Does anyone have a rundown on which core’s saves/states are compatible with each other? Specifically SNES and GBA cores. Are they all independent? Know of any handy conversion tools/tricks?
Save States are NEVER compatible between different emulators and usually break every few releases too.
I’ve been thinking about writing a save compatibility list for different cores but never really got around making one. Regarding SNES and GBA:
SNES saves are compatible between all cores and should work with most non-libretro emulators too.
GBA saves are probably the most problematic ones out of all possible systems since there is no automatic way to safely determine what kind of save type a game uses. Essentially there are three ways an emulator can save:
1:No internal list of save types (Mednafen GBA, Meteor, VBA) 2:Internal list of save types (mainline VBA-M) 3:136kb saves (VBAM-libretro, VBA-Next)
Saves from 1 are usually broken in some of the bigger games (Pokemon) and end up missing parts of the save data, so they should be avoided at all costs.
Most saves will work between 2 and 3, but some are not compatible (Ninja Five-0 and Boktai for example).
There’s a small program called gbaconv that allows you to convert your saves between 2 and 3 in our repo. https://github.com/libretro/vba-next/tr … ro/gbaconv
ALWAYS make a backup before using your saves on a different emulator, there’s always a chance something goes wrong.
That was really helpful, thanks! If you don’t make a compatibility guide, I might tackle it. Wasn’t sure if it existed already or not.