Hacking M3+Passcard 3 - Saving Question

[dn604]

Hi there,

I have an M3 with a Passcard 3 for my NDS.

I have been playing Mario and Luigi - Partners in Time. I was about 4 hours into a game, saved, turned it off, then on again, it did its memory dump and saved like normal, I ran the game and double checked, save was good. Came back several hours later, turned it back on and loaded the game only to find it had reverted to a save that was only 1:10 in. No idea how this happened.

I noticed something on the next few saves and wasn't sure if this was normal or not, I don't remember it being so.

When you turn on the NDS after saving and it does its memory dump, the gamenames are shortened, ie:

Mario~.dat

I swear it used to display the whole file name.

Hoping someone can answer:
1) Why did my save get lost in the first place.
2) Is that filename shortening (looks like to the 8.3 dos format) normal.

Thanks so much.

-dn

 

[tama_mog]

I know the shortened name happens sometimes but hasn't behaved how you described......only way that would pose a problem is if you have another game on there that's called something like marioxxxxxxxxxxx and it truncated it down to put the save in the wrong save file....but I cannot explain what happened with you checking on the save being ok (because that means it's been written already) and coming back and the save reverting since the sram has been flushed.....now, like I said, if you have another game called marioxxxxxxxxx, then maybe you have 2 active save files going on for the same game and you're loading the wrong one when starting the game.

 

[dn604]

I know the shortened name happens sometimes but hasn't behaved how you described......only way that would pose a problem is if you have another game on there that's called something like marioxxxxxxxxxxx and it truncated it down to put the save in the wrong save file....but I cannot explain what happened with you checking on the save being ok (because that means it's been written already) and coming back and the save reverting since the sram has been flushed.....now, like I said, if you have another game called marioxxxxxxxxx, then maybe you have 2 active save files going on for the same game and you're loading the wrong one when starting the game.

This name shortening is now happen on all games I play and save. I just swear it wasn't happening before this little Mario goof up.

Thanks for the reply.

-dn

 

[FifthE1ement]

These are the times I love to know my SuperCard has instant save function for DS games. I feel for you man...

FifthE1ement

 

[dn604]

These are the times I love to know my SuperCard has instant save function for DS games. I feel for you man...

FifthE1ement

Yeah, hopefully we will see the same functionality on the Passcard soon!

 

[tama_mog]

this doesn't have any bearing on instant saving, fact is he's not saving to the proper file, same thing would happen to the supercard if the save file was missing or you associated the wrong save file.

 

[lornranger]

1) This should not happen. When you reboot, the save gets written to the SD/CF card. How can it go missing then? The only reason(s) I think it happened is you loaded the wrong save, or you had 2 saves of nearly the identical filenames. Another is your SD/CF card is corrupted.

2) This is normal for long filenames.

 

[dn604]

1) This should not happen. When you reboot, the save gets written to the SD/CF card. How can it go missing then? The only reason(s) I think it happened is you loaded the wrong save, or you had 2 saves of nearly the identical filenames. Another is your SD/CF card is corrupted.

2) This is normal for long filenames.

Thanks for everyones replies. Not sure what caused my loss before, everything has been working perfect since. So I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

 

[tama_mog]

1) This should not happen. When you reboot, the save gets written to the SD/CF card. How can it go missing then? The only reason(s) I think it happened is you loaded the wrong save, or you had 2 saves of nearly the identical filenames. Another is your SD/CF card is corrupted.

2) This is normal for long filenames.

I don't agree with #2, it's not normal actually. It has never happened to my m3 lite but I know for my gf's it happens off and on, sometimes it's shortened and sometimes it's not. We both have the same formatting (fat16 64k cluster size) and same firmware.....only difference I can think of is most of my games (if not all) were all patched with v27a instead of the new gm28 and 29....not sure if that has any bearing on the issue though. But she definitely does not lose saves and the only way I can see this having a problem is like I/you mentioned earlier, if 2 games have the same name initially before the ~1 trim...but if it were smart enough like dos systems....it would know to make ~2 and so forth. I'm glad it's working out for dn604 now though.....just make sure when you reset to the main menu....just boot up the game just in case to see if the save is there.

 

[meteora91]

I believe it may have something to do with your skin.

I changed me gba skin just for kicks and when i tried to open gba games, they wouldn't load.
Upon restarting the DS, the shoretened save appeared.

So, maybe just change your skin.