RFE: there should exist a alternative neo-retropad with a way to save and load states

[i30817]

It's undeniable that the current version of neo retropad overlay is cleaner than the previous, and fast forward is likely the most used function after savestates.

But there is annoying flow\usability problem when using savestates.

I noticed I was getting irritated about this when I was testing the supported emulated input hardware devices in a amiga game for a bug report to whdload. I was in the main menu, and saved a state, and then went into the quick menu>controls in puae with the game running and changed the device.

Then tried to trigger the neoretropad fire button(s), and if it proceeded, the devices worked and I returned to the saves menu to load the state, then returned back to the input menu to test another device.

This is probably not the only situation where you want to load or save a state in between changing settings.

The older retropad cog button overlay would have solved that, I would have access to load, save, cycle forward and back savestates, and even shaders.

I don't actually like submenus there though. Id be interested in a retropad that kept a small row of buttons in the bottom of the screen that worked a bit like dolphin upstream savestate keys.

If you don't know, dolphin savestates use the Fkeys of keyboards. I don't recall which saves and loads but one of them uses a modifier. The idea on that small row of buttons (say, 1 to 4, two each side), is that a quick press\release would savestate to that index and a long press would load the state. No submenus.

[i30817]

The advantage of this variation over one where you can cycle savestates is that it's less easy to get lost, and that by limiting the amount of possible slots you prevent savestate size explosion in later generation console cores.

Sure with 4 buttons (hopefully smaller than the normal neoretropad), you could do a save\load and cycle left\right version too, but I'm kind of partial to this limited version idea, particularly the long press to load idea.

Less likely to load when you mean to save , or save when you mean to load too.

[hizzlekizzle]

Less likely to load when you mean to save , or save when you mean to load too.

Ha, I thought exactly the opposite, actually. "Seems like it would be easy to overwrite your state accidentally instead of loading if you got in a hurry"

[i30817]

Interestingly, I always got more mad if I loaded a savestate accidentally because I lost the current state. I also think that if you're playing a platformer for example you're more likely to want fast (tap) savestates because the opposite may mean you can't savestate on the middle of some tricky parts without opening the menu.

I guess it depends how often you use savestates, I always liked savestate spam.

It makes little difference now that there is the new undo options in the savestate submenus.

I wouldn't say no to be able to cancel the 'long tap' somehow, maybe moving the finger out of the button before releasing. Activating the function after only the release (instead of a timer) would also be good for preparing mentally if the state loaded would be to a tricky part of the game and moving the fingers to the ready position.

[i30817]

Amusingly, two years later when I was editing my old neoretropad hacked overlay for introducing a layer for the keyboard, I thought of this exact same thing again and was coming up to make a feature request about it (again).

I like the new context sensitive retropad overlays a lot too... I just wish (again) that they had versions available with inbuilt save\load buttons (my hack has two buttons to cycle, two to save and load, but as I said I would prefer a overload of 4 save and load buttons).