Buttons for save/load state?

[Dougmeister]

Do most people incorporate these buttons into their control panels or not?

[jdjuggler]

I haven't seen any CP's with dedicated Save/Load buttons.  Not that it's a bad idea.
I'm going to have quite a few dedicated admin buttons on my CP - as I'm not a big fan of shifted buttons.
But, if you have an encoder that allows for shifted buttons -  A set of Save/load butttons would be a good add-on (shifted, of course).

What games are you wanting this save/load function for?

JD

[Dougmeister]

No games in particular.  I think the "Pause" button is essential, and I'm very glad I included it.

Just thinking about the games that go on forever.  I have young kids and often put the cheats on for them.  It would be nice to be able to save their progress and re-load the game at a later time.

[MustardTent]

No games in particular. I think the "Pause" button is essential, and I'm very glad I included it.

Just thinking about the games that go on forever. I have young kids and often put the cheats on for them. It would be nice to be able to save their progress and re-load the game at a later time.

This is exactly why I'm going to add save/load buttons to my machine.  Playing the first couple levels in ghouls and ghosts or whatever gets annoying pretty quickly.  And the pause button is extremely handy...

[Veinman]

I'm adding 5 admin buttons, with save / load in mind. Whether I end up making a button "SHIFT" and another button "Save & Load" remains to be seen. I suppose if I take that approach, with my 5 buttons I get 8 functions instead of only 5.

On the other hand, I don't really want my control panel to be tough for the uninitiated to use.

[Ghoward]

The only admin button I have is a free credit button. The more buttons you add the more cluttered your control panel is going to look.

Gary

[Lilwolf]

I wanted to add a dedicated load/save.  But anyone figure out a way to do it with one button?

it requires hitting a number....  And now that I have a coin mech only for coins (1-4) I guess I could then press the start button 5-8....

So Save button then start 1 for save slot 5.

But I would LOVE a one button solution.  Anyone have one?

[MustardTent]

The only way that I see for a one-button solution is editing the code for all the emulators that you use.

[MustardTent]

A little clarification:

In the mame .087 source:

edit line 3943 of usrintrf.c to say:

code = KEYCODE_A;

instead of

code = code_read_async();

This way mame will always save/load from state 0.

[Veinman]

I didn't really think about the "save slot selection" when I decided on buttons. A lot of the console emus I've tried have what is essentially a quicksave/quickload, so that is probably what I would use it for mostly.

[Dougmeister]

I know it's a lot of work for something that might not get used very much, but it would be cool to hack a keyboard into just the numeric keypad (or buy a standalone) and mount that on your control panel to enter the numbers.

Would look like a MAC machine!

Could even make them enter a PIN number for credits... or to turn the machine on ;-)