ZSNES auto-save rewrite. <--- THIS IS A STUPID FUNCTION

[Zsnesdoublefail]

Rant begins here. (Feel free to skip to the question.)

To separate my save files I have created a folder on my desktop with individually named folders for each game I use on my ZSNES. While switching from game to game I have to change the save paths, that didn't seem like it would be problem. Unless of course there was some stupid built in auto-save function that rewrites data with whatever data is currently displayed when you close the problem.

Oh wait guys....THERE IS!

I opened my game up and realized that the paths were wrong, whatever, I guess I just change the path and reopen ZSNES. WRONG! This RI-FING-DICULOUS program decides to rewrite my saved data with empty data because I reopened the program. There is no reason for an automatic data over-writing on a video game program, this thing should only save when I COMMAND IT TO! I AM THE USER! I TELL YOU WHEN TO SAVE AND OVERWRITE MY FILES! NOT YOU!

I lost many hours of gameplay due to this stupid function.

Rant ends here. (Question Begins)

So to my actual question following my rant...

Is there any way I can change it so that ZSNES doesn't automatically save and overwrite my file unless I tell it to? Or is this program inevitably going to eat my data if I don't always and forever change the path before opening the game? I just don't have that kind of attention span to do that 50,000 times per day as I'm switching games.

[paulguy]

a way you could've done this is to have a shortcut for each one, with a config file in each directory, so it'd automatically just use the directory-specific config files with the configured save paths. Although I suppose that'd only matter if each game was the same filename. Not sure how that screwed up otherwise.

It's a pretty reasonable feature if you're not doing things in a weird way.

Also, yeah, I think there might be a feature to disable auto SRAM save.

[odditude]

To separate my save files I have created a folder on my desktop with individually named folders for each game I use on my ZSNES. While switching from game to game I have to change the save paths, that didn't seem like it would be problem.

out of curiosity, why are you doing this?

Unless of course there was some stupid built in auto-save function that rewrites data with whatever data is currently displayed when you close the problem.

Oh wait guys....THERE IS!

do you mean you don't want to config to save on close, meaning unless you manually save the config any display/controller/etc settings would be lost?

I opened my game up and realized that the paths were wrong, whatever, I guess I just change the path and reopen ZSNES. WRONG! This RI-FING-DICULOUS program decides to rewrite my saved data with empty data because I reopened the program.

this shouldn't happen. if gamename.smc is opened, gamename.srm will only be created if it doesn't already exist. if gamename.srm exists, it will be opened as-is unless corrupt.

There is no reason for an automatic data over-writing on a video game program, this thing should only save when I COMMAND IT TO! I AM THE USER! I TELL YOU WHEN TO SAVE AND OVERWRITE MY FILES! NOT YOU!

so sram data shouldn't be written to disk unless you tell it to?

I lost many hours of gameplay due to this stupid function.

your usage pattern is FAR from the norm and could not reasonably be expected by a developer.

Rant ends here. (Question Begins)

So to my actual question following my rant...

Is there any way I can change it so that ZSNES doesn't automatically save and overwrite my file unless I tell it to? Or is this program inevitably going to eat my data if I don't always and forever change the path before opening the game?

disable sram check+save.

I just don't have that kind of attention span to do that 50,000 times per day as I'm switching games.

so why do you have everything split into a million different folders?

anyway, to extend paulguy's suggestion - instead of making a million zsnes shortcuts, you could make a single shortcut without the working directory defined (therefore it should use current directory), and then create a file association that runs "drive:\path\to\zsnes.lnk" "%1". if you have a separate config file in each game's directory with the save path defined there, it should read that config file and life should be good. of course, you'll need to run zsnes only via that file association, and close out of zsnes and reopen it if you want to switch games.

in the meantime, you might just want to look for your lost gamename.srm elsewhere on the drive; it might have ended up somewhere you didn't think to look.

aaaand in case you completely tl;dr'd this response, disable sram check+save.

[grinvader]

SRAM check&save makes zsnes aware of the game's writes to sram, and save the sram to disk a few seconds after it's modified.

[going technical, the first write triggers a timer, and upon completion regardless new writes, the file is written to hdd. then a new write to sram launches another delayed hdd write, and so on. once every few seconds is light enough not to rape the hdd, and frequent enough that zsnes crashing doesn't make you lose days of progress.]

If you disable it, zsnes will cache all SRAM modifications until you load another game or quit. It will still overwrite your existing sram when doing so.


Do note: several games need sram modifications to happen to behave properly. Preventing changes will cause varied issues.