Post subject: Help! Can you recover a .dtm from savestates?
Joined: 4/26/2012
Posts: 11
Location: MN, US
I just picked up Dolphin not but a few days ago and just recently experienced a crash. I didn't back up my .dtm as I was adding to it and somehow managed to lose all the stored input in the file. I still have savestates stored for the game that work so I was wondering if there is a way I can recover everything from those. I wasn't terribly far into my adventure run (SSBM) but I'd hate to lose my results. Any help would be massively appreciated.
Editor, Experienced player (608)
Joined: 11/8/2010
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Yes, there are two ways I know of. The first way is playing back your .dtm, loading your savestate, and then saving over your .dtm with the new input. The other way to recover your .dtm is to go to the main savestates folder (User>StateSaves), load one of the .dtms your savestate is attached to, and continue working from there. Also, welcome to TASVideos!
Joined: 4/26/2012
Posts: 11
Location: MN, US
I couldn't manage to remake the full .dtm using these methods; whenever I loaded up the new file (which was only a few kb) Dolphin would crash upon decompressing the save. If I throw whatever relevant files I have into a folder and upload would you, or anyone for that matter, be willing to take a look at reconstructing my save? And thanks for the advice Kirby, I wish I could have gotten it to work.
RachelB
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Joined: 12/3/2011
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The .dtm is saved outside of the save state. Just open up the save state folder and grab the .dtm Also, if you try to load a save state immediately after starting a game (while the status/title bar says clearing code cache, or interpreter instead of JIT64), it will never work and always fail when decompressing the save state. I'm guessing that's what your problem there was. Alternatively, if you aren't using one of the builds i posted to the dolphin forum, then the issue is bad save states, which will happen relatively often when using official builds.
Joined: 4/26/2012
Posts: 11
Location: MN, US
I checked the StateSaves folder and the .dtm is only 7KB which I found out is only about 20-30 frames from the end of my Giant DK battle. Also, when the emulator crashes on the save decompression that's just me trying to play back the .dtm (not me attempting to load a save). I'm using the build you recommended here and everything has been running smoothly up to this point. I really appreciate you guys expressing concern over this because I really am a Newbie when it comes to this tool. http://www.mediafire.com/?u2da96hmb3h8jmb I placed everything that looked important into here if you want to take a look at what's up.
RachelB
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Also, when the emulator crashes on the save decompression that's just me trying to play back the .dtm (not me attempting to load a save).
...what? Does your movie start from a save state? edit: indeed it does. Don't do that, it doesn't work properly. Do you have any other save states? Why is there no .dtm with the first 2?
Joined: 4/26/2012
Posts: 11
Location: MN, US
I only used 3 save states for it and have no idea where the .dtm is for the first two. Everything in the folder with the exception of the .txt and the WIP files is what I found in the StateSaves folder for Dolphin. If nothing can be reconstructed with those files then I'll just have to restart the project.
RachelB
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Did you intentionally start recording from a save state? I doubt you'll be able to recover anything useful.
Joined: 4/26/2012
Posts: 11
Location: MN, US
Well I'm not quite sure how the playback system works when recording new input to a .dtm so what I have been doing is starting playback of a .dtm and skipping ahead to one of my savestates after I start recording. I figured that would allow me to keep all the input without having to rewatch the entire TAS up to that point. So yes, I suppose it was inentional to start recording at a save state but I really didn't know the consequences. I was really hoping the save state files would allow me to rebuild an entire .dtm.
RachelB
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Subrava wrote:
Well I'm not quite sure how the playback system works when recording new input to a .dtm so what I have been doing is starting playback of a .dtm and skipping ahead to one of my savestates after I start recording. I figured that would allow me to keep all the input without having to rewatch the entire TAS up to that point. So yes, I suppose it was inentional to start recording at a save state but I really didn't know the consequences.
That wouldn't start recording from a save state, it would just load the movie from the save state and ignore everything you did before that.
I was really hoping the save state files would allow me to rebuild an entire .dtm.
No rebuilding needs to be done. The entire .dtm is saved with every single save state. The fact that there is no .dtm with the first two states means you stopped recording.
Joined: 4/26/2012
Posts: 11
Location: MN, US
rog wrote:
I was really hoping the save state files would allow me to rebuild an entire .dtm.
No rebuilding needs to be done. The entire .dtm is saved with every single save state. The fact that there is no .dtm with the first two states means you stopped recording.
So I guess that means I'm out of luck. Oh well, the Mushroom Kingdom needed a lot of work anyway. A little discouraging that I couldn't recover my work but thanks for the help nonetheless. Time to get back to TASing :P