N64 save file renaming

[kingradness]

Re: Can't transfer save files (SRAM) between N64 emulators

I've got a related question to this post which never totally seemed to get answered. At the end of his post, Finndersen here was asking why the .sra filename was different from the rom, and my assumption is that the emulator renames the save file to whatever official title it has inside the cartridge (hence the U, v1.0 and b1). I have a similar problem with a fan-patched translation rom of Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (Japan-only) where the mupen64plus .sra savefile gets saved as a gibberish string of characters (�ް��� ���ڽ 2 (unknown rom).sra), to the extent that I can't even copy the filename to an imported save file because MC and Pixel don't know how to handle it. I downloaded Japanese text support (or at least I think I did it correctly) and it still isn't showing correctly, so I assume either the patched rom or the original was doing it to begin with; I suppose I could confirm that when I get home from work today.

So I guess my question is, for the easier example of Finndersen's original question, what determines what mupen64plus writes the .sra filename as? Is the Ocarina of Time (U) (V1.0) [b1].sra filename built into the rom, or can I edit a file somewhere in my SD structure that changes the rom name, like something scraper related? And if it is built into the rom, is there any easy-ish way to patch it to something different? Thanks for your time.

[kingradness]

@kingradness To follow up on this, I ran the original, unpatched rom and it created a cleanly named file of "Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 - Oudou Keishou (J) [!].sra"; ironically, when I tried clearing everything and then restarting the game from scratch with my downloaded save properly renamed, it overwrote the new save with a fresh blank empty one, but when I then copied over the new one with the downloaded one, it worked, so somehow it needs to establish a relationship with that filename first instead seeking it out, for lack of a better expression.

So after all that, I'm still sorta back where I started, since my imported save only works on the original Japanese version, not my patched rom. I know for a fact this patch will work with imported saves, because I got it to work on OpenEmu on my Mac, but one thing I'm wondering is if the encoding by the guy who made the patch is UTF-8 and Linux apparently wants everything in Ascii, but I'll have to ask that guy if that's the case.

In the meantime, I guess my question still maybe stands; is there an option/config somewhere that allows me to control the destination filename of either the save file or even change the official rom name (not sure if that's the right nomenclature; in this example, "Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 - Oudou Keishou (J) [!].sra" with the J and ! that arent present in the rom's filename)

Thanks for your help!

[kingradness]

Finally figured it out last night. At this point I'm just talking to myself, but for posterity, in case anyone else has a similar problem, I found the solution to be to use a hex editor to change the rom's header info; there are Windows utilities that do it easily (Rom Renamer, for one), but since all I have is my Pi and a Mac, I had to figure out how to do it myself. Although it appears headers can be longer than 14 characters, I saw posts saying the 14 slots after 0x20 were editable (when I tried to go longer the rom wouldn't launch in Emulationstation, either) so I used an ASCII hex editor to write VirtualProWre2, and when I booted it in Emulationstation (with mupen64plus) it created a new save file named VirtualProWre2 (unknown rom).sra, which I was able to replace with my own downloaded, renamed rom. I'm still not sure why it put the (unknown rom) in there; I presume that's either something else I could change in the hex editor or perhaps the hash data didn't match the scraper because it was a hacked rom, maybe.

[CharlieDigital]

@kingradness can you please post your renamed file here for me? I'd love to get a good save of this game but I'm having a hard time.