Hack2.Manage Your Saved Games

Hack 2. Manage Your Saved Games

Save your game progress on the PSP, move these saved games to a computer, and share saved games with others.

Games: you love them. You like to have multiple concurrent sessions of the same game, as if each slightly different character or choice were but one manifestation of you in the multiverse.

Most hard-core game players know that having multiple file saves can be the key to progressing effectively through a game. We've all experienced that sinking feeling when you discover in level four that you cannot defeat the boss without the magic cap that you didn't find in level three, and it is much less frustrating to start over from level three than it would be to start over from the beginning or spend a lot of time backtracking.

If you haven't been able to track down that 1GB Memory Stick Duo card that you've been looking for, the 32MB stick included with your PSP is probably feeling a little cramped. This hack will discuss various options for managing your saved game files and moving them between your PSP and your computer.

1.3.1. Saving Game Progress

You know how to quit a game quickly [Hack #1], but if you actually want to save your game progress, either to switch to another game, watch a movie, or listen to some tunes, all you have to do is press the Start button. A menu will pop up, providing you with a variety of options, including Save Game (Figure 1-2).

Figure 1-2. The Start button brings this menu up on Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade

Not all games will allow you to save your progress in the middle of game play. Several games require you to save at special places along the way called save points, so make sure to glance at the manual that came with each game to find out which saving mechanism the game uses.

For example, Wipeout Pure will only let you save your progress in between races and via a save dialog provided within the game. Metal Gear Ac!d saves to two different types of save game files: one that you create by saving in Intermission mode between boards and another for saving progress in the middle of a board.

Of course, if you are playing wirelessly along with friends [Hack #38] or with strangers over the Internet [Hack #37], you cannot save game progress, since stopping play disconnects you from the shared game.

Once you have saved your game file, hit the Home button. A dialog will pop up asking, "Do you want to quit the game?" Select Yes and hit the X button to choose to quit the game, and the O button (or select No and hit X) to choose not to.

Now that you have successfully saved your game progress and exited out of the game, I'll explain what else you can do to manage your game files via the PSP itself.

1.3.2. Copy and Delete Files

Under the Game menu on the PlayStation Portable, just below Game Sharing and just above UMD/Memory Stick (depending on whether you have a UMD disk inserted or not), you'll find the Saved Data Utility (Figure 1-3). Highlight it and hit the X button.

You will be presented with a list of all the saved game files on your PSP. When you highlight each saved game, you will see a screenshot or animation from the game, usually along with music from the game, and a good amount of metadata associated with the game; this usually includes the date and time the file was saved and the size of the file alongside game-specific data that varies from game to game. Some games include information about the board you were on when you saved, the level of difficulty of game play, the type of game-save data, and possibly the name of the player and the total time spent playing the game.

Now, if you hit the Triangle button, you will be given another menu with options for Copy, Delete, and Information (Figure 1-4). If you select Copy and hit X, a dialog will appear noting: "You will be asked to change the Memory Stick 3 times. Press the X button to begin." Hit X to begin the copy process or O to go back to the previous menu (Figure 1-5).

Figure 1-3. Saved Data Utility

Figure 1-4. Hitting Triangle gives you the option to copy, delete, or get more information on the file

The Copy Data Utility allows you to copy your games to another Memory Stick in case you want to give a copy of a game-save file to your friend, or if you just want to keep a backup Memory Stick and game data without bothering to use a separate computer to host your game files.

Figure 1-5. Copy Data Utility

Even if you save up and grab a 1GB or even 2GB Memory Stick Duo, I recommend keeping on hand the measly 32MB stick that was included with your PSP. It can come in handy as a game-only backup space.

The PSP will copy the game data into its memory, then prompt you to remove your Memory Stick and insert the Memory Stick on which you want to copy the data. As you can see in Figure 1-6, the PSP tells you that the whole process will require switching out the Memory Stick three times, but what it doesn't tell you is that each of these three times actually entails switching out the Memory Stick twice. Be prepared to spend a few minutes swapping out the two cards a total of six times. When it is finished, you will be prompted to switch back to the original Memory Stick.

If you instead choose Delete from the Saved Data Utility menu, the PSP will ask whether you are sure you want to delete the game data file. Make sure you are sure before choosing to delete, as there is no recovering the data (unless you have previously backed up the information).

And, finally, if you select Information from the Saved Data Utility menu, you are presented with a slightly more detailed view of the metadata associated with the file (see Figure 1-7).

