Satellaview multi-week games and SRAM
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I just started dabbling with emulating Nintendo Satellaview. There are some quirks to say the least. Many of the games had 4 episodes that were released one week after the other. I know for certain that the game 'BS The legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets' which had 4 weekly episodes, uses a common game save for all 4 parts. Typically, you would have to rename your .srm file to match the rom name of whichever week you are going to play so that your progress loads correctly.
I've come up with a method, using symlinks, hidden folders and clever file naming, to make it so that you never have to remember to SSH into your Pi and rename your .srm file.
But there is something I am unsure of that I would like to ask the community about. Do any of the other, multi-week Satellaview games share game saves between weeks the was the Zelda game does? Games like BS F-Zero Grand Prix, BS Fire Emblem, BS Marvelous, BS Super Mario USA and Excitebike Bunbun Mario Battle, all have 4 weekly episodes. Do their game saves pass from one episode to the next?
If I can help it, I don't want to have to play through at least the first episode of each game before I can find out. I also don't want to spend time setting up my workaround if it doesn't actually accomplish anything, or even worse, screws something up for a particular game.
Hopefully someone here knows.
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@joelkolb said in Satellaview multi-week games and SRAM:
I've come up with a method, using symlinks, hidden folders and clever file naming, to make it so that you never have to remember to SSH into your Pi and rename your .srm file.
Sorry I can't help you with your question, but what you did for passing on the savegames sounds very interesting! I just made 3 symlinks of the first savegame with the name of the other three weeks. With that I have to be careful not to start a new week without having finished the previous.
I'm curious how you made it work :D
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@ecto Here is what I did.
First I made a hidden folder (by making the first character of the folder name a dot) for each ROM inside my satellaview folder, like so:
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 1
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 2
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 3
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 4Hiding these folders will keep the way our games are displayed in EmulationStation looking nice and tidy.
Then, inside each folder you would place the corresponding ROM file. But you would rename the ROM file so that each file has the same name. This is why we place each ROM in it's own folder, so that each ROM can have the same name without issue. If you have your ROMs compressed, make sure the both the .zip or .7z file and the ROM inside are named this way. So now we would have the following:
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 1/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.7z
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 2/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.7z
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 3/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.7z
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 4/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.7zMaking sure the ROM files all have the same name will make it so their .srm savegame files will also all have the same name.
Next, we create symlinks to the ROM files in the satellaview folder. Each symlink will have to have a unique name so that they can all exist in the same folder.
So now we have this:
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 1/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.7z
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 1.7z ---symlink to above ^^^
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 2/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.7z
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 2.7z ---symlink to above ^^^
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 3/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.7z
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 3.7z ---symlink to above ^^^
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/.BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 4/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.7z
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets - Week 4.7z ---symlink to above ^^^These symlinks are what EmulationStation will actually use to start the games. We will list these symlinks in our gamelist.xml with any references to artwork and metadata just like they were the actual ROM files sitting in ../roms/satellaview.
With everything set up like this, you will have everything displayed nicely in EmulationStation without anything we wouldn't want to be seen. We will also have one single .srm file that all 4 ROMS will use, here:
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/satellaview/BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets.srm
I hope that is helpful.
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@joelkolb Wow! Thanks for the really detailed explanation!
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