02-04-2011, 03:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-04-2011, 03:33 AM by nosisab Ken Keleh.)
Savestates are useful to be relatively safe between normal saves, a handy way to make a quick exit in an emergency and several other good reasons... BUT should not substitute the normal saves.
The first and foremost reason being normal saves are a game's feature, each game saves all and only what it need to completely remount the actual game status (indeed the game is reconstructed from scratch from the disc and so most corruptions will be gone, unless it is on those stats themselves but hardly a reason to crash the emulator). There is no way for the emulator to preview what must be saved at each game, so savestates just dumps all the pertinent memory into a file. That brings two points that should be understood.
1 - savestates should never be used to test cheat codes, just as an example. That's because whatever is introduced by the cheat will be indelibly stamped in the savestate and any corruption will propagate and add with any other corruption over time, leaving the game unplayable at some point. One common corruption that may be not perceptible but would be perpetuated by the sstate is the case where a code is introduced in a wrong address that could be even a piece of executable code which eventually would be executed and so promptly crashes the game and only then...
2 - Be aware different emulator's versions may have different dumps for the sstate making them in fact incompatibles, in this case the only reliable solution is returning the same version the sstate was made and keep going until a normal save can be done. From there is safe to update to the new emulator's version and have the saves working as expected.
The bottom line is: Try to make a normal save at the end of each game session whenever it's possible, make this a habit. Still be free to keep sstates in the between, preferably in a slotted and rotating fashion.
Remember the sstate seldom introduces corruption by itself but will "gladly" perpetuate whatever corruption already exist, whatever the reason it came to life.
The first and foremost reason being normal saves are a game's feature, each game saves all and only what it need to completely remount the actual game status (indeed the game is reconstructed from scratch from the disc and so most corruptions will be gone, unless it is on those stats themselves but hardly a reason to crash the emulator). There is no way for the emulator to preview what must be saved at each game, so savestates just dumps all the pertinent memory into a file. That brings two points that should be understood.
1 - savestates should never be used to test cheat codes, just as an example. That's because whatever is introduced by the cheat will be indelibly stamped in the savestate and any corruption will propagate and add with any other corruption over time, leaving the game unplayable at some point. One common corruption that may be not perceptible but would be perpetuated by the sstate is the case where a code is introduced in a wrong address that could be even a piece of executable code which eventually would be executed and so promptly crashes the game and only then...
2 - Be aware different emulator's versions may have different dumps for the sstate making them in fact incompatibles, in this case the only reliable solution is returning the same version the sstate was made and keep going until a normal save can be done. From there is safe to update to the new emulator's version and have the saves working as expected.
The bottom line is: Try to make a normal save at the end of each game session whenever it's possible, make this a habit. Still be free to keep sstates in the between, preferably in a slotted and rotating fashion.
Remember the sstate seldom introduces corruption by itself but will "gladly" perpetuate whatever corruption already exist, whatever the reason it came to life.
Imagination is where we are truly real