Fusion3.51 saving issues

So I'm rather frustrated. Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell you, my good man. I'm frustrated because Fusion 3.51 isn't loading the gmae I had been playing in Shining Force 1.

Now, this is very strange to me, because it had no problem loading up my saved game in Shining Force 2. I would fight the battles, save the game, shut down the emulator, and come back sometime later and load it up again, and it worked fine.

Until now. Now, NEITHER ONE is working properly. I boot up Fusion, load the ROMs I had been using, and it does not recognize that I have a saved game anywhere.

I would swear that I haven't messed with anything other than the button scheme, and so I really have no idea what has caused it to do this. All I remember changing was moving all of my ROMs, in their respective folders, over to another folder, and added an image file so that my thumbnails would look pretty. And I don't know WHY that would throw it off, but that's the only thing I can think of that might have done it.

You got a better idea?

So, I need to do some troubleshooting and I need YOU to help me do it. Please be detailed, because I'm only a novice in this field. I don't even know if I'm supposed to name my saved file Shining Force or Shining Force.srm for certain.

I'm running windows XP and have access to all the original files involved.

This is a pretty weird problem that no one has ever been able to fully answer..
Every once in a while it happens to someone who stuff has been working fine, for whatever reason. I've never heard of a definite cause but have experienced it myself, and my brother had it happen to him a lot many years ago..

The best advice I can give is to try using save states instead of the in-game save mechanism. It's a bandaid, but it may work well enough for most people not to care.

By "save states," you mean the downloaded save states from various websites, yes? Or do you mean the save state function on Fusion 3.51? Because I thought that it would tell me I could only use that for segaCD images or something.

Anyway, if it's really that much trouble, couldn't I just use a different emulator? I already have a save state downloaded for the chapter I was on. I'm trying to get it to work on Gens and Fusion, but to no success. I'll work on it though, and maybe try more emulators if I have to.

So using Fusion for this is probably out of the question, and my game is probably lost. Is there a way to load up my Fusion game on a different emulator? If so, could one of you give me detailed instructions on how to do it correctly, ie, where to place my srm and sdm files, what to name them, things like that. In the meantime, I'mm try and figure it out on my own.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

I have no experience trying to move savestates from one emulator to the next.. There may be a problem with that in general as different coders may use differenth methods and file structures.

So at this point, yeah you could try using a downloaded savestate for Fusion, or restarting and seeing if savestates will work properly. Or you could try using a different emulator as well.

Aside from that your other option is to lookup the official support forum for Kega Fusion. I think that stuff is based at Eidelon's Inn.

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I have no experience trying to move savestates from one emulator to the next.. There may be a problem with that in general as different coders may use differenth methods and file structures.

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That's what I would have thought, but the site I got them from said otherwise. Said it would work with any emulaor, except Gens, and it gave me a seperate file for Gens. It said all I would have to do was rename it to whatever the game was, but it didn't work, and that's a real shame.

I'm just going to start over, unless someone can come up with a solution pretty soon :s I only spent about 2-3 hours or so, it's jsut that I got lucky with level-ups and that's a real shame to lose out on.

Did you make sure the file names were exactly/case sensitive? including any other symbols and spaces that may be on the original ROM/CD-Image name?

One trick is to highlight your rom/cd-image in explorer like you are going to rename it, and then copy the filename (except for the extension of course) and then paste that as the new name for the save state file.. Also make sure it is in the correct path that is specified for savestates in your emulator options

yeah, use a saved state, oh, and by the way, i was in the very same situation with shining force, its and excellent game though,

I sometimes get this problem. What I do is make sure that the srm files are set to that said folder. I had this problem with shining force as well, but fixed it by doing that. I don't really understand why it happened, but it worked for me.

Oh wow, how rude of me; I never thanked you for your help, Zach. You see, after your last message I was on the brink of giving up, but I tried like 4-5 different genesis emulators and messed with a TON of thigns for several hours, before I finally got it to work. It's all too complicated and obfuscated to go into, so I will just thank you for the help you gave me.

By the way guys, use Gens. Not Gens+. Use gens. There is sometimes a strange problem where, if you leave the sound off, it will freeze when you pick up an item or make a selective action, and it won't resume until you turn sound on again. It's very strange, but I can assure you it is the best choice of a Genesis emulator. At least you won't magically lose your saved files like you would with Fusion.

Anyway, thanks a lot, Zach and you others.

Well, the beauty of having multiple emulators is that someone can always find something that works.. But as far as the best emulator goes, I respectfully disagree. Fusion has always worked great for me, and is also the most accurate (noi hacks/shortcuts etc) especially for sound.

Sorry that you had problems with it tho.. It just goes with the territory with PC's because no two computers are really exactly the same due to all the variable :)