[SOLVED] -- Sound lost with specific saved state

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SeanMeh
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[SOLVED] -- Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by SeanMeh »

EDIT -- Thanks all for the responses and advice. I wasn't able to verify Gonzo's solution due to a ROM incompatibility (I'm guessing), but it definitely should work if anyone else happens across this problem.

---

So... I was playing Secret of Evermore, using save states rather than the game's built in save functionality. I got to a point where I'd messed up, decided to go back to the previous save state and speed through a bunch of dialog that I'd just read (using the ~ key). By the time I was done fast-forwarding, the sound had stopped working.

Unknowing of the problem at the time, I figured I just needed to fiddle with sound settings, maybe restart. Fiddling with the sound settings didn't work, so I saved the state (big mistake here) and restarted. Turns out, sound is lost specifically for my one save-state. I can start the game over and I have sound.

I was able to find one thread where someone else had this problem, but at his request the thread was locked before anyone had time to post an actual solution.

I have little knowledge of how emulators work under the hood, and would appreciate some guidance as to how this problem can be fixed. If it comes down to having to start over from the beginning of the game, I'll just play some other game instead.

I'm not sure what other information I can provide that would be useful, but will be happy to provide it upon request if anyone's interested in helping me solve this issue.
Last edited by SeanMeh on Mon Sep 17, 2012 1:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Gonzo
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Re: Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by Gonzo »

What should work is if you load from the save state where the sound isn't working, then save in game, then reset the game. Now if you load that save file(not the save state) then the sound should be working.
Last edited by Gonzo on Mon Sep 17, 2012 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
SeanMeh
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Re: Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by SeanMeh »

Hey. Good thought. I'll give that a try then update this post.

EDIT:

Seems I've run into a different problem. After changing maps to a new area right after the spot I'm at in this particular save state, I'm met with a black screen and no evidence the game is running (although I can reload from the save-state via F4). I did some searching, and it seems Secret of Evermore has problems with the current version of ZSNES. Apparently, the fact that I've not encountered this black-screen problem until now is miraculous.

It seems that right up until the point where the display fails, the game runs a bit choppy.

I'm unable to verify that the solution to the sound problem works, but it really sounds like it would (and I'm a bit ashamed I didn't think of it myself, to be honest). ;P
paulguy
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Re: Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by paulguy »

You can move the .srm file to another emulator. Assuming the save data isn't invalid in some way, you'll be able to continue on just fine.

Edit: damn android's handling of periods.
Maybe these people were born without that part of their brain that lets you try different things to see if they work better. --Retsupurae
Gil_Hamilton
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Re: Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by Gil_Hamilton »

SeanMeh wrote:So... I was playing Secret of Evermore, using save states rather than the game's built in save functionality. I got to a point where I'd messed up, decided to go back to the previous save state and speed through a bunch of dialog that I'd just read (using the ~ key). By the time I was done fast-forwarding, the sound had stopped working.

Unknowing of the problem at the time, I figured I just needed to fiddle with sound settings, maybe restart. Fiddling with the sound settings didn't work, so I saved the state (big mistake here) and restarted. Turns out, sound is lost specifically for my one save-state. I can start the game over and I have sound.

I was able to find one thread where someone else had this problem, but at his request the thread was locked before anyone had time to post an actual solution.

I have little knowledge of how emulators work under the hood, and would appreciate some guidance as to how this problem can be fixed. If it comes down to having to start over from the beginning of the game, I'll just play some other game instead.

I'm not sure what other information I can provide that would be useful, but will be happy to provide it upon request if anyone's interested in helping me solve this issue.
Obligatory warning: Using state saves exclusively is dangerous.

As you've found out, if there's a glitch somewhere that leads to a crash, a state save will preserve the conditions that lead to that crash. A regular save will not. If the game crashes, you can reset it and reload the in-game save and all is well.
It's also a lot easier to state save in an unwinnable situation than it is to regular-save in an unwinnable situation.

I personally recommend using regular saves as your primary save mechanism and states only as temporary placeholders.



As far as under the hood goes... in theory, an emulator recreates the behavior of the original system as closely as possible. Think of the running emulator as an SNES with the video cable plugged into your emulator window/monitor(or in ZSNES' case, a bootleg SNES that manages to behave close enough to the real thing more often than not).

A state save is a copy of the SNES' RAM and, umm, state at the time you hit save. It's like... well, it's like making a copy of your running SNES and shooting it with a time-stopper ray at the same time.

When you load the state, it restores all that information. It's like turning off the time stopper so that SNES can start running again as if nothing happened. It's COMPLETELY unaware of anything that happened while it was frozen. As far as it's concerned, there was no interruption and this is all one really long game session.
Squall_Leonhart wrote:
You have your 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s, 64s, and 128s(crash course in binary counting!). But no 1s.
DirectInput represents all bits, not just powers of 2 in an axis.
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SeanMeh
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Re: Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by SeanMeh »

paulguy wrote:You can move the .srm file to another emulator. Assuming the save data isn't invalid in some way, you'll be able to continue on just fine.
That's what I've ended up doing. I have a "natural" save from about (sigh) five hours prior to the save state. On the bright side, it allows me to correct some of the mistakes I made previously.

Gil_Hamilton wrote: Obligatory warning: Using state saves exclusively is dangerous.

