huge problem.

[Enzyme]

Ok i am playing final fantasy 7. Something very very strange happened. While playing, I have only used 3 save slots alternating. When I turned on the game today, i lost about 8 hours of game play.

Whats really weird is, it looked like saved files rolled back or something. The 3 saved files I have right now showing have been overwritten many many times over. Losing the all the files altogether is one thing, but my current ones have been replaced by old ones that i have deleted so to speak.

Im going to pull all my hair out. This is like 8 hours worth of overwriting files. I spent like a whole night trying mastering materia, and battle arenas. I dont know what to do, how to even approach this problem. nothing makes any sense.

---

Last edited by Enzyme; April 20th, 2007 at 07:51..

[Holic]

you mean you are using save states or save the game at save points?

__________________
Find the keys to your life.

[Nucking Futs]

Originally Posted by Enzyme

Ok i am playing final fantasy 7. Something very very strange happened. While playing, I have only used 3 save slots alternating. When I turned on the game today, i lost about 8 hours of game play.

Whats really weird is, it looked like saved files rolled back or something. The 3 saved files I have right now showing have been overwritten many many times over. Losing the all the files altogether is one thing, but my current ones have been replaced by old ones that i have deleted so to speak.

Im going to pull all my hair out. This is like 8 hours worth of overwriting files. I spent like a whole night trying mastering materia, and battle arenas. I dont know what to do, how to even approach this problem. nothing makes any sense.

Got any younger brothers? j/k erm i'm also confused what type of savestates you mean, internal ones or memcard files, if you mean the epsxe internal ones my adivse would be not to use those as they tend to be buggy, if you talk about the memcard my only guess is that you maybe messed up the directory where your correct memcard is in. You can try to search your disc for *.mcr files.

__________________

~ whoever calls himself an Existentialist does not understand the true meaning of that word ~

.: Armored Ninja :.
CPU: Core 2 Duo E4300 (@ 3.333 GHz) | Memory: Seitec 1024MB DDR2 RAM (@ 740 MHz)
GPU: Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB (Core Clock: Geometric Domain @ 648 MHz / Shader Domain @ 1512 MHz Memory Clock @ 972 MHz )
Case: Thermaltake Armor VA8000B | Cooler: Scythe Ninja Plus Rev. B | Mobo: GA-965P-DS3 | PSU: Corsair HX620W

[ShendoXT]

My guess is that you are using both savestates and regular saves.

Well here is the thing, savestates contain a memorycards and if you make a save
to a memorycard and load a savestate before saving to a memorycard it will be as if you were not saved the game.

So if you have the latest savestate (the one after you leveled up and stuff) load it and then load the game from the memorycard.

Btw: if you load the savestate and you are ingame press start+select+all shoulder buttons to come back to title screen where you can load your memorycard save.

__________________
Shendo's software blog

Core i5 2400 3.1 Ghz | ASRock H67M | GTX460 768Mb | 8GB DDR3 1333 | 1500 Gb HDD
Grundig VLC 7121 C (1080p) 32" | Razer DeathAdder | Logitech G110 | Windows 7 x64

Don't PM or ask me about VMP-MCR conversions. I will ignore you if you do.

---

Last edited by ShendoXT; April 20th, 2007 at 12:14..

[Enzyme]

I have only used memory card saves. I didnt really know what save state really is or how to use it.

ok for example in mem. card lets say i save at exactly every hour, and that I save/rewrite always the oldest file, and only use 3 save slots in memory card when im doing this.

and im current playing at 25 hours. so my 3 saved files in the game should be 25, 24, and 23hours. but when i turn on the game, the 3 files i show in memery card are 16, 17, and 18 hours. its impossible because those has been overwritten by myself incremently up 25.

well i just want to know how do i prevent this from happening again. That was alot of hours lost but if you know this game, the loss potential is alot higher.

Originally Posted by xxxHolic

you mean you are using save states or save the game at save points?

The saves i speak of are internally in the game at the game save points. and save onto memory card.

Originally Posted by Shendo

My guess is that you are using both savestates and regular saves.

Well here is the thing, savestates contain a memorycards and if you make a save
to a memorycard and load a savestate before saving to a memorycard it will be as if you were not saved the game.

So if you have the latest savestate (the one after you leveled up and stuff) load it and then load the game from the memorycard.

Btw: if you load the savestate and you are ingame press start+select+all shoulder buttons to come back to title screen where you can load your memorycard save.

