Save States at the start of the game

[Elora]

Hi! I've heard that you should try not to use save states too much, because they can cause problems in games... I can live with mostly using memory card saves throughout the game, but at the start of FF7 there's those very annoying, slooow messages that you can't skip (Something about pirating and 'Sony presents'). I'd really like to just have a save state at the beginning menu (New game/Continue) to get past this, but could that cause problems to appear much later on in the game? I don't want to mess anything up just to save a few seconds ^_~

Maybe a little off topic, but if there's a way to skip those screens, that'd be nice too...

Thanks in advance!

[zen_master]

And how would that cause problems later in the game?
I dont get it...

[Elora]

It's quite likely I misunderstood something... I've just gotten paranoid about those save states, maybe I just don't quite understand the problem?

From what I've read, using save states can be unreliable, they can cause problems with the graphics or sounds that sometimes don't appear straight away... So if I loaded a save state as the first thing I did every time I started the game, could that cause problems as I'm playing even if I just loaded a memory card save straight away?

Actually the thing I'm most worried about is this: If I were playing, save a state, then load that state, then do a memory card save... If the save state had messed up but not appeared, could the memory card save somehow be messed up as well?

Ick, that doesn't even make sense to ME... Um, basically I'm just worried that I'll get a corrupt save state, and that'll somehow cause a corrupt memory save, and I'll lose a whole lot of progress...

I'm really sorry, I'm such a newbie! I hope I somehow made sense in all of that...

[Coolsvilleman]

Ok memcards = safe
save states = usually ok.
The reason that save states get corrupted is because you eithier quit the game to quickly or you save them to quickly or to much data is changing while the state is saving. Good idea to save them twice about 20 seconds apart. If one gets messed up however it cannot mess up your memcard saves. Secondly Yes if they don't save all the data graphical errors can occur. Also don't save during transition points in games... a.k.a. logo transitions like intro. Just don't rely on save states alone to get you through a game.

[Elora]

Ah ok, that's great, thank you very much!

[WindHydra]

I think you misunderstood what they mean by save states messing up the games, Elora (I don't know how to explain though )

[bazzarr]

LIES! save states DO have a chance to mess up the game greatly, while they cant mess with data in memory cards, they CAN sly-mess up the game so it wont really save into memory cards even through the game says it did. thus you might find yourself, deep into a game, then it crashes/messes up due to a savestate, you try to memory-card-save to evade the crash/mess up and you find out that an early save state you did messed up the save system.
and yes, that happened to me.
moral of the story : if you use save states, immidiatly save-to-memory-card after using them and hard-reset and delete all traces of the evil save state.

[Coolsvilleman]

I don't think that's possible bazzarr. If the game says it saved to a memcard then it did. I've had some of the problems of save state corruption and such but I was always able to save to a memcard without error after loading a state. The state saves the games current "state" therfore if you can succesfully load the state and the game say it saves ... then it did.

[WindHydra]

bazzarr, did you save to memory card, load save state, and then save again, or did anything similar to that? After you saved to memory card, don't use savestate to go back to before you saved.

[zen_master]

Ok here's one easy and simple solution, instead of worying about savestates and all that just try to finish your games in one try, i bet you wont have that problem agian..

PS: Here's an interesting fact: when I first bought my ps2 I had one game and no memory card, it was metal gear solid two, and guess what I finished it in one try but at the end of the game when they mess with your head i thought i was really going crazy because I played the darn thing for so long...I skipped true all the movies ofcourse so I had to play it again without the mem card.

[Prafull]

To put it staright,

Save states= 99% reliable 1% problematic. Problem usually with sound or graphics but it disappears when you load a memory card save.

[Betamax]

As prafull said, generally savestates are fine. However in addition:

1. It is not advisable to mix states and cards. This harkens back to the pre 1.5 days, when doing so would mean that the cards would be saved inside the states, instead of to the disk. It was fixed in 1.5 but can still sometimes occur (as we still get threads regarding this from time to time)
2. Never make a state during a video clip.
3. Never use states on multi cd games. You may not be able to swap disks properly.
4. From personal experience... never use states with final fantasy .

[bazzarr]

no seriosuly, it happened to me once, i used save states and things started to get glitchy like sound and such, and when i tried to save to the memory card, it showed that it saved, but i then reseted the game, without load stating or anything went to the main menu and the save i just made was gone, meaning it didnt save. the save stated screwed the game so much it couldnt save.