Might take a break from PSO for a while...

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byte.me
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Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

I've corrupted my save again! This is the second time this month, and I doubt it's because of the fact that I have a 3rd party memory card.

The first time was about a week ago. I was in a group and doing TTF on Hard. We restocked and as I was leaving the bank, I received message, saying something like "The line was disconnected..." All I could do was press Start and it booted me out of the group, and the next thing it said was that one of my files was corrupted. Had no choice but to delete the save, else I can't get to the PSO main menu.

The second time happened between 1600 and 1630 GMT+8 (right before this post). I was playing with Danger Bot and we just finished a game on Episode II. He was about to leave and I was trying to say my thanks for helping me out and goodbye, but nothing's coming out when I hit Enter on the keytroller. I thought my internet got disconnected, but when I checked on my PC it's still working fine. Symbols still come out, though. Anyway, I checked if I could still talk with the guy that appraises unknown items in the shop and he still talked. The thing I did that was stupid was try the other shops -- ones that make you save before leaving. It was until then that the same message above reappeared, and it told me that one of my files was corrupted. Just my luck. I should've just restarted my 'Cube.

I was nearly level 40 the first time it happened, and on the second time I just reached 42. Sucks that you can't back up your saves to another memory card, either, and the /save and /restore commands don't work. I don't have a Wii, so there's no easy way around copying PSO saves. That's why if your messages don't show in your game online, just hit the reset button on the 'Cube, because you'll corrupt your file if it tries to save. It's just frustrating this happened to me again, and so soon. I...just need a little break from this.

That's all, folks. Just venting out a little. Thanks.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by Aleron Ives »

If you can't talk, it means that you're lagging, so you can either wait to get disconnected, or you can quit and save from the menu and then reconnect. It's normal PSO behaviour, so it isn't the cause of your corruptions. Lag doesn't affect Symbol Chat or Word Select, because both of them display locally on the client. Speech bubbles, however, get sent to the server and then echoed back to the client (so Sega could censor your speech), so you can't talk if you're lagging. Powering off from lag is a terrible idea, as doing so will cause the game to delete all of your unequipped items. My guess would be that you're not actually lagging but that your card had died already and caused PSO to lose its connectivity, so powering off probably wouldn't have helped, anyway. This doesn't happen to anybody else, either, so it has to be your third party memory card. I hope you bought that Nintendo 59 card the other day...
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

^ Doesn't the game only read from and write to the memory card when it needs to (like when loading the file or saving)? Does it constantly access the card? My 3rd party memory card still saves fine. I've never had corrupted saves until PSO. Sadly, the 59 block I mentioned before had already been bought. I need to wait for another one to come up.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by tueidj »

It doesn't constantly access the card but it requires it to remain in the slot while you're playing, otherwise it'll disconnect. So if the connection's dodgy or the card is just misbehaving in general you'll get kicked off. I don't remember if you can use slot B without slot A filled for this game, but it might be worth a shot to rule out a dirty connector.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

^ I really don't want to find out the hard way, because losing a save file that you've worked hard to build sucks. But maybe I'll hook my black 'Cube back up instead of my orange one. I'm using the orange 'Cube because it has a region switch, and it's the only one that can run the Game Boy Player right now (start-up disc is Japanese). I'll probably post news when something arises from using my black 'Cube. Although, it may take a while before I could get into PSO again. Just thinking about the gear and items that were lost in those files devastates me, not to mention the hours spent grinding. I really don't want to go back to Level 1 this soon.
My Hunters:
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Metatron (HUcast, SKYLY) - Lv 80
Shaider (RAmar, PURPLENUM) - Lv 91

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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by Kayak »

3rd Party Cards and PSO do not get along, I've had my Nintendo MCs for over 10 years and only corrupted once. Do yourself a favor before starting over, get yourself an actual nintendo MC, whether its the grey, black or white one, all work fine.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by Sir Rappington »

Four out of my six memory cards were third-party and they've never given me a problem over the years. Granted, I play on Dolphin now, but I've used the physical cards as recently as a few months ago, no problems. :P Your mileage may vary, of course.

What I would do is recreate your characters at lv1, then see if you can get someone with an AR or Proxy to recreate your items. For your levels, well... maybe battle-leveling? Is that still a thing? I remember thinking that's the path I would take if I ever had another card corruption, back in the day.

Failing that, maybe consider Dolphin if your computer can handle it? You'll never deal with backup issues again as you can make wholesale copies of your memory card files.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

Kayak wrote:3rd Party Cards and PSO do not get along, I've had my Nintendo MCs for over 10 years and only corrupted once. Do yourself a favor before starting over, get yourself an actual nintendo MC, whether its the grey, black or white one, all work fine.
For the record, my memory card is more than 9 years old and hasn't corrupted any saves until PSO. But I suppose it would be hard to dismiss any negative correlation that may exist between 3rd party memory cards (particularly the MadCatz brand) and PSO, after what happened to me. I actually have planned on buying Nintendo branded MCs way before my time with PSO. I just didn't realize it would be required by some games. Perhaps by the time I get one, I'd be fine playing PSO again. While I do love the game, the obnoxious amount of times it saves just begs for something to go wrong with your file. Probably, the safest way to play the GCN version of PSO is through Wii or an emulator on PC, where backing up your file is easy.
My Hunters:
Chadha Birdy (RAcast, ORAN - Main) - Lv 140
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Shaider (RAmar, PURPLENUM) - Lv 91

