07754: nrallyx: INP playback does not work (out of sync)

ID	Category [?]	Severity [?]	Reproducibility	Date Submitted	Last Update
07754	Save/Restore	Minor	Always	Sep 17, 2020, 17:32	Oct 1, 2020, 20:46

Tester	rcoltrane	View Status	Public	Platform	MAME (Official Binary)
Assigned To		Resolution	No change required	OS	Windows 10 (64-bit)
Status [?]	Closed			Driver	namco/rallyx.cpp
Version	0.223	Fixed in Version		Build	64-bit
		Fixed in Git Commit		Github Pull Request #

Summary	07754: nrallyx: INP playback does not work (out of sync)
Description	Playback issues when trying to record a video of my 1cc gameplay. It gets out of sync in match 6.
Steps To Reproduce	Record a full gameplay and try to playback it.
Additional Information	I've attached my .inp file here for analysis.
Github Commit

Flags
Regression Version
Affected Sets / Systems	nrallyx

Attached Files	nrallyx.inp (463,755 bytes) Sep 17, 2020, 17:32 Uploaded by rcoltrane
Attached Files	mynrallyx_224.inp (292,975 bytes) Sep 25, 2020, 18:58 Uploaded by Tafoid MAME 0.224 nrallyx recording (round 8 - 102120)

No.17997 Tafoid Administrator Sep 25, 2020, 10:04	Very odd. It seems to playback just fine until shortly after Round 2 starts - you are collecting flags then suddenly you ram into a boulder. The next life, you do a lot of moving around and I noticed the enemy cars are "stuck" on the radar after a time. Not sure what to think.
No.17998 Tafoid Administrator Sep 25, 2020, 10:20	I just played a game to Round 8 and it plays back without issue... (attached 0.224 playthrough). Since I used exclusively the keyboard to control the game, it got me thinking of a possibility that the record/playback system may not be accounting for analog controllers correctly. If you has specific settings, a certain "deadzone" that isn't normal or something else that may come about when using an analog stick/xbox/ps4/whatever. Like I observed, your run was going fine until that one moment on my end which made your car make a very slight right turn and hit a boulder. Anyway, something for devs to look at. Perhaps you can make a recording using a keyboard and see if the same things happen. Also try unplugging your analog controller and see if that makes a difference.
No.18008 rcoltrane Tester Sep 28, 2020, 13:58 edited on: Sep 28, 2020, 13:58	I did my recording using a keyboard. I've been playing games on my Lenovo 320 laptop for quite some time now since my analog arcade controls are not here at home at this moment. But I can assure you that the inp recording system has some major problems because today I did another 1cc, this time at Ikari (japan) and the very same out of sync issue happened again! I'm not using this inp system anymore, I will start recording .avi files on the fly, even with poor gaming performance. I've lost many 1cc runs due to this lost sync issues.
No.18013 Tafoid Administrator Sep 30, 2020, 10:53	Can you please try my "mynrallyx_224.inp" file I uploaded and -playback to see if the score and round I posted above is achieved, and ends normally? Thanks
No.18014 rcoltrane Tester Oct 1, 2020, 12:17	I've playbacked your nrallyx_224.inp file with MAME 0.225 and it did 18770 points, dying at the 2nd stage. Is this correct? Anyway, here's my full nrallyx command line used in Launchbox. Please see if there's something that could cause the .inp recording failure: mame64 nrallyx -bgfx_backend opengl -bgfx_screen_chains crt-geom-deluxe-HACK -bgfx_shadow_mask -noreadconfig -nowriteconfig -nofilter -triplebuffer -pause_brightness 1.00000000 -cheat -nonvram_save -plugin hiscore -skip_gameinfo -noui_mouse -rompath "C:\RCS\Games\UME\roms\ARCADE" -aviwrite nrallyx.avi -nosnapbilinear -video bgfx
No.18016 rcoltrane Tester Oct 1, 2020, 13:16	Did a quick test with a clean mame 0.225 installation in a new folder and executed the game with these parameters: mame64 nrallyx -record nrallyx.inp and after that I did a simple playback of the recorded inp file with no extra parameters and it worked fine to the end (round 11). So it seems that there's something wrong at my full command line parameters mentioned above or with Launchbox itself interfering in the inp recording/playback as you said.
No.18018 Tafoid Administrator Oct 1, 2020, 15:44	Take out the -plugin hiscore trigger (and potentially -cheat as well) when doing recordings or playbacks. In my testing dropping the plugin this fixed the playback of my file which was crashing out hard on the that command-line trigger list you posted. At this point I'd have to assume most/all of the issues you've had with recording is regarding the hiscore plugin. Please retest locally and let us know.
No.18020 rcoltrane Tester Oct 1, 2020, 18:23	I did some major cleanup here after updating to latest mame 0.225. I had a lot of old .ini files that were not being used anymore and so I erased all these .ini files (I'm handling everything through LaunchBox now). I've also erased all my old .inp files too. After that, I did some more tests with nrallyx and ikarijp and, to my surprise, both are recording/playbacking fine now! I did a somewhat long recording in both of them and both playbacks worked fine to the end. And I didn't need to remove the hiscore plugin and/or cheats as you suggested. So I suppose that the trouble has no relation to the cheat system and/or hiscore plugin, but it may has relation to the old .ini/.inp files I had that were recorded/generated by old mame versions. With that said you can now close all these .inp bugs I reported here beacuse it seems that the .inp system is working fine.
No.18023 Tafoid Administrator Oct 1, 2020, 19:53	One of your .ini files appears to have had plugins activated making the -plugin hiscores work where it doesn't work if if plugins is set to 0 or -noplugins is set as high scores would not load or save. In any case, we are going to not suggest either -cheat or -plugin hiscore be active when recording/playing back an .inp file. I am relieved that the issue seems resolved on your end in any case. I will close the recent reports.