I tried loading all the possible save states and then checking my memory card. none contain any of my current games. Ididnt think this would work because i have never used save state before. I mean, I can play this whole game without using save/load states and just use the game's save points just fine right?

---

Last edited by Enzyme; April 20th, 2007 at 14:41.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

[Holic]

what I think you done is that when you saved, you actually didnot save to a
memory card because you did not select it when you configured the memory card.

EG

If you have no memory card selected, you can still use the saves in game but it wont be saved when you go back to load the game.

So maybe thats what happended to you.
You saved the games successfully the first time round, but then you didn't select the memcard on the config to saved the game. But because no the emulator shows no error when you save without a memcard selected you carried on playing the game.

OR

Maybe you saved to a different memory card without knowing it.

Those are my possible explanations, there is nothing to do I'm afraid.

__________________
Find the keys to your life.

[Enzyme]

Originally Posted by xxxHolic

what I think you done is that when you saved, you actually didnot save to a
memory card because you did not select it when you configured the memory card.

EG

If you have no memory card selected, you can still use the saves in game but it wont be saved when you go back to load the game.

So maybe thats what happended to you.
You saved the games successfully the first time round, but then you didn't select the memcard on the config to saved the game. But because no the emulator shows no error when you save without a memcard selected you carried on playing the game.

OR

Maybe you saved to a different memory card without knowing it.

Those are my possible explanations, there is nothing to do I'm afraid.

To my understanding, being an emulator there are no physical memory cards. Rather there are two files in the 'memory card' folder right? I assume the saved games are stored in these files. I dont think its possible that I saved to a different mem, I only use those two files.

I mean the way I save is just exactly how one would save if playing on a console. Are you saying that even after saving in-game (save point, select mem1/mem2, pick a slot), that I was suppose to go into config and select a memory card too?

Because I have never done that. And itve gotten many hours into the game with many successful saves by doing only the in-game saves.

I have come to peace that im not going to get those most recent saved games back. I just want to know things I can do to prevent this again. So just saving to memory1 or memory2 alone isnt enough to ensure this? Are there things I need to do in epsxe as well after saving in-game? or certain things to do in epsxe before i load the game?

---

Last edited by Enzyme; April 20th, 2007 at 15:47..

[Holic]

when you save the game just make sure that a memcard is selected in the config, then you won't go wrong.

__________________
Find the keys to your life.

[Nucking Futs]

Well if you really only saved your games on your virtual memcards (the normal way) then you should be alright. Only thing that i can imagine otherwise is that you might have had a backup of some sort.

__________________

~ whoever calls himself an Existentialist does not understand the true meaning of that word ~

.: Armored Ninja :.
CPU: Core 2 Duo E4300 (@ 3.333 GHz) | Memory: Seitec 1024MB DDR2 RAM (@ 740 MHz)
GPU: Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB (Core Clock: Geometric Domain @ 648 MHz / Shader Domain @ 1512 MHz Memory Clock @ 972 MHz )
Case: Thermaltake Armor VA8000B | Cooler: Scythe Ninja Plus Rev. B | Mobo: GA-965P-DS3 | PSU: Corsair HX620W

[Enzyme]

Originally Posted by Nucking Futs

Well if you really only saved your games on your virtual memcards (the normal way) then you should be alright. Only thing that i can imagine otherwise is that you might have had a backup of some sort.

Yes i only used the virtual memory card in-game saves. Thats why i was so suprised. It didnt make sense whatsoever. If the saved games had just been wiped out and shows empty slots, i'd cope with this a little easier. but they were replaced by saved files that i have overwritten over many times over.

Oh well im about half way back to where I was now. i have to spent another hour plus playing dunk time at golden saucer! yay.

[ShendoXT]

Have you closed the emulator any other way then pressing ESC and closing it from the GUI?

If you have your memorycard files weren't updated.

__________________
Shendo's software blog

Core i5 2400 3.1 Ghz | ASRock H67M | GTX460 768Mb | 8GB DDR3 1333 | 1500 Gb HDD
Grundig VLC 7121 C (1080p) 32" | Razer DeathAdder | Logitech G110 | Windows 7 x64

Don't PM or ask me about VMP-MCR conversions. I will ignore you if you do.

[Enzyme]

it is very possible i have maybe saved in game then just closing w/o using esc. I sometimes do that with other games that dont require saving.