Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

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xZabuzax
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Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by xZabuzax »

Why doesn't emulator authors implement the Mac/Os X version approach of Snes9X's Save State/Load State GUI in their emulators? if you haven't seen it then take a look:
Image

That's a feature that was available in Snes9X for Mac in the 90's and is still available today so I find it odd that Windows hasn't come up with an approach similar to that one, the only emulators with an approach a bit similar is PPSSPP and Zsnes (this one looks plain ugly though) but the approach for Snes9X is much better than those 2 and it allows for more "slots" to save the game. This feature can't be that hard to maintain either, I mean if the Mac version of Snes9X was able to maintain that awesome feature for decades then I see no reason why Windows can't do the same.

Any opinions on this matter?
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koitsu
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by koitsu »

Opinions are exactly what you're conveying here.

Maybe consider stuff like this isn't deemed a high priority by users *or* developers? It just means keeping a screenshot of where the save state was along/inside the save state. Whether or not that's worth it is exactly what's described above: an opinion.

If you want MY opinion? This feature is not useful to me.
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tokumaru
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by tokumaru »

I don't consider it particularly useful either. If I'm playing through a game I'll most likely only use 1 or 2 save states, so I don't really need pictures to tell them apart. And in the rare event that I feel the need to keep multiple states from all over my playthrough so I can jump into the middle of the game in the future (how often does anyone really do that?), they'll be chronologically sorted, so I can easily guess which state is near the spot I want.
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by creaothceann »

koitsu wrote:Maybe consider stuff like this isn't deemed a high priority by users *or* developers?
Users are very much concerned with usability though, which mainly means interface design. Just look at how many frontends there are...
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koitsu
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by koitsu »

creaothceann wrote:
koitsu wrote:Maybe consider stuff like this isn't deemed a high priority by users *or* developers?
Users are very much concerned with usability though, which mainly means interface design. Just look at how many frontends there are...
This is somewhat of a strawman argument. We all know usability and UI are important. If it was such an important feature to usability-focused users, why do basically no emulators have it? Could it be that screenshots displayed with stave states isn't deemed a particularly important feature for most people? It's not like this (emulation) is a new thing -- we're going on over 20 years now, folks...
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by rainwarrior »

xZabuzax wrote:Why doesn't emulator authors implement the Mac/Os X version approach of Snes9X's Save State/Load State GUI in their emulators?
A question like this doesn't have a specific answer. Every emulator author has different goals.

It's clear the general trend is just that they don't care about this feature enough to implement it. If you want a literal answer to your question, that answer is pretty clear.

If this is a vague feature request, well you'd get a lot more mileage out of directly asking some specific emulator author to add it for you. You'll likely get the answer you already know, though, i.e. "I don't think it's important".
xZabuzax
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by xZabuzax »

koitsu wrote:Opinions are exactly what you're conveying here.

Maybe consider stuff like this isn't deemed a high priority by users *or* developers? It just means keeping a screenshot of where the save state was along/inside the save state. Whether or not that's worth it is exactly what's described above: an opinion.

If you want MY opinion? This feature is not useful to me.
I understand that this feature might not be useful to you but some users could find it useful even if they don't say anything about it here, there's hundreds (or thousands) of users that are lurkers and never engage in conversations in forums.

In emulators is important to have all the necessary features to make it easier for the user but some emulators can also focus on being "eye-candy" to look pretty with features like this and some users will still find it useful. This is the same as the video filters, what's the point in having so many video filters in an emulator if the majority of the users will only use 2 or 3? in my case I only use 2 filters (mostly 1) and don't really care about the rest so having 10+ video filters in an emulator is not useful to me either, same goes for HD packs, I don't really care about it and some users won't care either but I understand that there's other users that also cares about it. Those other features are mostly "eye-candy" as well and even if I (or some other users) don't find them particularly useful either the features are there to please the users that finds them useful.
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koitsu
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by koitsu »

xZabuzax wrote:I understand that this feature might not be useful to you but some users could find it useful even if they don't say anything about it here, there's hundreds (or thousands) of users that are lurkers and never engage in conversations in forums.
Three things:

1. In no way shape or form am I attempting to diminish the level of importance those users feel this feature would provide them. Rephrased: I totally acknowledge that this feature is important to you, but thus assuming that it is important to others (or to everyone) is a bit of a stretch.

2. We've had 20 years of emulators across a myriad of consoles/systems developed, many (most? half?) of which support save states. There have been, oh I don't know, probably hundreds of thousands of people involved in emulation at this point. Yet, despite that, it is a very rare feature. What does this tell you? (I am legitimately asking you this question. :-) )

3. A user being silent is their choice. Just because they are silent it does not mean that they support this feature, or that they are against it. They effectively choose to have no voice, which is 100% legitimate.

xZabuzax wrote:In emulators is important to have all the necessary features to make it easier for the user but some emulators can also focus on being "eye-candy" to look pretty with features like this and some users will still find it useful. This is the same as the video filters, what's the point in having so many video filters in an emulator if the majority of the users will only use 2 or 3?

