I am on a MacBook Pro running Maverick and I recently downloaded Visual Boy Advance v. 1.7.6 and am having trouble loading saved game states.
I was playing Pokemon Emerald and saving via the in-game save option (not using the "Freeze state"). The saves seemed to work successfully and no errors popped up when I saved the game. After quitting the emulator and returning later, however, I had only the "New Game" and "Options" selections at the main Pokemon menu.
The "Save States" folder has a file labeled "Pokemon Emerald1.sgm" that gives me an "Unknown file type" error when I try to open it with VBA and the "Battery Saves" folder has a file labeled "Pokemon Emerald.sav" that also gives me an "Unknown file type" error when I try to open it with VBA.
Also, I know that this question was answered previously by Jerry, but he answered the question if it was being run on a PC. I need a solution that works with Mac. There is no "File" > "Load" options and pressing Ctrl + L nor Command + L will allow me to load any file. The "File" > "Import Battery" option is also not possible on Mac OSX. I am using both .sav and .sgm files.
Thanks in advance for the help!
Best Answer
You are trying to open the save files/states of a Pokémon Emerald rom. The .sav file is the game's save file— it must be named the exact same as the rom (except for the file extension) for the game to recognize it. You can't open it directly from the Finder.
Regarding the .sgm file, that's a Freeze state, made by the emulator. You can load it with the "Defrost Game State" command (Cmd-D) in the Options menu. Like the save file, you can't open this file directly from the Finder either.
As for whether the save worked properly, that's trickier. When you save, does a small, red 'Wrote Battery' appear in the bottom left corner after a second or two? If no, it hasn't written properly.
If it does, though: try starting a new game, saving, and seeing if your changes stick. If they still don't, it might be a problem with either [A] the emulator (it could have the wrong save file type), or [B] the save file itself, if it is locked or placed in a directory without write permissions.
Good luck!