1.3.3. Manually Copy Game Data to Your Computer

To really keep a nice backup of your saved game files, you're going to want to move them onto your computer. There are a few programs that will do this automatically for you, but first let us discuss how to do it manually. There are two ways to make your saved game data accessible to your computer: either by hooking your PSP up to your computer via a USB mini to USB cable, or by removing your Memory Stick from the PSP and placing it in a Memory Stickcapable card reader attached to your computer.

Figure 1-6. Copy step one

Figure 1-7. Save Data Utility info

1.3.3.1. Connecting your PSP to your computer via USB.

You need a USB mini to USB cable. Plug the USB mini end of the cable into your PSP and the regular USB end of the cable into your computer (Figure 1-8 shows a hybrid data/USB power cable). Now turn on your PSP and navigate over to the Settings menu. Scroll over to USB Connection and hit the X button. If you are on Windows, the Memory Stick Duo will show up in your drives list under My Computer. If you are on Mac OS X, the Memory Stick Duo will show up on your desktop as a new drive. If you're on Linux, see "Exchange Files with Any Computer" [Hack #3].

Figure 1-8. A PSP connected to a PowerBook G4 with a USB to USB mini/Power Adapter by Innovation

If you're going to keep your PSP connected to your computer via USB for a while, you will want to make sure that it is not set to go to sleep before connecting. If you unplug or disconnect the PSP before dismounting the Memory Stick properly, you could damage the data on the stick. If the PSP goes to sleep while connected to your computer, it can have the same negative results.

To avoid this, under Settings on your PSP, select Power Settings, and then select Auto Sleep and change the setting to Off. To conserve power, you can still change the Backlight Auto-Off setting, also under Power Settings, to two minutes (its lowest setting).

Alternately, you could invest in a USB cord that also supplies power to the PSP.

Open the Memory Stick by double-clicking on it. Inside you will see a folder called PSP. Inside that folder, you will see a SAVEDATA folder. Inside the SAVEDATA folder, you will find all of your saved games. Simply copy the entire SAVEDATA folder over to your computer.

After you have finished copying the files, you must dismount the Memory Stick before severing the connection. To do this, eject the Memory Stick by dragging it to the Trash in Mac OS X or choose "Safely Remove Hardware" from the Windows toolbar. After you have dismounted your PSP, hit the O button on your PSP to disconnect it fully from your computer. Now remove the USB cable.

1.3.3.2. Connecting your Memory Stick to your computer via a card reader.

If you have a Memory Stick Duo capable card reader, there is no need to connect your PSP via USB to transfer files to your computer. Instead, simply power down your PSP, then open up the Memory Stick Duo panel on the bottom-left side of your PSP. Press in lightly on the Memory Stick to eject it from the port. Once it is sticking out of the PSP, grab onto it and pull it free.

Now, simply attach your card reader to your computer and insert the Memory Stick into the card reader. If you have a card reader that is only capable of reading regular Memory Stick cards, you will need a Memory Stick to Memory Stick Duo adapter. Your memory stick will appear as a disk drive on your operating system, and you can follow the instructions in the preceding section to work with files on it.

If you don't like the GUI interface of your OS, you can avoid all this clicking by using the command line.

1.3.3.3. The Mac OS X Terminal.

Launch the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities/), and at the command line, you can type:

 open /Volumes/<NAMEOFYOURMEMORYSTICK>/PSP/SAVEDATA/ 

Here you would replace <NAMEOFYOURMEMORYSTICK> with the actual name of the device as it appears mounted on the desktop. By default, this will be "Untitled." If the name has been changed to something like "My PSP," then you will need to add an \ before the space in the name. For example, if your Memory Stick were named "My PSP," you would type the following:

 open /Volumes/My\ PSP/PSP/SAVEDATA/ 

Then hit Return. This will open the folder in the Finder, so that you can drag all the files to wherever you like on your Mac.

If you would rather keep the process GUI-free, simply type the commands:

 cd /Volumes/Untitled/PSP/SAVEDATA/ cp -R * ~/Desktop/PSP/ 

Hit Return after each line. The first cd command will change the directory on your mounted Memory Stick (named Untitled) to the SAVEDATA folder. The cp -R command will then copy all the files and folders within this folder into a folder called PSP on your desktop.

You need to already have the PSP folder created on your desktop for this to work.

