requesting more save states.

[psionx]

What should happen

it's not like they use alot of space so I don't see the point in stopping at 5. also the save state folder should have per game sub folders to keep things organized.

Who would this benefit

any game that has hidden items and multiple routes to take.

Platform (if relevant)

No response

Games this would be useful in

ULUS-10286 - Riviera - The Promised Land

Other emulators or software with a similar feature

No response

Checklist

• Check the latest git build in case it's already implemented.
• Search for other requests of the same feature.

[unknownbrackets]

On PC, you can save state to any file you want, so I assume this is for Android. Adding an extra directory would just slow down save states there even more (ugh Android storage access slowness.)

As for the UI, it might be best to comment in #13016 with specific ideas on how this would be shown without making it confusing or complicated to use.

-[Unknown]

[psionx]

ok. didn't see the option because I never use the top menu bar in this emulator. that aside nothing about adding a button at the bottom of a list to add more slots should be complicated or confusing. it shouldn't even need any major UI redesigns.

[hrydgard]

Ok so riddle me this, if you want more slots:

To add more slots, since the screen is full on many devices, we need to either scroll or add pages. It's already very easy to make mistakes and press the wrong button. Squeezing in more buttons for paging would make things even more cramped, while making the view scrollable would increase the risk for mis-clicks by a LOT.

Is it worth that for more slots?

I am considering a complete redesign of the pause screen, but haven't really started that thinking properly yet.

[psionx]

VID_20221104_090400.webm heres a video to show you how much of a non-issue it is to use a small screen with no mis-clicks. you also have the option to use double tap or long press to reduce the odds of problems further.

[LunaMoo]

That video shows nothing, but you using existing ui just to prove your point, but the same UI causes people to missclick between save and load and for example IMO both of those options should be hidden in the additional menu after you click on preview pic which has room to place them much further away and even made bigger.

Also scrolling through extra 10% of the screen that's hidden might feel ok, but it will definitely not be ok if few % is the most you actually see at the time and need to scroll through many pages.

Worst offenders when it comes to UI would IMO be shortcuts for savestates ~ cycling through 5 is very quick and efficient, allowing more through shortcut keys makes it a nightmare and ofc the slow access to files on modern android.

Savestates are just memory dump with state of the emulated hardware at the time, it CAN'T be used to for example unlock more stuff by playing through all branches of the story/player choices it would just overwrite your savedata with the older version at best, at worst would not allow saving at all on old savestates as quite a few PSP games check for it. Definitely not something to enhance your playthrough in games that have hidden items and unlocks.
Also savestates aren't reliable, abusing them simulate situation of never restarting the PSP and games aren't stable enough to run for many hours without breaks. Depending on savestates would be awful even on real hardware, through emulation which is far from perfect and changes all the time it get's even worse, there's no real reason to keep large collection of savestates, especially since most PSP games are modern enough to either have infinite or very large number of savedata and being designed around saving only unlocked stuff and not exact place in game which again savestates could not be used for to unlock more as they keep all game state including what you unlocked at the exact point. Fun stuff they also include all bugs and if emulation improves you'd have to load the game from real in-game save and delete all your old savestates to really get those new fixes in your game.

Instead of abusing savestates and wanting features that encourage to abuse it even more, I'd say we should do the opposite and encourage switching to in-game saves which are reliable and safe way to not only save any routes in games you might want to revisit, but will also work between different emulator versions, different emulators or even real hardware just the same.

On a side note, savestates ARE heavy, collection of savestates can easily take as much as modern PC game vs collection of savedata which takes just a fraction of it, I ocassionally purge mine as I see no value in savestates, they take a lot of space, even more with backups and I find them useful only for creating patches and other cheats.

[hrydgard]

Heh, I did forget that we already scroll there. Which is a little scary. So yeah, it would not be too difficult to add more from that point of view, but the situation isn't ideal.

Anyway, a bigger redesign of the pause screen is planned for some point in the future, and I do agree with LunaMoo that getting too dependent on savestates isn't good - they are never going to be as reliable as proper in-game saves.