Save files don't write to disk until you close the game or set a save interval

Libretro Lakka
#1

I am trying to wrap my head around this difference of behavior between Lakka and for example RetroArch as installed on a Windows or standard Linux system. I am currently messing around with Lakka on a Raspberry Pi 3.

It seems that when you save your progress in a game such as an RPG (not savestates), it will keep the save file in memory and NOT write the file to disk until you properly “close” the game. Alternatively, I see that there is an option to periodically save this data to the disk at an interval such as 10 seconds.

I am not understanding the logic behind this very well. Presumably this is to save your SD card from being overwritten too much and wearing out the memory? Seems a little bit unnecessary to me. But even if this is the reason, then why is there an option to set it to write every 10 seconds (probably the worst of these scenarios for flash memory health) but there is NOT an option to just act like RetroArch on any other platform and “write to the disk right away” when the file is updated?

Or am I missing something and this is already possible to have Lakka write SRAM to the disk in “real-time”?

#2

RetroArch doesn’t write to disk immediately anywhere. Writing to disk on any change is a no-go because some games use SRAM as scratch space–that is, it’s constantly being written to many times per second–which would be a real problem for SSDs. It also can cause performance stalls in I/O-limited environments.

Having the option is a compromise that people can opt into by enabling it but it’s much too dangerous to leave on by default.

#3

Might be nice to have a hotkey to write SRAM to disk so after saving in game users can do it manually and get a little OSD message as feedback.

#4

Hmm… no kidding… I just tested this in Windows and obviously you’re right. It did not save my progress in Chrono Trigger until after I pressed the escape key to kill the game. I can’t believe that I’ve been using emulators and RetroArch for so long and didn’t realize this.

I suppose I’ll just have to keep this in mind. Thanks for the info!

#5

[QUOTE=singularity098;51485]Hmm… no kidding… I just tested this in Windows and obviously you’re right. It did not save my progress in Chrono Trigger until after I pressed the escape key to kill the game. I can’t believe that I’ve been using emulators and RetroArch for so long and didn’t realize this.

I suppose I’ll just have to keep this in mind. Thanks for the info![/QUOTE]

Well, I just learnt this the hard way whilst trying to get through FF3 without using save states…

Oh well, here we go, from the top…

#6

I also just found out playing Chrono Trigger. Shouldn’t this have a more sane default? Maybe one minute? Or 10 seconds?

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