Save Games Archive

[Artemio Urbina]

I was playing MKR on my Sat yesterday (remembering that I had all the jewels and had the great idea to save just before finghting the final boss and only got the extras up to the Black Diary at the rainbow shop) and wondered... Is there any site with Saturn savegames actually FULLy working? I think now, why don't we start one? we have all re resources here... I could host it if necessary.

 

[Captian Crazy]

I was thinking the samething ! but wouldnt it be possiable to make a "Dex Drive" like device for saturn memory cards ? But how would be get the saved games to the saturn ?

 

[Artemio Urbina]

With the AR+ you can connect it to the PC Commslink card and download/upload to the PC. I believe I saw somewhere the pinout to connect the AR to the common parallel port of the PC, will search in my personal archive for that data.

 

[FLEABttn]

Quote: from Captian Crazy on 6:50 pm on Mar. 3, 2002

I was thinking the samething ! but wouldnt it be possiable to make a "Dex Drive" like device for saturn memory cards ? But how would be get the saved games to the saturn ?

Via the Netlink. A save game database is located here:

http://www.planetweb.com/gamexch/

 

[Artemio Urbina]

I don't have a Sat Netlink, and have tried it before, but most of the files sent by mail are empty. Have tried even uudecode on them (as well as a lot of mail agents), and has sometimes worked... but most of the archive there is dead.

=(

 

[AmyGrrl]

Yes.. I have the same problem with my netlink... what we need is a simple e-mail program to e-mail save files to the net link... I know if I use Oulook Express... I can't e-mail my saves back... it says I have an attached file.... but I can't retrieve it

 

[Captian Crazy]

Ah, i know this sounds silly ^_^ but how bout we get some requests for saves started

 

[noob]

As far as I understood, the only real way you could use the Netlink to upload saves is by having a data converter of some sort that Planetweb had come up with.... As for using the PAR, there are so VERY few people with PARs _and_ the hardware to hook it up to a computer that it might not be worth the time and effort. Perhaps I'll give Planetweb an E-mail and ask them if they still have the script that they used to upload the saves with. TTFN

Noob

 

[AmyGrrl]

It's easy to send save files back and forth to the netlink... you just e-mail them.... but the main problem is... that when e-mailing the files back... the netlink has troubles seeing the file... it says there is an attachment... but you can't get to it... I think the problem is... that porgrams like outlook express adds a bunch of newer info... the netlink doesn't understand...

 

[Artemio Urbina]

That is quite possible.....

*sigh* there goe sthe idea then...

 

[TakaIsSilly]

You could allways develop a simpler aproach. One could compile a CD with save games and a program what would write them to memory ^^;. Ah, if only we could figure out the Comm Port to send bits out of that particular port, tere would be no more need for an AR or NetLink.

Another nice ideia would be a way to compress Save States in the Saturn memory (to make them take less blocks while you play other games). Can anyone tell how mutch a .zip compresses a really big Save Game? (for example the SF3 ones)

 

[slinga]

I'm interested in this idea...I really want a save game for Fire Pro Wrestling: 6 Man Scramble. I had one, but my saturn went kaput and took my save with it =(

 

[AmyGrrl]

I'd like to have a place to get game saves also.. then ppl who have Netlink's or PAR w/COMM Card can get saves..... but I think someone will need to write a simple e-mail program that is very basic so it'll work probly with the netlink....

 

[AmyGrrl]

or maybe we can do something like the planet web site does... for e-mailing saves..

 

[Gear]

What about using any gameshark-compatible cart to let you "beat" the game until the point you want to save, then use the save without any code.

 

[antime]

Someone could try putting the savegames on a webserver and serve them with the mimetype "application/x-planetweb-app-segasavedgame" as it seems this is what the Netlink software wants.

As for connecting an Action Replay to the parallel port, I found this doc http://www.geocities.com/Silicon....ynk.zip that is aimed for PSX developing, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with the Saturn too. You'd have to write your own software, though. (The site the doc is from is http://phatt.hn.org/nitrous/psxdocs.htm)

 

[antime]

Right, I decided to try it myself. Someone with a Netlink set up, please go to http://www.helsinki.fi/~ammonton/sega/index.html and try to download the saves there. I don't know if you can download saves via the browser, but it's worth a try.

The mails you get from the Planetweb archive do contain the saved games, but unfortunately the MIME headers they use are corrupt, that's why the mails appear empty. If you can save the mail in an "unformatted" way (I had to manually extract them from my Unix mail-spool), save the stuff that's between the "--==pw_boundary==" headers into a separate file and then use a base64-decoding tool to extract the save. I used WinZip 8 under Windows, but any tool understanding base64 should do.

 

[ExCyber]

That Homelynk thing sure has a lot of hardware for needing a bidirectional port. The Freewing interface (probably the nibble mode interface mentioned in the Homelynk doc) only needs two more 74xx circuits, works with unidirectional ports, and has some software already written for it (the Caetla tools for PSX, and I think SSLINK for Saturn supports it too). It's probably a bit slower though, since it multiplexes the return byte. If you want to write some Saturn-side software that uses the cable, keep in mind that the commslink addresses are in different places on the Datel and EMS AR units. I'd say what the addresses are, but that info is on my main PC which is dead at the moment.

If someone really wants to know, let me know and I'll figure it out again; hopefully my memory is good enough to make it relatively easy...

 

[Artemio Urbina]

Quote: from antime on 8:35 am on Mar. 7, 2002

Right, I decided to try it myself. Someone with a Netlink set up, please go to http://www.helsinki.fi/~ammonton/sega/index.html and try to download the saves there. I don't know if you can download saves via the browser, but it's worth a try.

The mails you get from the Planetweb archive do contain the saved games, but unfortunately the MIME headers they use are corrupt, that's why the mails appear empty. If you can save the mail in an "unformatted" way (I had to manually extract them from my Unix mail-spool), save the stuff that's between the "--==pw_boundary==" headers into a separate file and then use a base64-decoding tool to extract the save. I used WinZip 8 under Windows, but any tool understanding base64 should do.

Not all of them are ok,I use linux a lot, and have tried everything, and sometimes it has worked (am mentioned before mangling the headers and getting uudecode to make the job) an dit has worked, but several times (60%) there is no more data than the header in there.

Taka:

Well, I think that is a pretty good idea, I will play around with that this weeken to try and find out if I can move something from the CD to the cart or SS (I don't think it will be that difficult, doing dumps from RAM we are able to dump the saves)

Great idea. Will attempt something this weekend (If I have toime (that means no problems in TV stations now)).

Good luck all

 

[antime]

Well, I finally set up my Netlink and unfortunately downloading savegames through the browser doesn't work. After downloading the save, the browser crashes with a black screen. Fortunately none of the other saves seemed affected by this.

This was tested with the Finnish 2.0 browser, but I assume other versions behave identically.