Problem saving via "save state"

[deexii]

Heya guys, ive ran into a bit of a problem and i was wondering if any of you could help ^_^. saving via " file>save state > " doesnt seem to be working correctly, sometimes it works and then other times it doesnt.
ive looked through the other posts in the forums with no avail so thought id ask to see if anyone knows whats going on.

thanks in advance ^_^.

Dee

[deexii]

cancel that cry for help, for some reason the saved files were saving in the psx folder, not the "psx > saves " files. ( wish i had found that out earlier -_-) hours of gameplay wasted trying to find a fix it T_T . thanks for any help i would of gotten anyways .

Dee

[dfreer]

Just an FYI, with most emulators it is recommended to use in-game saves (e.g. the memory card saves) whenever possible, as sometimes bad things can happen with save states. Not sure if this applies to pSX but whatever, thought I'd mention it.

[cid67]

he's right. save states will develop problems after about 10 hrs, give or take, and will eventually cause your game to lock up and not be passable. you can prevent this by doing a memory card save at the end of your daily game session as a memory card save will purge the accumulated errors. just remember that and it will be perfectly fine to use save states.

[108]

Dec 4, 2008 9:28:28 GMT -5 cid67 said:

he's right. save states will develop problems after about 10 hrs, give or take, and will eventually cause your game to lock up and not be passable. you can prevent this by doing a memory card save at the end of your daily game session as a memory card save will purge the accumulated errors. just remember that and it will be perfectly fine to use save states.

What? This has never happened to me, and I rarely, if ever, save using the memory card.

[Ultima]

There is no such solid (average) number of hours beyond which corruption will occur. It happens sometimes, but not all the time. In the end, all that can really be said about it is that save states aren't perfect.

If you don't want to save a game to memory card, that's completely your prerogative. Why you wouldn't want to is beyond me (considering the fact that you virtually have an unlimited number of memory cards anyway), but if you run into problems while playing the game using only save states, that only makes it that much more difficult to:

1. ensure that you can continue without having to start the entire game over
2. figure out whether the problem occurred because of memory corruption, or because of an emulation bug

So essentially: don't say we didn't warn you.

[psicomaniaco]

Problems with Save States is something very random, actually. I for one did finished Valkyrie Profile and Chrono Cross using ONLY save states.

On the other hand, I had problems after 4 hours of Parasite Eve, so its something very random.

[Gamesoul Master]

To clarify, I'd say 80% of it is the game you're playing, 10% is how you're playing it (console or emulator), and 10% is luck.

Some games have poor code that, if executed too long in too many different ways, will eventually start to create small corruptions in memory values. Variables may slowly start to bear incorrect/invalid values. And obviously, some games have worse code than others.

Method of gameplay can obviously be a factor too, as an emulator may not handle things quite as well as the console, and so it may be an agent in causing problems like mentioned above to occur faster/sooner.

And obviously, the luck falls in with simply how things happen... maybe you press the confirm button quickly through things (because you're impatient), and due to the game not having a certain piece of code executing fast enough, something gets missed. It could be any little simple thing like that, something you'd never think should be a problem, and then slowly that one little missed item slowly spreads little invisible problems. And because the game isn't being saved to memory card, more and more variables are slowly becoming corrupt, with nothing to "refresh" things by preserving the values.

The point being... you never know when it could happen. There is no harm (and hardly any effort) in making a memory card save here and there, just in case. Depending on a game programmer's code to keep things running smoothly is never a good thing, especially when you bypass saving which they sometimes figure will "hide" the flaws in their code.

I once played through Suikoden IV twice in a row (first time was 40 hours and some minutes, second was 45 hours and some minutes) without once loading from a save (beat the game once, went to sleep, woke up and played all the way through again). I came across no problems while playing, but I still made memory card saves every time it seemed appropriate (before boss battles, etc) with alternating saves (so if the last one was corrupt, the one before hopefully wouldn't be). Why take a pointless, unnecessary risk when you don't have to, right?