"WHARZ ALL MAH STUFF AT? HALP!" PPSSPP's Directories and You: A guide

[TheDax]

Halp! Where's mah stuff on Linux?
See here. In more recent git builds, it's now $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, or ~/.config/ppsspp if XDG_CONFIG_HOME isn't defined or doesn't exist. The rest of the guide past "Where things go" is only relevant for MS Windows.

Where things go:
PPSSPP uses a file layout similar to the real PSP.

$memstickroot denotes wherever you're keeping PPSSPP's PSP folder. This is usually "memstick", but if you use installed.txt, it's either PPSSPP/PSP in My Documents, or whatever directory you defined in installed.txt.

- Cheats are now located in $memstickroot/PSP/Cheats.
- Config files are now located in $memstickroot/PSP/SYSTEM.
- Screenshots are now located in $memstickroot/PSP/SCREENSHOT.
- Save states can be found in $memstickroot/PSP/PPSSPP_STATE.
- In-game saves are found in $memstickroot/PSP/SAVEDATA.
- DLC files go in $memstickroot/PSP/GAME/<your game id here> in most cases, but it can vary by game.
- Game or Demo EBOOT.PBPs go in $memstickroot/PSP/GAME/<give a new folder a name>.

Help! After upgrading to a newer build/version my stuff seems to be gone!
If you have PPSSPP in a read-only directory, or if it can't use the current directory(or the directory you specified in installed.txt) for some reason, it'll use your My Documents or Documents folder, where it'll drop everything in a new folder called PPSSPP.

I don't want my memory stick stuff in the same directory as PPSSPP. I'd prefer PPSSPP to store its saves and files in My Documents (or just Documents on Vista/7/8/8.1). How can I change it?

Create a text file called installed.txt in the same directory as PPSSPP (and leave its contents blank). This will make PPSSPP use your Documents or My Documents folder (in a new folder called PPSSPP) instead of the "memstick" directory where PPSSPP resides.

I don't want my memory stick stuff in the same directory as PPSSPP, and I don't want it in My Documents. Can I put my stuff wherever?

Yes. If you enter a file path inside installed.txt (for example, C:\blah\psp), PPSSPP will use this directory instead of My Documents. However, if PPSSPP can't access this directory for some reason (read-only, it's missing, whatever the case), PPSSPP will fall back on using My Documents/PPSSPP. Also, if you require UTF-8 characters(e.g. Japanese/Russian/Korean/Chinese/etc.) characters in your path, make sure you save installed.txt as UTF-8, otherwise Bad Things (can't find saves, saves being written in mysterious places, etc.) can happen!

I don't care about that/I don't use installed.txt/I want to use the old way! How do I make my cheats and stuff work now that a bunch of stuff was moved around?!

Make sure you don't have an installed.txt file, first off, and this will let PPSSPP use the old behaviour of using the memstick folder in the same directory as PPSSPP (except for things that have permanently moved, like cheats and screenshots).