MagicEngine

[Kaminari]

David,

Is it me or the Back-up RAM emulation has still some serious problems, even with the 'new' dat/idx format?

For example, I saved my progress in Gulliver Boy and reset the console, then I ran the CD again and tried to load my saved game on the Continue screen: all the four slots appeared empty. Frustrating... especially after five hours of intense playing.

I made a couple of another attempts with the same result. I will try other RPGs to see what's going on.

Are we doomed to rely on save states only?

[dmichel]

Hmm, I remember having had a similar problem once, the game did get saved correctly in the .dat file but when I ran it again ME created and used another slot in the .dat file instead of using the one it had previously saved, so in the end I had two backup RAM slots for this game, a good one with my saved game and an empty one, and of course ME used the empty one.

After encountering this problem I checked my .dat file and in fact I found many dup of my games, some had like 3-4 slots, but this was quite a long time ago, around v0.96/0.97 I think, I then changed the backup RAM code and after that I didn't encounter this problem anymore.

I will try Gulliver and see if I get the same problem as you.

Anyone else encountered this problem too?
_________________
David Michel

[Kaminari]

I proceeded to some quick tests with a couple of games and met the very same problem with Jiraia, Manjimaru and Kabuki Den. However, Xanadu 1 works OK.

I'm under the bad feeling that many more games could be concerned.

Win 2k, ME 0.99b5, Back-up RAM set on 'new'.

[dmichel]

I just tried Gulliver, I tried with my current .dat/.idx set and I tried with a new empty one, in both cases I was able to save/reload the game, I tried reseting the system card, quitting the emulator, it always worked, each time I could re-load the game from the continue menu... this is getting strange now. How big are your .dat/.idx files, may be you hit a limit or something like that, would you mind e-mailing them to me so that I get tons of saved games, errrrr... I mean so that I can look at them more closely.
_________________
David Michel

[Kaminari]

[dmichel]

It's working fine for me...

I installed all your config files (didnt use mine) in a new directory, I unzipped the latest beta there and run the test, all is ok... I even compared your .dat file with mine, things are ok there too... I have no clue of what's going on

Do you have the possibility to try on another PC?
_________________
David Michel

[Kaminari]

[Kaminari]

Ni lus ni connus, on va switcher tranquillement en français

Après des tests de torture sur mon install ME 099 et sur une install 098 totalement basique, et observant avec désespoir exactement les mêmes symptômes dans les deux cas, c'est finalement le debug log qui m'a mis la puce à l'oreille.

Grosso modo : les sauvegardes ne sont pas enregistrées en temps réel

J'entends par là qu'elles sont bien présentes en RAM (après un reset sur l'écran de boot du SuperCD, il suffit d'aller jeter un oeil dans le Back-up Manager avec le bouton Select), mais elles ne sont physiquement enregistrées dans les fichiers backup.dat et backup.idx que lorsqu'on quitte Magic Engine. Si on a le malheur de relancer le jeu juste après avoir fait un simple reset (donc sans quitter ME), les modifs disparaissent dans le néant. J'ai pu reproduire ce mécanisme systématiquement.

La question Microsoft que je me pose est : is this a behaviour by design? Je me sens un peu benêt, mais vu que ce n'est indiqué nulle part, ce système de sauvegarde pourrait en laisser plus d'un perplexe... ou bien suis-je le seul à utiliser la Back-up RAM ?

[Kaminari]

[dmichel]

Bien vu! Je peux reproduire le bug aussi maintenant.

Les sauvegardes sont faites quand tu quittes l'emu bien sur mais aussi a chaque fois que tu vas dans l'ecran de menu, j'avais prevu le coup du reset de la system card par le menu, mais arf oui j'avais pas du tout pense au faite qu'on pouvait la reseter en interne avec select et run.

Et quand tu boots un CD la backup RAM est automatiquement rechargee a partir du .dat, d'ou le probleme que tu as rencontre... ok ok, on va corriger ca, ca devrait pas etre trop difficile.

Bah, merci encore une fois, t'es trop fort.

[dmichel]

[Kaminari]

[Jabberwok]

C'est peut-etre une question de rapport entre la carte de son & le cd-rom? Sur mon ancien PC j'avais le meme probleme de fade-in/fade-out, sur mon nouveau tout est parfait .

La section "cd" de mon log :

-WAVEOUT [ 0] vol = 100 [00000000/0000FFFF]
-SYNTHESIZER [ 1] vol = 100 [00000000/0000FFFF]
-LINE [ 2] vol = 100 [00000000/0000FFFF]
-MICROPHONE [ 3] vol = 100 [00000000/0000FFFF]
-COMPACTDISC [ 4] vol = 100 [00000000/0000FFFF] (selected as CD input line)
-ANALOG [ 5] vol = 100 [00000000/0000FFFF]
-LINE [ 6] vol = 100 [00000000/0000FFFF]

Different du tien, c'est probablement normal .

[Kaminari]

[dmichel]