Filters are a slightly different situation, but for what it's worth, I am part of what you might call the "anti-filter" crowd. That said, I do find things like blargg's NTSC filters useful when doing things like developing or testing how visual graphics might look on actual hardware (other than doing real-world tests). But I'm not a graphics artist, so this tends to rank extremely low on my list of interests. To graphics artists, it may rank very high, and I think that's legit.

There are some "visually-focused" emulators -- for example, nemulator -- that offer this type of aesthetic in their UIs. But you will find by and large this to be extremely uncommon. Mesen and Mesen-S, as two other examples, offer what is called "Game selection screen", which shows a kind of preview of a game you previously were playing, and you can flip between those ROMs/games clicking or moving left/right (you can currently disable this in Mesen (and I do, via Preferences -> Advanced -> Disable game selection screen) but cannot in Mesen-S). Some people like these features/styles, which is great, but some don't -- which is why I'm glad it's a configurable option. But on the flip side, I find things like this abhorrent, and similarly about HD packs. But that's just my opinion, and mine is worth no more or less than someone else's.

The point I'm making: if users want this feature (save state screenshot previews), then those users should speak up (as you are!). Those users should also be aware that if they want this feature, and the emulator is open-source, it is most likely that they (the users) will have to write the code to do it, including extending the save state format for that emulator to support a screenshot of sorts (thus discussions with the emu author(s) will be necessary because backwards compatibility will need to be ensured). I encourage people wanting this feature to do exactly that. Just please be aware there is probably a reason why this feature is not commonplace, and as someone in these scenes since their inceptions, I can safely tell you that it's because most users don't find it useful/of value and most developers don't see the point in spending the time to write the code for it. (Respectfully, remember that you did ask for opinions on this subject, so...) :-)
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by nocash »

Are that really screenshots, or are the pictures rendered on the fly from the savestate data?
Screenshots would be a bit lame.
On the other hand, on the fly might risk crashes for dozens of reasons.
Either way, it looks nice at first glance, but I am not so sure how much I would like the feature on second glance, especially if it would replace ability to use normal filenames.
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xZabuzax
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by xZabuzax »

koitsu wrote: 2. We've had 20 years of emulators across a myriad of consoles/systems developed, many (most? half?) of which support save states. There have been, oh I don't know, probably hundreds of thousands of people involved in emulation at this point. Yet, despite that, it is a very rare feature. What does this tell you? (I am legitimately asking you this question. :-) )
To be fair, I was a Mac user in the past so I used Snes9X a lot and that feature increased my pleasure even more with the emulator so I still miss it till this day. Now, if I was a Windows user from the beginning then I would probably not have cared for this feature like the rest of you are. The point I'm trying to make is that most of you don't consider this feature important is because most of you probably didn't experienced that type of feature and even if you did and still don't want the feature, other users will still benefit from it and some users may even change their mind after experiencing it. These type of feature is simply not a "trend" in emulators. If more emulator developers applied that same feature when emulators started to become "a thing" in the past then a lot of people would probably be asking for this feature today.
koitsu wrote: 3. A user being silent is their choice. Just because they are silent it does not mean that they support this feature, or that they are against it. They effectively choose to have no voice, which is 100% legitimate.
Totally agree, is just a shame that I'm the only one asking for this feature. I didn't even planned to bring this up but being silent about it won't help the situation either so someone needs to speak up. Just like me there are probably others that wanted to start this up but they could just not be bothered to do it, well I finally did now after decades.
koitsu wrote: Filters are a slightly different situation, but for what it's worth, I am part of what you might call the "anti-filter" crowd. That said, I do find things like blargg's NTSC filters useful when doing things like developing or testing how visual graphics might look on actual hardware (other than doing real-world tests). But I'm not a graphics artist, so this tends to rank extremely low on my list of interests. To graphics artists, it may rank very high, and I think that's legit.
That's understandable, you may not like filters that much and I totally understand that but there are users that do. For some users the more feature an emulator has the better, other likes the simplicity of an emulator.
koitsu wrote: There are some "visually-focused" emulators -- for example, nemulator -- that offer this type of aesthetic in their UIs. But you will find by and large this to be extremely uncommon. Mesen and Mesen-S, as two other examples, offer what is called "Game selection screen", which shows a kind of preview of a game you previously were playing, and you can flip between those ROMs/games clicking or moving left/right (you can currently disable this in Mesen (and I do, via Preferences -> Advanced -> Disable game selection screen) but cannot in Mesen-S). Some people like these features/styles, which is great, but some don't -- which is why I'm glad it's a configurable option. But on the flip side, I find things like this abhorrent, and similarly about HD packs. But that's just my opinion, and mine is worth no more or less than someone else's.
Yeah, some emulators have eye-candy features which isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Yes, I noticed that Mesen and Mesen-S has something similar with the "Game selection screen" which unfortunately only works when you quit the emulator. While this may be useful to some people is not that useful to me, I rather have full control of that feature and open that "Game selection screen" via hotkeys to either save the game or load the games. The author of Mesen can implement that feature pretty easily, the feature is already there after all, he just needs to add a couple of lines of codes to reduce that picture and add more slots in it and allow that window to be opened via hotkeys like "Save Window" and "Load Window" or something and that will be pretty close to the Snes9X approach for Mac.
koitsu wrote: The point I'm making: if users want this feature (save state screenshot previews), then those users should speak up (as you are!). Those users should also be aware that if they want this feature, and the emulator is open-source, it is most likely that they (the users) will have to write the code to do it, including extending the save state format for that emulator to support a screenshot of sorts (thus discussions with the emu author(s) will be necessary because backwards compatibility will need to be ensured). I encourage people wanting this feature to do exactly that. Just please be aware there is probably a reason why this feature is not commonplace, and as someone in these scenes since their inceptions, I can safely tell you that it's because most users don't find it useful/of value and most developers don't see the point in spending the time to write the code for it. (Respectfully, remember that you did ask for opinions on this subject, so...) :-)
Yes, I'm finally speaking up and I hope that other's will do the same in the future. Is just that this feature is not a "trend" in emulators so most people won't find it useful but once they try it out they will probably change their minds. If I was a developer myself I would definitely be implementing this feature to other open source emulators but unfortunately I'm not a developer. I understand that most developers don't see the point in this feature but the same thing can be said for the other features like "HD Packs" or as you pointed out, the "3D" in NES games. You don't like that feature and find it unnecessary but other's love it because a developer finally took action to break that "trend" to do something different.
Last edited by xZabuzax on Sat Aug 10, 2019 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
xZabuzax
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by xZabuzax »