As you've found out, if there's a glitch somewhere that leads to a crash, a state save will preserve the conditions that lead to that crash. A regular save will not. If the game crashes, you can reset it and reload the in-game save and all is well.
It's also a lot easier to state save in an unwinnable situation than it is to regular-save in an unwinnable situation.

I personally recommend using regular saves as your primary save mechanism and states only as temporary placeholders.



As far as under the hood goes... in theory, an emulator recreates the behavior of the original system as closely as possible. Think of the running emulator as an SNES with the video cable plugged into your emulator window/monitor(or in ZSNES' case, a bootleg SNES that manages to behave close enough to the real thing more often than not).

A state save is a copy of the SNES' RAM and, umm, state at the time you hit save. It's like... well, it's like making a copy of your running SNES and shooting it with a time-stopper ray at the same time.

When you load the state, it restores all that information. It's like turning off the time stopper so that SNES can start running again as if nothing happened. It's COMPLETELY unaware of anything that happened while it was frozen. As far as it's concerned, there was no interruption and this is all one really long game session.
Yep. Definitely learned my lesson about relying heavily on save-states.

I understand the general gist of how an emulator works. For the most part -- as a web developer focusing my career in Ruby on Rails -- I just have no idea how to write the kinda code that makes ZSNES work its magic. I don't have any experience with rendering graphics, and so the thought of writing code that emulates a Super Nintendo is still "magic" to me. ;P
Gil_Hamilton
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Re: Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by Gil_Hamilton »

SeanMeh wrote:I understand the general gist of how an emulator works. For the most part -- as a web developer focusing my career in Ruby on Rails -- I just have no idea how to write the kinda code that makes ZSNES work its magic. I don't have any experience with rendering graphics, and so the thought of writing code that emulates a Super Nintendo is still "magic" to me. ;P
Never mind, then.
Lot of people come in with an "I know nothing about computers at all" approach, so... lacking context, I assume the bare minimum.



...

Some lead in with an announcement that they don't know anything about computers, and append some variant of "And I'm proud of it, you loser nerds!" to the sentiment. As you can imagine, even if we still wanted to help, that refusal to learn so much as how to find where they saved the damn files does not make it possible. Makes me want to kill.
Squall_Leonhart wrote:
You have your 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s, 64s, and 128s(crash course in binary counting!). But no 1s.
DirectInput represents all bits, not just powers of 2 in an axis.
KHDownloads
paulguy
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Re: [SOLVED] -- Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by paulguy »

Eh, don't get too upset about them. They'll be the ones who can't help themselves, and lose their saves and whatever else they end up screwing up, and/or having to pay someone who does know what they're doing to help them, because they prefer ignorance. (Although, that ignorance is kind of killing the technological world for people who want more out of their electronics.)
Maybe these people were born without that part of their brain that lets you try different things to see if they work better. --Retsupurae
Gil_Hamilton
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Re: [SOLVED] -- Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by Gil_Hamilton »

paulguy wrote:Eh, don't get too upset about them. They'll be the ones who can't help themselves, and lose their saves and whatever else they end up screwing up, and/or having to pay someone who does know what they're doing to help them, because they prefer ignorance. (Although, that ignorance is kind of killing the technological world for people who want more out of their electronics.)
I find it as symptomatic of a problem with society at large(at least in the US).
There should be no circumstances under which someone feels PROUD of their ignorance. Not in computers, not in science, not in anything.

And that's why it bothers me. It's not an individual case, they're a lightning rod for my largely impotent wrath for an entire nation full of willfully ignorant people.
Squall_Leonhart wrote:
You have your 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s, 64s, and 128s(crash course in binary counting!). But no 1s.
DirectInput represents all bits, not just powers of 2 in an axis.
KHDownloads
SeanMeh
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Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2012 12:32 am

Re: Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by SeanMeh »

Gil_Hamilton wrote:
SeanMeh wrote:I understand the general gist of how an emulator works. For the most part -- as a web developer focusing my career in Ruby on Rails -- I just have no idea how to write the kinda code that makes ZSNES work its magic. I don't have any experience with rendering graphics, and so the thought of writing code that emulates a Super Nintendo is still "magic" to me. ;P
Never mind, then.
Lot of people come in with an "I know nothing about computers at all" approach, so... lacking context, I assume the bare minimum.



...

Some lead in with an announcement that they don't know anything about computers, and append some variant of "And I'm proud of it, you loser nerds!" to the sentiment. As you can imagine, even if we still wanted to help, that refusal to learn so much as how to find where they saved the damn files does not make it possible. Makes me want to kill.
Seriously? You see people like that here? That sounds like something that would be more of a caricature than an actual personality. Although, I have had co-workers back in my food-service days that wouldn't let their kids anywhere near a computer, never mind the fact that nearly every well-paying career requires some level of computer skills. >.>
Gil_Hamilton
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Re: [SOLVED] -- Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by Gil_Hamilton »

100% serious.
Squall_Leonhart wrote:
You have your 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s, 64s, and 128s(crash course in binary counting!). But no 1s.
DirectInput represents all bits, not just powers of 2 in an axis.
KHDownloads
grinvader
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Re: [SOLVED] -- Sound lost with specific saved state

Post by grinvader »

It happened, sadly.
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