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How to save states? - Printable Version

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How to save states? - nl7_ - 2014-05-17

Is this a dumb question? I couldn't find documentation on this anywhere. I looked through the forums and supposedly it's bound to "c -" - doesn't work. I've added the folder for save games along with the Emulator name, still doesn't work. Going a little nuts here, pressed every button on my keyboard long with shift but can't seem to do anything. All I can really do is fast forward and rewind... Help!


RE: How to save states? - dyslecix - 2014-05-18

(2014-05-17, 22:20)nl7_ Wrote: Is this a dumb question? I couldn't find documentation on this anywhere. I looked through the forums and supposedly it's bound to "c -" - doesn't work. I've added the folder for save games along with the Emulator name, still doesn't work. Going a little nuts here, pressed every button on my keyboard long with shift but can't seem to do anything. All I can really do is fast forward and rewind... Help!

Try Shift 1-9 to save the state. Then press 1-9 in the game to load to it. See if it works.


RE: How to save states? - garbear - 2014-05-19

save states have been cut in order to made retroplayer gotham more lean and merge-ready. I apologize for the suckiness of having no save states, but it's just part of making the engineering effort for manageable for myself. as more developers sign up we'll be able to cover a broader range of awesome features


RE: How to save states? - OmniBlade - 2014-05-19

Isn't the serialisation needed for save states also needed for the rewind function? Is it more just the UI for actually using save states that needs development if that is the case?


RE: How to save states? - garbear - 2014-05-19

the database for storing save states, actually. UI and serialisation are fine


RE: How to save states? - OmniBlade - 2014-05-19

Speaking of save sates, are there plans to allow some kind of sharing of the saves between xbmc instances on the network? I realise there is a risk of two clients overwriting each others saves if they were playing the same game at the same time, but perhaps with some kind of "claiming" of a save state while running and only allowing another system to use it once the orginal claimant has released it. I'm thinking of it behaving something like watched state does when using MySQL where you can watch a show or movie part way through and then resume it in another room on another xbmc instance.


RE: How to save states? - Dippo - 2014-05-19

If you are a developer you can try this fork of mine:

https://github.com/eibma/xbmc/tree/retroplayer-beta1-savegame

This is a fork of garbears code with simple savegame support included. It is based on xbmc gotham beta1 but it does the job quite well for my setup. (64bit linux machine)

Once garbear releases a new working retroplayer build i will try to update this one.


RE: How to save states? - LoL - 2017-02-19

Hey garbear,

Thank you so much for this next BIG leap for kodi!

Sorry for bumping this thread but it was the most recent info i found on this issue :|

My question is the same: is there a way to save the games? Is it still cut or have you added it again... and I'm too stupid to find it? Wink

Bookmarking doesn't work for me.

Thx again,

LoL


RE: How to save states? - garbear - 2017-02-27

(2017-02-19, 22:15)LoL Wrote: My question is the same: is there a way to save the games? Is it still cut or have you added it again... and I'm too stupid to find it? Wink

Bookmarking doesn't work for me.

Bookmarking is actually my current "solution" to saving games. I've repurposed the bookmark manager to take, restore and manage savestates. This should work in current test builds and Milhouse builds.

However, all this code is getting dropped. With a new game database (in progress) and a new RetroPlayer (envisioned), many possibilities are opened.

Personally, I'm a big archivist. I've saved the progress of every game I've played on a harddrive somewhere. I'm working on a new archival format for emulation that can perfectly reproduce every frame played until that point. It's robust against both save states and in-game (SRAM) saves. It can handle multi-disk games. It uses web standards where possible to guarantee forward-compatibility into the future.

What sort of needs and requirements do you have for saved games? What do you think Kodi's saved game manager should look like?


RE: How to save states? - LoL - 2017-03-03

Souds like a very nice envisionment :-)

Bookmarking only works as a kind of rewind method for me now... enough for now ofcourse!

What I would like extra is a key-combo on my controller (SNES) to pull up the save-states (and pause the game) because now I use my controller for the games but need a remote to rewind and stuff.

Keep up the good work!


RE: How to save states? - garbear - 2017-03-03

(2017-03-03, 23:08)LoL Wrote: What I would like extra is a key-combo on my controller (SNES) to pull up the save-states (and pause the game) because now I use my controller for the games but need a remote to rewind and stuff.

What key combo should we use? What do other emulator systems use?


RE: How to save states? - LoL - 2017-03-03

I think it was START + L-BUTTON + R-BUTTON in RetroArch, but it's configurable

Worked good for me, for NES controllers it wouldn't work though... not many possibilities on that controller Wink


RE: How to save states? - d3mncln3r - 2017-03-20

Hey garbear can you give some insight into your bookmark strategy? I'm having trouble using it. The length of the timeframe is only 1 minute. After which it the timer just stays at the 1 minute mark. Loading a bookmark seems to take you to whatever time-position you saved it at relative to the 1 minute mark. For example if I save it at 30 seconds, then go on to play for 5 more minutes, the time frame is still at the 1 minute mark, and will load at 30 seconds prior to where I am. I'm not sure if that's a clear explanation, but basically the timer should count on to infinity, not stop at 1 minute.


RE: How to save states? - garbear - 2017-03-20

(2017-03-20, 17:24)d3mncln3r Wrote: Hey garbear can you give some insight into your bookmark strategy? I'm having trouble using it. The length of the timeframe is only 1 minute. After which it the timer just stays at the 1 minute mark. Loading a bookmark seems to take you to whatever time-position you saved it at relative to the 1 minute mark. For example if I save it at 30 seconds, then go on to play for 5 more minutes, the time frame is still at the 1 minute mark, and will load at 30 seconds prior to where I am. I'm not sure if that's a clear explanation, but basically the timer should count on to infinity, not stop at 1 minute.

The reason for 1 minute showing is becaues you have 1 minute buffered for which you can rewind. When full, seeking to zero seconds will rewind 60 seconds. It doesn't increase to infinity because you can't rewind past 1 minute. (Note that you can increase this up to 10 minutes in advanced game settings.)

Loading/saving has weird behavior because it was implemented after rewinding.

The ultimate problem is that we're trying to fit gameplay into the movie paradigm (where time can't increase forever). I initially chose this paradigm because it required less code changes, which was important in ever getting RetroPlayer merged. Now that it's merged, we should revisit this assumption.

The question is, what should we show? The length of the rewind buffer, or total play time? I would actually argue to show nothing, because like you said, rewind time doesn't make much sense, and some games I play so much I don't wanna be reminded how much total time I've wasted :p

I plan to totally rework how rewinding and saving/loading works, so I'm open to ideas in how this should be done.


RE: How to save states? - natethomas - 2017-03-21

For what it's worth, I think a lot of people really like stats about their gameplay. Play time being one of them. Wasn't there some project a while back that was able to create achievements for old games by watching what happened in the emulator and recording when certain actions occurred? Like this: http://retroachievements.org/

Might be kind of neat to see if it's possible to integrate that and keep a timeline of your entire playthrough, with the 60 seconds or so around various "achievements" autobookmarked.

That could be a ton of work though. It's just a thought.