Hacking How is the chance to have the existing Gateway saves to work with CIA?

player0

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From a technical point of view, is the barrier large or small? As far as I know they are both generic encrypted save files?
I am about to start a game from the beginning again because I have just installed it as CIA but I had played more than a hundred hours when it was on Gateway.
 

piratesephiroth

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Well, it's just a dumb theory but maybe you could convert you rom to card2, get the gateway save file from the SD card and shove it inside the rom.
Hopefully the game would work fine and SaveDataFiler would be able to read it
 

Queno138

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Well, it's just a dumb theory but maybe you could convert you rom to card2, get the gateway save file from the SD card and shove it inside the rom.
Hopefully the game would work fine and SaveDataFiler would be able to read it

after conversion, header changes.
so the rom won't be able to read the original save itself.
I've tried.
 
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player0

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I checked the save file sizes are different. Unless I know the file structure of the gateway saves, I can't really do any cutting and pasting
 

gamesquest1

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basically from a technical point of view it should be fairly easy for gateway to load up the card1 saves sooner, as it works now card1 game saves only load when the game itself is started, if they where to change it so the save is loaded as the rom is selected from the multi-rom menu this should allow save data filer to pretty much convert any save from any format to any format (.3ds<->.3dz<->.cia)

now im not sure if gateways planned "revised save system" will make this change, but idk it sounds like it would be simple enough to change
 

player0

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basically from a technical point of view it should be fairly easy for gateway to load up the card1 saves sooner, as it works now card1 game saves only load when the game itself is started, if they where to change it so the save is loaded as the rom is selected from the multi-rom menu this should allow save data filer to pretty much convert any save from any format to any format (.3ds<->.3dz<->.cia)

now im not sure if gateways planned "revised save system" will make this change, but idk it sounds like it would be simple enough to change

Wait why does Gateway need to change anything? Isn't it just a matter of understanding the file structure of the Gateway saves and convert that into CIA saves (which are essentially 3DS backup saves?)
 

gamesquest1

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Wait why does Gateway need to change anything? Isn't it just a matter of understanding the file structure of the Gateway saves and convert that into CIA saves (which are essentially 3DS backup saves?)
well saves are encrypted....unless you can decrypt them you cant just swap them to a different format....so again the only way you could do it is with savedatafiler....so you would be in the exact same situation i.e you cant load them up for decryption in savedatafiler unless it can detect card1 games which it currently can't
 

player0

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well saves are encrypted....unless you can decrypt them you cant just swap them to a different format....so again the only way you could do it is with savedatafiler....so you would be in the exact same situation i.e you cant load them up for decryption in savedatafiler unless it can detect card1 games which it currently can't

Ok, so from what you are saying, retail cards/Gateway red card (even for the same game) saves into different format then the CIA/digital versions? It is not Gateway who changed the saves file structure?

Thats news to me. Because I thought CIAs are just a repack of ROMs? How does that change the save file format?
 

The Real Jdbye

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Ok, so from what you are saying, retail cards/Gateway red card (even for the same game) saves into different format then the CIA/digital versions? It is not Gateway who changed the saves file structure?

Thats news to me. Because I thought CIAs are just a repack of ROMs? How does that change the save file format?
CIAs use a console unique encryption key where carts use a cartridge unique encryption key.
 

gamesquest1

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its not so save format, as much the container.....both different types of container are encrypted, except you can decrypt the .cia installed games saves using sdf, but as sdf currently cant access the saves on card1 games, there's no way to extract the raw save contents to be able to inject them to a different container

basically think of it as 3 different size sd card, you cant just clone one card to another as they are using different types of file system, now card2 and cia games are readable by save data filer so you can copy the files off and copy them to the other type of save, but with card1 games currently there is no way to access the filesystem to actually copy the save off

(thats not the technical way it works, but its a similar setup)
 
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fatboynate

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Okay so what if i wanted to use my oras save from my redcard on my oras cia? i have the save backed up with datafiler so it should just be a case of importing it to the cia version right?
 

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