playback that originated from this file (even those that were separate when it was corrupted) just freaks out at that certain point. So bizarre... But yeah, thanks for the help.
 
Okay, I tried running this on another computer and it's fine. MAME is just screw on this one for some reason. Thanks for the input, case closed!
 
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