PPSSPP Feature Request Page

[dlanor]

Isn't it enough to simply consider the first 9 characters of the filename before the dot as the ID, and let the rest be freeform? No complicated wildcarding needed.

I'm not sure of the distinction, as I think we're talking about exactly the same thing here.
We're probably just using terminology differently, so I'll be over-explicit in my next paragraph (no offense intended).

I'm not familiar with the filesystem term 'freeform', but I think you simply mean that the characters between the first group of 9 and the ".ini" extension may be any valid filesystem characters that the user chooses to place there. And that's exactly what I intended with my suggestion. I used the term 'wildcard' in its standard meaning only for the filesystem method used to allow arbitrary content in the name of a file to be loaded. Where I come from this has always been called 'wildcard' access, and there's nothing really complicated about it.

It may take a few extra function calls, like it did when I implemented it for PCSX2. Those libs didn't have wildcard support for a simple 'file open' function, so instead I had to do a wildcarded search of the "cheats" folder and then open the found file (if any). But even so it was just a few lines extra, so not really complicated at all.

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@dlanor

I tried something like that before. If i remember correctly, we had a bunch of problems with special encoding, and needed cases for each "weird" character that ppsspp didn't like.

I'm not sure what you mean here, as PPSSPP code would not be involved in the renaming done manually by a user.

What you say would only apply if you also wanted to implement my secondary suggestion, of making the extraction from a cheat.db file modify the filename by including the game title in the filename, filtered for filename validity. But that's not really necessary. The crucial change is just to allow arbitrary characters after the game ID code, and leaving it up to each user to add those strings as needed. And then they will automatically be valid for the current filesystem as the renaming will otherwise fail (for the user, not in PPSSPP).

I suppose i could try and implement it in your way, in which the first 9 characters are required, while the rest can be anything.

That's exactly what I intended with my primary suggestion.

I may do it eventually, but feel free to do it yourself Everything you need will be in Cwcheat.cpp

No offense, but I've heard that one before.

That's exactly what they said in the PCSX2 forums too, so I did the development myself, produced a suitable patch file and tried to contribute it, resulting only in it being ignored forever. That fix never was adopted, forcing me to recompile every PCSX2 version I want it in, which becomes really old really fast... (One reason I haven't bothered with that emulator for some time now.)

And that's not even an option for PPSSPP since there's some basic incompatibility between some of your required development components and some I already have installed on my systems. (Microsoft just loves hidden traps like that.) So trying to install the stuff PPSSPP needs, in recommended sequence, only leads to error messages when reaching the extra compiler parts, which simply refuse to add themselves to my existing VS setups. I'd have to start from scratch with a clean computer, which isn't really an option right now. (None of the six I currently have is both free for it and suitable for it.)

So if none of you guys will adopt this fix, then I guess it just won't happen.

No big deal, I can live with this too. It's just inconvenient when developing or testing cheats for multiple games.

Best regards: dlanor