Save Compatibilty

Libretro Cores
#1

Soooo, I have been testing several cores trying to ascertain saveram compatibility. My findings so far:

SNES

  • Snes9x
  • Snes9x 2002
  • Snes9x 2005 (Plus)
  • Snes9x 2010
  • bsnes
  • bsnes2014
  • bsnes-mercury
  • higan
  • nside
  • Mesen-S
  • Mednafen bSNES

All pass with flying colors. The same save loads fine in all of them

3 Likes
#2

NES

  • Nestopia UE
  • FCEUMM
  • Mesen
  • Quicknes

All good

GB©

  • Gambatte
  • SameBoy
  • GearBoy
  • TGB Dual

All good (still have to test VBA-M, bsnes, mGBA)

Genesis

  • Genesis Plus GX
  • Picodrive

Good

  • Blastem -> doesn’t seem to save data

GBA

  • mgba
  • vbam

good, these work

  • vba-next -> no dice, different save format I guess
  • gpsp -> doesn’t work, uses SAV extension, fixable
  • Beetle VBA-M -> doesn’t work, uses naming convention, fixable
2 Likes
#3

Other candidates for testing:

DS:

  • MelonDS
  • Desmume
  • Desmume2015

PSX (This one is tricky, mednafen PSX saves each slot in a different file)

  • Beetle PSX
  • Beetle PSX HW
  • PCSX-ReARMed

Saturn

  • Beetle Saturn
  • Yabause
  • Yaba Sanshiro
  • Kronos

Master System

  • Picodrive
  • GPGX
  • Gearsystem
#4

Maybe I could implement a sort saves (but not states) using content dir, similar to what I did for shaders and remaps?

Would that be desirable?

#5

I know when I initially switched from vbam to mGBA, most games loaded the vbam saves fine, but some acted like there was no save. And they were overwritten as empty saves. I don’t remember the specific games that had issues though. I know there was a topic somewhere about converting GBA saves.

Desmume and MelonDS saves are not compatible. You have to use stand-alone Desmume to load a game with a libretro save, then use the dropdown menu to save a raw copy of the save that will work with Melon.

#6

In the Beetle PSX / HW core options you can change the type of the saved memcard:

Memory Card 0 Method        Libretro/Mednafen

But it makes no difference as the *.srm and the *.mcr seems to be raw saves and can be renamed to the other extension.

Tested a *.srm save with all 3 cores and it is working

[EDIT] Maybe i should add, that i can’t test Beetle PSX HW since it doesn’t work with my old machine.

#7

Here is a comparison of different PSX memcard formats:
(Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (Europe) saved with Beetle PSX and converted to other popular formats)

As you can see only DexDrive and Virtual Game Station differ. The other memcards are interchangeable

b086721d        Bleem.mcd
b086721d        Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (Europe).srm     (libretro)
b086721d        Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (Europe).1.mcr   (mednafen)
acdcafc6        DexDrive.gme
b086721d        Mad Kats Data Deck.ddf
b086721d        Other - AdriPSX - FPSE - pcsx.mcr
b086721d        PSEmu.mcr
140d964d        Virtual Game Station.mem
b086721d        ePSXe.mcr
Transfer save from ePSXe to Retroarch (Beetle PSX HW)
#8

And i can confirm that battery saves are compatible across all N64 cores. Those include Mupen64plus, Mupen64plus_next, ParaLLel and even older cores like Glupen.

#9

A sort saves option?

You mean having all compatible saves in one folder like SNES saves, PS1 saves etc?

I like the idea but what about the saves we already have? My folder has saves from more than 2.000 games. Could these be sorted retroactively?

#10

several months ago I tried to use my previous save raw file between beetle psx and beetle psx hw. It didn’t work. Maybe I was too naive to see the problem

#11

Maybe i should add, that i can’t test Beetle PSX HW since it doesn’t work with my old machine.

#12

anyone tried dolphin? I would want import from standalone Dolphin since it looks to use the same files.

#13

UPDATE: Just imported the content from Dolphin Emulator folder (locaed in documents by default ) into the System\dolphin-emu\sys folder from retroarch. The gamesaves is working