Please post any feedback here that concerns using LaunchELF for MC gamesave backups.
Best regards: dlanor
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Please post any feedback here that concerns using LaunchELF for MC gamesave backups.
Best regards: dlanor
i did some testing..
i copied all my gamesaves from mc to hd
deleted them all on mc(a bit crazy,but if it gone wrong i havent been to sad)
pasted them back with the MCpaste future.
Everyone worked perfectly!
this is the gamesaves i tested.
Psychounauts
Tombraider angel of darkness
Need for speed underground 2
Super bust a move
Sly racoon
crash bandicoot wrath of coretex
(moved it from the big ulaunchelf thread)
MGS3 saves work perfect. I have one question, does it copy psx saved game too?
007 Everything or Nothing
Someone reported me that he wasn't able to backup the savegame from this game. It shows "copy failed".
Hmmm. That is probably not the kind of error we're looking for here, as it most likely means only that the files could not be written to the destination.Quote:
Originally Posted by firehawk
What we really want to see here are results for whether or not the real games accept gamesaves that have first been backed up to non-MC media, and then restored back to MC again, using the mcPaste command for both operations. And we want this particularly for games whose saves could not be backed up (and work afterwards) with earlier methods.
The mcPaste copying SHOULD preserve all attributes and timestamps, so that all gamesaves restored this way will work with the games. But this needs to be tested, thoroughly, far more than I have time to do myself. This is where all users finally get a chance to pitch in and help...! And that is why this thread exists, so that users can report whether or not the games accept or refuse gamesaves restored by this new method. This way we get all reports on this subject in one place, for easy reference, and without cluttering up the release thread.
Best regards: dlanor
Sorry about that, dlanor. I thought it could be placed here. Anyway, it won't happen again.
No problem, but for the future I prefer to see feedback for mcPaste here (both successes and failures), since that is THE mose important function added to LaunchELF recently.Quote:
Originally Posted by firehawk
Also, concerning the game "007 Everything or Nothing":
Reports in another thread make it clear that this game uses the backslash character in two icon filenames. This makes those names illegal under Windows and DOS rules, meaning that they are also illegal on media to be used there.
So attempts to backup saves for that game will always fail if you mcPaste to a Windows PC via HOST, and backing them up to USB devices will probably fail too, as many of them also refuse to store names containing backslash. The only devices where such names are sure to be accepted are the PS2 MC and the PS2 HDD. So that game can have its saves safely backed up to HDD or to other MCs, but not anywhere else.
The blame really lies with the game makers, for using idiotic names.
(Resulting from an attempt to use Windows-style subfolders on MC :crazy: )
I just wanted to clarify that problem for those who wondered...
Best regards: dlanor
Well I did get around and tested quite a few saves on my reformatted 8MB memory card. I had the saves backed up with mcpaste to the ps2 hdd and restored them back to the memory card. Everything I tested checked out ok: all 3 GTA games, Mortal Kombat saves, PS2 system saves, and other random saves. I used my earlier X-port methods to do part the testing.
As for 'James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing', I took a look and the icon has a file name of 'trc\savegame.icn' which is where the issue is. It's plainly out of our hands though so one will need to use nPort or something else with that one. It may also be possible to backup the 'trc\savegame.icn' to the ps2 hdd restore it manually back to the mc.
Speaking of nPort, I had thought about modifying the program for those that want to at least be able to restore their GTA game saves with it. The source is old and would have to be modified to fit the new ps2sdk standard. I had thought about it and looked at the source before but never quite got around to seeing how possible it would be to get it to compile. I myself never really used nPort for anything but I know that its backups are ok it just doesn't restore that preserved attribute. If I ever get around to it and get it working I'll be sure to release my source changes along with the binary.
Good. I believe we have 'nailed' the attribute/timestamp handling, but confirmation of this is still important. I guess most users don't realize this, considering how few reports we have received. They probably think that only errors are important enough to report, but if they all think so then we can NEVER verify that it works properly for all the games that neither you nor I possess.Quote:
Originally Posted by E P
That should work fine.Quote:
As for 'James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing', I took a look and the icon has a file name of 'trc\savegame.icn' which is where the issue is. It's plainly out of our hands though so one will need to use nPort or something else with that one. It may also be possible to backup the 'trc\savegame.icn' to the ps2 hdd restore it manually back to the mc.
I made a temporary mod to the virtual keyboard used for 'rename', and used this to create some rather odd names for files and folders, using backslash and other special characters. Copying those back and forth between MC and PS2 hdd worked very well. As far as I know only colon (':') and forward-slash ('/') will fail to work inside names on these file systems, since they are drive/folder separators. Most other characters work fine, even though they would cause trouble on a PC. (eg: filenames containing quote characters, or leading whitespace, etc.)
Using our methods it should be simple to preserve all attributes, the only risk is that there may be confusion concerning saves made by others.Quote:
Speaking of nPort, I had thought about modifying the program for those that want to at least be able to restore their GTA game saves with it. The source is old and would have to be modified to fit the new ps2sdk standard. I had thought about it and looked at the source before but never quite got around to seeing how possible it would be to get it to compile. I myself never really used nPort for anything but I know that its backups are ok it just doesn't restore that preserved attribute. If I ever get around to it and get it working I'll be sure to release my source changes along with the binary.
This goes two ways of course. The new version needs to know if all the attribute bits in a save are really valid, and the old version might get confused by bits it didn't expect... (Just guessing really ;))
Best regards: dlanor
Yeah, you're right I just found out the nPort format isn't as robust. So much for my earlier thought of a few quick fixes. :( I had thought that the nPort backups retained all the attributes much like X-port.Quote:
Originally Posted by dlanor
Well it didn't matter that I previously deleted all those nPort saves I had made. I stopped using nPort a long time ago and from the looks of it now too many changes would be required to be worth it. So I can scrap that idea all together. I'll stick with X-port's XPS format and uLaunchELF's best format for correctly backing up/restoring all save attributes. I can't see making another alternate format that would be required to do what I wanted in nPort.