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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by Kayak »

byte.me wrote:
Kayak wrote:3rd Party Cards and PSO do not get along, I've had my Nintendo MCs for over 10 years and only corrupted once. Do yourself a favor before starting over, get yourself an actual nintendo MC, whether its the grey, black or white one, all work fine.
For the record, my memory card is more than 9 years old and hasn't corrupted any saves until PSO. But I suppose it would be hard to dismiss any negative correlation that may exist between 3rd party memory cards (particularly the MadCatz brand) and PSO, after what happened to me. I actually have planned on buying Nintendo branded MCs way before my time with PSO. I just didn't realize it would be required by some games. Perhaps by the time I get one, I'd be fine playing PSO again. While I do love the game, the obnoxious amount of times it saves just begs for something to go wrong with your file. Probably, the safest way to play the GCN version of PSO is through Wii or an emulator on PC, where backing up your file is easy.
I can help you restore your characters once you get everything set up again.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by tueidj »

If you're getting a non-plus PSO disc for homebrew like you mentioned in another thread, you could use GCMM to backup your cards.
These days the third-party memcards available on ebay and such are actually better quality than original Nintendo cards, they use newer NAND chips that can handle far more erase/program cycles.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

Sir Rappington wrote:Four out of my six memory cards were third-party and they've never given me a problem over the years. Granted, I play on Dolphin now, but I've used the physical cards as recently as a few months ago, no problems. :P Your mileage may vary, of course.

What I would do is recreate your characters at lv1, then see if you can get someone with an AR or Proxy to recreate your items. For your levels, well... maybe battle-leveling? Is that still a thing? I remember thinking that's the path I would take if I ever had another card corruption, back in the day.

Failing that, maybe consider Dolphin if your computer can handle it? You'll never deal with backup issues again as you can make wholesale copies of your memory card files.
I guess I could also try Dolphin, but I like playing on the actual hardware better. I use a laptop, but it's probably good enough to run GCN games through Dolphin. Are you using the latest version? How's the compatibility? I've only tried version between 3.0 and 4.0, because 4.0 is more taxing on the hardware (at least for Wii games). I may have to ask you how to set it up for PSO online play, including keyboard support, later on.
Kayak wrote:I can help you restore your characters once you get everything set up again.
Thanks, Jar. Another thing that makes me love playing this game online are the helpful players/community. Countless players have aided me in leveling up by joining me during my runs and giving me awesome gear. Makes me feel guilty to lose them a second time.
tueidj wrote:If you're getting a non-plus PSO disc for homebrew like you mentioned in another thread, you could use GCMM to backup your cards.
These days the third-party memcards available on ebay and such are actually better quality than original Nintendo cards, they use newer NAND chips that can handle far more erase/program cycles.
I've actually looked into that fairly recently, and I'm not sure if GCMM would work on 3rd party cards. I believe it's based on CTR-GCS, and the author of this program explicitly said in the readme not to use it on 3rd party cards because it may corrupt them. I don't know if individual saves can be extracted from the card, either, but it can dump the MC image. Maybe Dolphin can do something about it, I don't know. There's also a header issue with Nintendo branded cards, IIRC, where the header in the image should match the one in the MC, or else it will show as corrupted. Basically, you can only inject the image back to the MC where you dumped it from. There's also a header editor around, but I'm not sure how well that works.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by tueidj »

All that stuff has been fixed for GCMM, it even does special handling for PSO saves so they can be copied to different cards (instead of just backing up and restoring to the same card).
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

^ Wow, seriously? That's excellent! I don't need an SD adapter, right? I can just dump straight to my PC via BBA?
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by tueidj »

No, it only supports SD Gecko.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

^ Then I guess I'm still screwed with that one. I don't have one of those, and they're as common as Char WaveBirds, nowadays. I can't even find any on eBay.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by Aleron Ives »

Why don't you just buy a Wii and forget all of this hassle? They're like $30...
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

^ I would, eventually, but I want it to be at my own pace. Don't want to buy it just because some games on the GCN won't allow you to copy their saves to another memory card. You'd be lucky to find a Wii for $50 (with at least the basics) where I live. Here, they're mostly priced at $90, used.
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by Aleron Ives »

Oh, right, outside of the US they would probably cost more. Well, Dolphin is an option if you have a new PC, but those cost a lot more than Wiis do. :?
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by tueidj »

byte.me wrote:^ Then I guess I'm still screwed with that one. I don't have one of those, and they're as common as Char WaveBirds, nowadays. I can't even find any on eBay.
Nah man, they're easy to find and dirt cheap.
Example: http://www.amazon.com/SD-Card-Adapter-W ... WJNTCPFP0H
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Re: Might take a break from PSO for a while...

Post by byte.me »

Aleron Ives wrote:Oh, right, outside of the US they would probably cost more. Well, Dolphin is an option if you have a new PC, but those cost a lot more than Wiis do. :?
The only PC i have is a laptop, but it's capable enough to run Dolphin. I'm just not sure if PSO runs nicely on lower versions of it. Later ones demand more from the hardware, but they do offer better compatibility. To be honest, playing on an emulator doesn't feel right for me. That may come off as weird to some people, but I don't feel like I'm really playing the game when I'm doing it through an emulator. If I find the energy to set it up on Dolphin, I'd probably just do it out of curiosity.
tueidj wrote: Nah man, they're easy to find and dirt cheap.
Example: http://www.amazon.com/SD-Card-Adapter-W ... WJNTCPFP0H
Oh, I thought you were talking about cards that are specifically named "SD Gecko". If any generic brand works just fine, it would certainly be easier for me to get one. Still, it's very likely that I'd have do that online because 'Cubes were very obscure here back in the day. Even the Xbox barely received any attention at the time. Would you know if Nintendo-branded SD adapters also work with GCMM?
My Hunters:
Chadha Birdy (RAcast, ORAN - Main) - Lv 140
Metatron (HUcast, SKYLY) - Lv 80
Shaider (RAmar, PURPLENUM) - Lv 91

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