1.3.3.4. The Windows Command Prompt.

In Windows, you can simply go to Start Run and type This will open the folder in a window from which you can copy all the files.

If you would rather copy them from the command prompt, launch the Command Prompt, found under Start All Programs Accessories. Once the command prompt comes up, type the following:

  cd e:\PSP\SAVEDATA\ xcopy e: c:\gamesaves\ /S 

Hit Return between each line. Substitute whatever drive letter your Memory Stick mounted on for e: in the above example. The first command will switch to the SAVEDATA directory on the Memory Stick. The second command will copy all the directories and subdirectories within the SAVEDATA folder into a new folder called "gamesaves" at the root level of your C: drive.

Keep in mind that you can substitute any path you like for c:\gamesaves\, but make sure to keep the /S flag at the end, as this ensures that xcopy copies all the directories and subdirectories within the SAVEDATA folder.

1.3.4. Automatically Copy Game Data to Your Computer

Sony should come out with their own software to automatically copy game data to your computer, but they haven't as of yet. In the meantime, there are several alternatives for a variety of platforms.

1.3.4.1. iPSP.

iPSP from RnSKSoftronics (http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/) runs on Windows ME, 2000, XP, or on Mac OS X. The program is described as a full multimedia manager for your PSP; in addition to backing up your saved games each time you connect your PSP or your Memory Stick Duo to your computer, iPSP syncs music, photos, and videos to your PSP, converts video to the proper format, and can convert PDF files into JPEGs for mobile viewing on your PSP. iPSP costs $19.99 USD.

Upon launching, iPSP automatically begins saving your game data to your computer (see Figure 1-9). Once it finishes copying the games to your computer, you can then select the Gamesaves button at the top of the main iPSP window. This will bring up a browser of all the locally saved games (see Figure 1-10).

Figure 1-9. The Mac OS X version of iPSP transferring game files

The sidebar will list all the individual game files saved to your computer. When you highlight a game in the sidebar, a history of all the different versions of the game that have been saved to your computer via iPSP in the past will be displayed by date in the first panel to the right of the sidebar. Selecting the date will list all the different times during that day that the game was backed up to your computer. If you select one of the times, you will see any metadata associated with the file in the far right panel, and you can choose either "Erase from Drive" or "Restore to PSP."

1.3.4.2. PSPWare.

If you are using OS X and you like the GUI goodness of iSync and the iLife suite, before going for iPSP, you'll probably want to try the demo of PSPWare for Mac OS X (http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/pspware; $15 USD). If you are on Windows, NullRiver has recently released a Windows version (http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/pspware.win). If you click on the Backup button (see Figure 1-11) in PSPWare, you can choose to automatically sync games to your computer each time you sync PSPWare. There's an Options button where you can select to keep the last 10, 25, 50, or all of your past backups. There's another Restore button via which you can restore your old backups to your PSP. An added benefit of PSPWare is that you can set up sync profiles for managing multiple Memory Sticks (and multiple games).

Figure 1-10. Browsing saved games with iPSP

1.3.5. Hacking the Hack

If you're a scripter and neither iPSP nor PSPWare fits your bill, consider using the command line instructions discussed in this hack as the basis for a script of your own for backing up your games.

For example, using AppleScript in Mac OS X, you could build a simple two-line script, like this:

 do shell script "cd /Volumes/Untitled/PSP/SAVEDATA/" do shell script "cp -R * ~/Desktop/PSP/" 

Figure 1-11. The Backup pane of PSPWare

If your Memory Stick Duo card is named something other than Untitled, you will need to change the first line of the script to account for the card's name. If there are any special characters or spaces in the card's name, you will have to escape them by putting a \ before the space or character. Save this file as an application to simplify backing up your game saves to your computer.

Now that you have managed to successfully save files to your computer, the possibilities are endless. You can email the saved files to friends as attachments. Offer a saved file on your web site as backup or as bragging proof of the speed with which you won Metal Gear Ac!d. With Version 2.0 of the firmware, you can navigate to the page and download the file directly to your PSP (see "Find Yourself a PSP Web Browser" [Hack #41]). If your friend has unlocked all of the levels on Tony Hawk Underground 2: Remix, why not grab a copy of his file so that you don't have to go through all the trouble of actually unlocking all the levels before you play them? Think about it. People are willing to pay money for virtual items these days. If you're a gaming pro, you could develop a lucrative career selling your tricked-out characters from forthcoming PSP RPG titles via eBay (http://www.ebay.com).