Hacking Need help with Dragon Quest IX Savefile.

[mewithoutYou52]

Hi, I apologize for my question in advance, as it may be really stupid.

I put about 40 hours into Dragon Quest IX, playing on my M3DS Real, and really love the game. I had a friend come stay with me for a week and wanted her to try it out, so I copied the save file to my computer to back it up, as I didn't know there was a backup feature already available straight from the M3DS Real software. Anyway, I renamed the file dragon quest ix.bak from the original dragon quest ix.sav.

My friend played the game a little and left this morning. I took the save file that she made and moved it to my hard drive. I moved my original save file back to the SD card and renamed it back to dragon quest ix.sav. When I load the game, it does not say "Save file does not exist. Creating one." so obviously it's seeing the file there, but when I am inside the game, I don't see an option to load game. It only is giving me the option to create a new game.

Is my save file corrupted? It's hard for me to believe that I could have damaged it simply by changing the extension. Is there anything I can do to rescue my file?

Thanks in advance for all your help. Been a big fan of this site for a long time.

 

[Joe88]

Misnamed it seems, its creating a new sav file becuase it doesnt see the old one

make sure both the rom and save file are named exactly the same (this includes upper and lower case)

 

[mewithoutYou52]

It's not creating a new save file. It just isn't reading the data properly.

I've double and triple checked the name, even going so far to rename both the rom and the sav file simple identical names to verify the fact.

Thank you for the fast reply, though.

 

[dsrules]

does your pc has hide file extension disabled? try delete the .sav at the end of the filename and see if it still says "sav file" under Type (next to Name Date)

or

if you and her used Sakura to play, maybe you could use it's Restore Save feature to get it back depending how many times she had played

the game should be still in the Quick Launch, if not
highlight the game then push X or Y to enter game Config menu, push B to go back
push Select to enter Quick Launch menu, highlight the game and push Start will gives you a list of save points to restore

it might be possible to restore a Save that's even a yr old

 

[mewithoutYou52]

I'm not sure what Sakura is, but I'm pretty sure we didn't use it.

I'm using Ubuntu, so I don't have any file extensions hidden. When I take off the .sav, it is no longer a save file.

Any other ideas?

 

[dsrules]

then what are you using to play your games? if it shows 8 icons to choose when you boot up the M3Real then you are using Touchpod

another idea would be try rename file shorter, less than 8 characters

or upload your save file and we could test if the save actually works on our side or not

 

[mewithoutYou52]

Here's my save file.

Thanks so much for offering to help.

https://www.yousendit.com/download/dklxak96SEJ3TGl4dnc9PQ

 

[dsrules]

tested your save file in an EMU and it comes up empty (New Game), did she deleted your save before you back it up????????????

 

[mewithoutYou52]

No, I backed it up myself before she even got here. All I did was rename the file from .sav to .bak and then back to .sav. I don't understand why it would be corrupt.

 

[dsrules]

not sure about how it got corrupted, but the only way to get it back now is IF you had used Sakura to play the game

this is how Sakura looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wMwwSOu49g

 

[Haloman800]

If you can't get yours back, check out the DQIX save file editor on the site.

 

[mewithoutYou52]

Using the editor is what I'm going to do, as this save file looks like a lost cause. I opened it up in the editor and it's all gibberish.

I'll just attempt to get all the levels back to similar places and try to beat the game again.

Thanks for all the suggestions.