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View Full Version : Are savestates a possibility for this?



Starscream
April 5th, 2005, 22:39
Or would the capacity of a VMU be to small? Are there other limitations when it comes to the implementation of such a feature? From what I've gathered somewhere else sometime ago saving is related to the actual ram of the system emulated, is that correct? I guess usually there's some method of compressing involved, at least that's how I would explain the differences between the various nester versions I tried. Could someone enlighten a technical noob like me a bit on this?

quzar
April 5th, 2005, 23:11
vmu is way too small for savestates of a whole computer system like that.

scrabbus
April 6th, 2005, 13:05
if you have a 1meg vmu you should be absolutely fine

quzar
April 6th, 2005, 13:08
you dont know what you're talking about.

the only amount of memory the dreamcast can access from a vmu at a time is 128kb(or whatever the size of a single VMU is). All larger vmus rely on hardware switching and the dreamcast has no control over when it happens.

The only way savestates can work on larger systems is if there is enough free ram space to allow you to keep one save state in ram while you run the emulator.

scrabbus
April 6th, 2005, 23:19
Woooooah sorry, dont get too angry with me Mighty Q!!! I misread and mis quoted, too little sleep I'm afraid!!!! "There's - Savestates

A SubMenu called "SAVESTATE", in where you can find 4 slots to Save and Load from memory, if you reset the emulator that savestates are losted.
Even using compressioin you will need a memory card with more than 1 MBit, compressed using Zip-9 takes a lot of memory at the moment.
I was really going by that!! so apologies to all

Starscream
April 7th, 2005, 18:14
Nevermind, it's just as I expected. That limits the choice of games since it excludes rpgs and many strategy games, but there's still a lot of good stuff, thanks.

qw3rty
April 16th, 2005, 01:41
For most games, it should be possible, to only save the CHANGES of the disk.
(e.g. only track1 & track2)
of course this would limit the usable (writeable) space of the save-disk to 128kB (plus eventually more if using compression)

I suppose this could be implemented fairly easy - simply compare the disks in the RAM to the "originals" on the CD, and save the changes to the VMU.
(maybe in the main-menu : "SAVE changes of A: to VMU")

quzar
April 16th, 2005, 02:10
For most games, it should be possible, to only save the CHANGES of the disk.
(e.g. only track1 & track2)
of course this would limit the usable (writeable) space of the save-disk to 128kB (plus eventually more if using compression)

I suppose this could be implemented fairly easy - simply compare the disks in the RAM to the "originals" on the CD, and save the changes to the VMU.
(maybe in the main-menu : "SAVE changes of A: to VMU")

That isnt what he was asking about. That is having normal saves. save 'states' implies saving the entire contents of the ram, so that the entire gameplay can begin exactly from where it left off.

What you are saing is actual saving, which if CaSTaway doesnt support, I dont see why it wouldnt.

Starscream
April 16th, 2005, 12:52
I thought savestates where the only possibility to implement actual saving without something like an sram like on consoles, I didn't know you could implement a method that allows using "savedisks".

quzar
April 16th, 2005, 21:58
I thought savestates where the only possibility to implement actual saving without something like an sram like on consoles, I didn't know you could implement a method that allows using "savedisks".

well, from what i gather he was saying was that the system saved games onto their own diskettes. if that was the case then it would be possible to save whatever changes were made. if there is no saving on the native system and savestates are too big, then saving is not possible.