save game and save state problems

Hi all
I have tried to search for this scenario , and reviewed the tutorials on the website but still struggling.
I am playing the WHD version of Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis adventure.
The game itself runs flawlessly.
The issue I have is when I try to save my progress. When I hit F12 - the options for load state or save state are greyed out.
If I insert a save disk in the DF0 removable media (called save game) - I then access the save game option from within the game itself , hit save and allocate a slot , and the save game works perfectly . (ie I can reload the save prior to exiting the emulator)
However when I exit the emulator and restart later , if I then try to load the same save game slot the name I gave is now replaced with "WARNING... old save game" , and receive an error message if I try to run this.
I have tried both the installation and portable version of FS-UAE (am on launcher and arcade 2.7.5dev)
many thanks

[Retro-Nerd]

WHDLoad saves during the game session in Ram only. You have to press the set WHDLoad quitkey or use the official ingame quit option (y/n) and the game is finally saved to hd.

many thanks for this reply however I am still struggling

I looked for more info as to the exit method you specified , however nothing has altered.
I press F10 or even the * as suggested in one of the articles however nothing happens
When I select F12 in game , the load and save state options are still greyed out.
I am using the portable version , and i believe there is no longer a requirement to set a configuration file , only make settings in the launcher , is that correct?
thanks for all the assistance

[Retro-Nerd]

You have to press the * on the numPad. This is the default quitkey for Fate of Atlantis. Though you can set your own global quitkey. Copy the S:whdload.prefs file from this archive into the folder with the FS-UAE Launcher.exe. With a text editor you can open the whdload.prefs file and map your own quitkey using this rawkey codes table ,e.g. Quitkey= $59 which is the F10 key.

http://whdload.de/docs/en/rawkey.html

When I select F12 in game , the load and save state options are still greyed out.

Looks like FS-UAE only support save states for disk image loaded games but not for hd installed. Makes sense, i wouldn't consider it perfectly save to use WinUAE save states for WHDLoad games, although they may work fine for some games.

[FrodeSolheim]

Yes, I disabled the save states for WHDLoad games, because the save states does not (yet) understand the temporary disks created by the launcher, so the (full) paths will be different each time the game is loaded, and if the game keeps a file open when the state is saved, something bad happens when you load it...

https://github.com/FrodeSolheim/fs-uae/issues/51

(This should be fixable by making sure only relative paths are saved in the state files, but currently this isn't so)

[RuySan]

Hi, has any progress been made meanwhile about this issue?

Generally I get a crash after playing for a while after loading a state with a WHDload game.

Retro-Nerd said above that it's safer to quit whdload before exiting emulatation, but I think I get crashed also with this method. Does it make any difference?

Thanks

[malko]

Like for many others adventure games, why use the WHDLoad version when the cracked copy of the game can be played/saved/loaded directly from HD ?
Is there any special reason ?

[Anubis]

Use Amiga files and play game in ScummVM.

If you want to have better experience with Indy 4, find FM Town version of the game.

[wongojack]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

WHDLoad saves during the game session in Ram only. You have to press the set WHDLoad quitkey or use the official ingame quit option (y/n) and the game is finally saved to hd.

I'm trying to understand this. I understand that save states are not reliable when using WHDLoad, but the game I am playing let's me use a save disk. If I am interpreting this correctly, then I need to quit WHDLoad manually to tell it to save the data from ram to the actual file on disk.

This post is from 2015, so I am wondering if this is still true. If so, what is the "quitkey" by default? * on the numpad doesn't seem to work as was suggested in this thread - looks like this was specific to an individual game.

I am playing Sensible World of Soccer, and it seems there is no specific way to quit back to the OS in the game. I tried configuring a WHDLoad quitkey using the file whdload.prefs as described above, but it seems that whatever key I specify in the file doesn't do anything when the emulation is running. WHDLoad does specify that you can press DEL to quit on its splash screen, but when I press this, the save data is not retained on the virtual disk.

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by wongojack

I'm trying to understand this. I understand that save states are not reliable when using WHDLoad, but the game I am playing let's me use a save disk. If I am interpreting this correctly, then I need to quit WHDLoad manually to tell it to save the data from ram to the actual file on disk.

