MiSTer FPGA Forum

FPGAzumSpass previews his new savestate feature for the MiSTer Gameboy Core:

Absolutely outstanding work! One of the very few advantages of software emulation over hardware emulation is savestates. Since the GBA core has it and the GB core is now going to get it eventually, this issue is getting mitigated over time.

I'm personally holding out for if and when the NES core can get savestates because that console is in desperate need of it since you can't save your progress in 99% of games.

Savestates in all the console and arcade cores would be nice.

This is amazing! Best of luck in getting it sorted out!

431Unknown wrote: ↑Mon Dec 21, 2020 5:31 pm Savestates in all the console and arcade scores would be nice.

would certainly be nice but probably overkill for most console cores. Atari for example whats the point really.. NES and SMS might be the systems that most benefit.

Isn't FDS the save-state version of NES? :p

Really it would be quite welcome on the 16-bit cores too, once you get outside of Nintendo and Squaresoft games there are a ton lacking any kind of save feature. I've gotten used to play a level or zone at a time on emulators and the time commitment to actually progress anywhere is really limiting my current Mister use to mostly games with saves.

FoxbatStargazer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 22, 2020 2:05 pm Isn't FDS the save-state version of NES? :p

Really it would be quite welcome on the 16-bit cores too, once you get outside of Nintendo and Squaresoft games there are a ton lacking any kind of save feature. I've gotten used to play a level or zone at a time on emulators and the time commitment to actually progress anywhere is really limiting my current Mister use to mostly games with saves.

Savestate ≠ saves/saveram

Savestates are saving at any point in the game whatsoever through methods commonly employed by emulators.

Saves/saveram is done within the software itself, like an RPG with save slots, but often can only be done at save points coded in the game.

Speedrunners use savestates to practice specific sequences over and over without having to restart whole levels or get a gameover and have to continue.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/savestate

(computing, video games) A file that contains an emulator's or virtualizer's state at the moment it was saved to disk. The file contains the contents of the memory, registers and other pertinent data that allows the user to resume the application from the moment the file was created.

Plenty of games with save features still would benefit greatly from savestates being added as a feature. (like you go 10 minutes into a zone in an RPG with a hard minigame and you want to 100% it, but it's hard, and you do it over and over without having to constantly walk back there for 10 minutes every single time)

Oops used the wrong emoji twas meant as a bad joke. So many FDS games with full save systems that just get ported West with nothing...

Obv save states are something different but in the meantime I'd be looking out for in-game save systems, even if that means virtual disks over virtual carts.

Status Update:

getting it 100% stable in all games is much more difficult than i thought.
Main Problem is, that when it crashes, I have no idea where to look for, as the core has no debug system/access whatsoever, like the GBA core has.

As a non-stable version is not worth to release, it will take a while for me to finish.
I hope to release a 95%+ testversion in discord and here in this thread, maybe in a week, so you can test which games still have problems.

FPGAzumSpass wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 6:58 am Status Update:

getting it 100% stable in all games is much more difficult than i thought.
Main Problem is, that when it crashes, I have no idea where to look for, as the core has no debug system/access whatsoever, like the GBA core has.

As a non-stable version is not worth to release, it will take a while for me to finish.
I hope to release a 95%+ testversion in discord and here in this thread, maybe in a week, so you can test which games still have problems.

Thanks for your contributions @FPGAzumSpass. I'm a huge fan of your GBA core and congrats on passing the AGS cartridge testing. Can't wait to see what you have for us in the future.

Update:

everything is implemented now and can be tested.
WARNING: This is a beta version, it may crash/hang at any time. I highly recommend to turn off autosave to avoid corruption of your savefiles.
Please test and report issues. Thanks for your support.

By myself, I tried about 10 different games with rewind, saving and loading probably more than 1000 savestates without a problem.

Got 1 crash while using rewind capture and fastforward in an earlier version(maybe a pause bug ?), but i could not reproduce now, so maybe it's fixed, maybe not.
It's hard to tell with 1 bug in many hours.

Would be great if you could test, too, before it's officially released.

Improving your high scores is a major part of arcade games, so being able to save them would be great.

FPGAzumSpass wrote: ↑Tue Dec 29, 2020 6:02 am Update:

everything is implemented now and can be tested.
WARNING: This is a beta version, it may crash/hang at any time. I highly recommend to turn off autosave to avoid corruption of your savefiles.
Please test and report issues. Thanks for your support.

By myself, I tried about 10 different games with rewind, saving and loading probably more than 1000 savestates without a problem.

Got 1 crash while using rewind capture and fastforward in an earlier version(maybe a pause bug ?), but i could not reproduce now, so maybe it's fixed, maybe not.
It's hard to tell with 1 bug in many hours.

Would be great if you could test, too, before it's officially released.

Thanks, I’ll see if I can test it in the coming days. For now, what’s the Discord you mentioned?

Gameboy Core update is now officially released, so you can just update.

Discord channel of classic gaming is here:
https://discord.gg/UDu5ztY