Strategy for save states and saves

[Arcuza]

Hi,

Where are save state files located?
Where are in game save files located?
What's a robust way of backing up those?
How's the compability of save states and in game saves with other emulators on other platforms?

Thank you!

[mauruco]

This is mine:
Edited /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg
Like this:

#Save all save files (*.srm) to this directory. This includes related files like .bsv, .rtc, .psrm, etc ...
#This will be overridden by explicit command line options.
savefile_directory = "/media/usb0/savefile"

#Save all save states (*.state) to this directory.
#This will be overridden by explicit command line options.
savestate_directory = "/home/pi/RetroPie/savestate"

And I edited /opt/retropie/configs/n64/mupen64plus.cfg
Like this:

#Path to directory where emulator save states (snapshots) are saved. If this is blank, the default #value of ${UserConfigPath}/save will be used
SaveStatePath = "/home/pi/RetroPie/savestate"
#Path to directory where SRAM/EEPROM data (in-game saves) are stored. If this is blank, the default #value of ${UserConfigPath}/save will be used
SaveSRAMPath = "/media/usb0/savefile"

In this way I always have my savefiles in usb.

It works perfect, but not for PSP and Dreamcast.
Default the savesfiles are in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/(emulator)

About compatibility with other emulators, I would say "not given but it can work".

[Arcuza]

@mauruco Thank you, that's perfect. Do you know the default location of save states and save games?

Can I replace the USB path to an NFS share with username and password?

[dankcushions]

saves for most systems are in the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/systemname/ folder. eg:
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/Legend of Zelda, The (USA).srm (the game internal backup)
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/Legend of Zelda, The (USA).state
(a save state)

extensions and locations may change for none-libretro systems.

[sselph]

If you mount the network share on boot you should be able to use it but makes traveling with it more difficult if you can't mount the share.

I had an arguably over complicated method for backing up my saves that I was meaning to make more robust and share but never made it past the prototype since it worked for me. I was making local versioned backups(via git) then syncing those periodically with my file server via smb. This had the benefit of working locally but then backup up when it was available.
http://blog.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/how-i-backup-my-saved-games-rpi2/

The more low tech version I used to use was just a cronjob that basically did the following for each system and file type I cared about.
cp ~/RetroPie/roms/nes/*.srm /mnt/share/backup/nes/
If your bash foo is strong you can probably write a single command to iterate over all the directories and file types.

[Lodan-Zark]

@mauruco said in Strategy for save states and saves:

This is mine:
Edited /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg"

That's very problematic in situations you have games (with srm support) with same name in different platforms, which could cause data overwrite, would be wise define the srm and savestate directory per core instead using the general config file.

What I've done in my build was creating srm and sstate folders per platform and attribute them permission to pi user (very important otherwise the emulators wont have root permission to write the files)

And then I edit each retroarch.cfg core individually alike:
savefile_directory = "/home/pi/RetroPie/srm/systemname"
savestate_directory = "/home/pi/RetroPie/sstate/systemname"

for example:
Edit /opt/retropie/configs/megadrive/retroarch.cfg
savefile_directory = "/home/pi/RetroPie/srm/megadrive"
savestate_directory = "/home/pi/RetroPie/sstate/megadrive"

When I want to back up the files I just copy the folder srm and sstate and I get all data i need

[Dochartaigh]

delete please...

[Spaccaimeni91]

Is it possible to store saves on a LAN address? For example a folder on a rpi 0 W which is always running pihole in the same LAN?
As far as I understand, retropie should mount the pi 0 W's drive on boot to make it works. How to do that? And how to set a network address on Linux?
I'm sorry but I'm quite noob.... Thanks!

[dankcushions]

@spaccaimeni91 please create new threads support issues. see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first