This post is from 2015, so I am wondering if this is still true. If so, what is the "quitkey" by default? * on the numpad doesn't seem to work as was suggested in this thread - looks like this was specific to an individual game.

I am playing Sensible World of Soccer, and it seems there is no specific way to quit back to the OS in the game. I tried configuring a WHDLoad quitkey using the file whdload.prefs as described above, but it seems that whatever key I specify in the file doesn't do anything when the emulation is running. WHDLoad does specify that you can press DEL to quit on its splash screen, but when I press this, the save data is not retained on the virtual disk.

Quitkey doesn't work on 68000 machines with every game, but this was fixed in SWOS slave version 2.0 http://whdload.de/games/SWOS.html

WHDLoad can save without quitting using NoWriteCache option, but it will be very slow https://whdload.de/docs/en/opt.html#NoWriteCache

[wongojack]

Originally Posted by Aardvark

Quitkey doesn't work on 68000 machines with every game, but this was fixed in SWOS slave version 2.0 http://whdload.de/games/SWOS.html

WHDLoad can save without quitting using NoWriteCache option, but it will be very slow https://whdload.de/docs/en/opt.html#NoWriteCache

Thank you - I'll say that I don't really understand WHDLoad. I started using FS-UAE because it was supported natively. I don't really know what to do with an .lha file.

Somewhere along the way, I downloaded a folder of WHDLoad .zip files. It has sub folders for Demos, Games, and Magazines. Any idea where I would have gotten this? From reading the readme inside Sensi, it seems that I have version 1.7 of this particular install which is not the latest, so I could update and try again.

I also read that saving is not supported with .zip files for WHDLoad, but I assumed I would be working around this by specifying a floppy disk.

So, thinking that the file being zipped was my problem, I extracted the zip, but whenever I try to unzip and point FS-UAE at the extracted folder, it won't load. Even if I type the name of the extracted 'slave' into the arguments line, it doesn't work. FS-UAE says it can't find the slave.

[wongojack]

I tried a pre-loaded image for SensibleWorldOfSoccer9697_v2.1_0842 and now when I interact with the save disk options from the menu it simply says "Disk Error," so with this version I cannot save at all. I tried multiple blank disks (Created with Win UAE) and the included save disk with FSUAE and they all gave me a "Disk Error."

Edit - it turns out that for v2.1 of SWOS9697, you don't need to specify a floppy through the game interface. Just continue when the game asks for a save disk and don't worry about what is in DF0: As long as I use the "QuitKey" (which is delete by default now) then the save data will persist between sessions.

[Senjin]

I think the confusion exists because there are different save systems.

For WHDLoad games: A game can have a save functionality itself. When you use that in-game save, the game will save to a virtual floppy (in df0) or perhaps it can save on the harddisk. It might not tell you at all, it depends on how the game is programmed.
Now to prevent your floppy or harddrive from getting messed up by save data, WHDLoad caches these save operations in memory and doesn't actually write them to disk. (floppy or harddisk). You don't even need a disk in the drive, it's all virtual. It only writes the save once you actually exit through either the WHDLoad quit button or if the game has an exit function.
It saves these to the set WHDLoad saves directory. Once you start the game again it'll put them back where they're supposed to be. A virtual floppy or on the harddrive.
This WHDLoad exit key can be specified in the WHDLoad settings file. I don't know if FS-UAE has one but I imagine so. If you don't specify the WHDLoad exit key. Each game can specify it's own. This is registered in the games .slave file and will be displayed on screen in the WHDLoad popup when you start the game.

If you don't use WHDLoad, but adf disk images for example, and still want to use the in-game save functionality (like intended back in the day), you'll have to go the proper way with a save floppy image in the drive. Possibly formatted. Or it might be able to save on harddisk. It depends on the game and how it's programmed. This will save immediately and not use the cached writes the WHDLoad system uses.

Now aside from all that there are save-states. Which means the emulator will take a snapshot of the memory and 'state' it is in and save it to a file. And that is what you get when you press F12 and save or load a state there. This however doesn't work with WHDLoad games (because of the use of a virtual harddisk), and then it's greyed out.

These different save systems aren't compatible with each other. If you save through WHDLoad, you can't load your save as a snapshot through the F12 menu. It's different ways of storing your save data.