The MAME Action Replay Record Help Page

CREATING NEW REPLAY FILES

To record an 'action replay' file of your own, use the -record option:

mame gamename -record filename

(again, you shouldn't specify the .inp extension - MAME always adds the '.inp' part)

Note that when making a replay file it is important that you don't have any .hi or .cfg file for the game in question, or the file probably won't play back properly. Your character will follow the correct path on the screen, but the bad guys probably won't, and you'll end up bumping into them. :o(

To make the process of recording new replay files easier, here's a script that I prepared earlier. Download the script and put it in your MAME directory (the place where mame.exe and the 'hi' and 'cfg' directories are). Run the script from your MAME directory like this:

record gamename

and it will do the following:

  • rename hi\gamename.hi to hi\gamename.tmp
  • rename cfg\gamename.cfg to cfg\gamename.tmp
  • run MAME to create a replay file
  • rename hi\gamename.tmp back to hi\gamename.hi
  • rename cfg\gamename.tmp back to cfg\gamename.cfg
  • The filename it creates is zw_gamename.inp where gamename is the name of the game you ran the script with. Change the 'zw' bit in the script to your initials or something if it pleases you to do so.

    If you just want to check that the file plays back OK, you can set the frameskip to 3 and turn throttling off. These things don't affect how the games run. Throttling is toggled with the F10 key.

    The .inp files zip up extremely well. Please zip any .inp files before mailing them to me!

    For help on how to play back replay files, click here.

    For a discussion of the randomness in the games, and why it need bother us not a jot, click here.


    Back to MAME Action Replay Page

    This document is updated rarely.