Growlanser Save Game Freeze / Playstation Clock Not Saving Time

[Slayn]

Well, that's it for the game working... I've reached to the WereCat girl 1st battle and it froze after I won... Then I restarted and it froze again after ATL*S and CARE*R SOF* Screens every time I reboot the game. I'll keep trying thoug.











EDIT: Ok, the werecat girl freeze battle was random, I loaded with a save state and managed to get throug. The main screen still freezes, it stays all black after ATL*US, so I had to load a very old save state and then load from a memory card save, and just in case did a save state while fighting the werecat.



EDIT 2: 

• Random Battles have had no freeze during 4hrs of gameplay.
  
• All story Battles have had only random freezes, couldn't have keep playing otherwise. So, just in case, I've kept doing save states during this fights.
  
• Black screen at the start of game still happens, so I've kept a 9th save state on the map so that I can load the last memory card save in order to be able to keep on playing.
  
• Memory card saves have some, random, wrong timing save, every time I try to do them. So just in case, after saving 2 or 3 different slots, I go back to save all of the slots I did, so that the time in every slot is the same one, or nearly the same. 
  
• If there's anything you don't understand, please let me know, so I can explain myself better.
  

EDIT 3: 12hrs of gameplay.

• Event randomly freezing is getting rather anoying...
  
• Arena also randomly freezes...
  
• Saves keep working smoothly.
  
• New issue, don't know how to call this thoug. When on different menus, like choosing spells or status screen, the pad works weird, as if I were pressing they key without letting it go, or just not responding at all. This is one of the most anoying of all.
  
• No Random battle freeze at all.
  
• Start game menu still black screening after atl*s screen.
  
• Nothing more up to the moment, I think I'll be able to end the game, if I don't get bored after all those bugs along the way.
  

EDIT 4: 14hrs of gameplay.

• Just had a froze while using "Raise" on two characters at the same time, never happend before, I guess this is because I've never used it on more than 1, rarely even used it.
  
• At this point, I guess, I should remember anyone who read  the post, that this is NOT a BUG report. I'm, trying, I think? to leave a record of my gameplay on PCSX 1.6.0, of the un-playable "playable" Growlanser Generations II and III.
  

THE END: There is no end, period.

• The game freezes at the very end, without being able to do a record and start a new game from the Ending Save. So, if you are thinking of just playing and having fun with the game, and don't mind all those random freezes on event battles and other stuff along the way, I'd say just go for it. But... if your planning on going for the long run of restarting the game over and over and play it lots of times, I highly recommend you to forget it. Do not attempt to do it. It's just not worth it. Wait for a new pcsx2 version that actually fixes the time error bugs.
  

[Ashali]

edit: I apologize (after the fact) for the 8mo+ necromancy (As one might suspect, I didn't read the rules before posting) - The thread is one of the highest results on google searching for the problem(TimeError[0] and save freezing on Growlanser II/III on pcsx2).

So, I discovered a way to (apparently) prevent saving from freezing the game(s) with a high success rate. That is, for both Growlanser II and Growlanser III.

If you set CDVD to "No Disc" and then boot BIOS, wait for the system to fully boot up, and *then* set CDVD to "ISO" and select "Swap Disc", then select the disc to load the game from the emulated BIOS, you will have a proper date/time set to whatever the games check for their saves, etc. Utilizing Save States and turning off/on the frame limiter will commonly break the timer, resulting in broken saves, however(Turbo appears to be fine).

This *also* prevents TimeError[0] from showing up in the program log.

I tested this ten times, without a single failure to save properly. It even restored proper times and date/time for save files that had 0:00 0/0/0000 set, and allowed them to properly save/save over files in the memory cards.

If you have the ISO in and do boot(full) and it loads the game immediately, you'll occasionally miss whatever it is that's setting the time in memory that the Growlanser games check(It won't show TimeError[0] but you'll get saves with 0:00 0/0/0000 that will freeze on the next save if the timer also isn't working on your next attempt). Boot(fast) will fail the time check 95%+ of the time(2 success in 40 attempts), and will result in TimeError[0] showing up in the program log.

I haven't been on the forums in forever, but I thought this would be helpful for people in the future who would like to play this beloved game without struggling to get saves working so they can play New Game +.

[krollo]

If you set CDVD to "No Disc" and then boot BIOS, wait for the system to fully boot up, and *then* set CDVD to "ISO" and select "Swap Disc", then select the disc to load the game from the emulated BIOS, you will have a proper date/time set to whatever the games check for their saves, etc. Utilizing Save States and turning off/on the frame limiter will commonly break the timer, resulting in broken saves, however(Turbo appears to be fine).

I used the save state for the first time in God of War II and encountered the same issue of frozen internal clock. The game saves properly to memory card but the clock is stuck to the date I did the save state. This solution worked for me, thanks.

[Htori]

So is there any better way to fix this issue than doing that? I haven't tried to do that just I would prefer a permanent solution.

I saw a conversation and a patch on github, but I don't have the first idea how to apply said patch, or what said patch even is.

https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/issues/107

Can I get a "for morons" walk through on it?

[kozarovv]

Place attached files in C:\Users\<your username>\Documents\PCSX2\cheats (for pcsx2 1.4.0/1.6.0), enable cheats in pcsx2 menu. Run game.  While patches seems to work fine, i can't guarantee they will be 100% ok to play with. In emulator log you should find Found Cheats file: 'xxxxxxxx.pnach' string, that mean patches were successfully loaded. Patches work with US version of game. 


  03f9c6d1.pnach (Size: 33 bytes / Downloads: 391)
  4ad529bb.pnach (Size: 33 bytes / Downloads: 353)