nocash wrote:Are that really screenshots, or are the pictures rendered on the fly from the savestate data?
Screenshots would be a bit lame.
On the other hand, on the fly might risk crashes for dozens of reasons.
Either way, it looks nice at first glance, but I am not so sure how much I would like the feature on second glance, especially if it would replace ability to use normal filenames.
I haven't used a Mac in a long time but if I remember correctly, those are pictures rendered on the fly from the savestate data. Hopefully someone can correct me on this one.

Since you are a developer I won't debate with you over the crashes it may cause because I'm not a programmer but if this feature doesn't crash on a Mac then I see no reason why it would crash in Windows. I used to abuse that feature A LOT in the past in my Mac and it never crashed once.
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by Ghandi »

long time lurker here who was also a mac user in the past. finally someone brought this up and i also agree with this option that zabuza spoke off, thats one of the best things an emulator in a mac did better than windows

i use a window now but believe it or not, that option is very useful and it helps me see the picture of the save states and it avoids issues like having to scroll through different save states and saving it in the wrong one. with a picture you can easily identify which save state you want to replace with the new one, you have no idea how many save states i lost because i couldn't identify my save states or because my kids didn't knew i had saved my games there. this could easily be avoided with a simple picture on my saves so not only does this option looks pretty, this option is actually more beneficial than you think

i'm a hardcore lurker and usually never participate in forums but here i am. since someone finally brought this up i needed to give my 2 cents here. heh
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koitsu
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by koitsu »

Great, two users! The place to start would be here, by submitting a feature request with the snes9x folks. (Please be sure to prefix the summary with Feature request: or something of that nature) Authors of other emulators can be referred to this thread if needed, but the feature submission will need to be done on a per-emulator basis.
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by creaothceann »

For the record, ZSNES does have this feature (accessible via F3 shortcut), it's saved as a 64x56 16-bit (7 KB) screenshot at the end of a savestate.

Super Sleuth also has/had a preview feature; the savestate has a 128x120 16-bit (30 KB) screenshot. I haven't found that feature in kindred though.

EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comm ... emulators/
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xZabuzax
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Re: Save State/Load State GUI in emulators...

Post by xZabuzax »

creaothceann wrote:For the record, ZSNES does have this feature (accessible via F3 shortcut), it's saved as a 64x56 16-bit (7 KB) screenshot at the end of a savestate.

Super Sleuth also has/had a preview feature; the savestate has a 128x120 16-bit (30 KB) screenshot. I haven't found that feature in kindred though.
Yes, I was aware that Zsnes had that feature (I pointed that emulator out in this thread) but the implementation is way too ugly but at least is better than nothing I guess. I was also aware of Super Sleuth having the feature but didn't even bothered to mention that one because is not a popular emulator so a lot of people aren't even aware of it. Who knows there's probably a few other emulators with a similar feature but let's be honest, those emulators are probably not that good so most people aren't even using them either. It would be nice having this feature on the popular emulators, those are the ones that have the potential of making this feature the new "trend" and once that happens the users that thought that this feature is bad will change their minds.

Glad to see another Mac user in the past that also missed that feature here.
Yes, I created that thread there to finally speak up about this. I hate places like Reddit though, it's a cancerous website with that shitty rating system, you can't even have a good debate and people will just downvote you for having a different opinion. Pretty retarded.
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