[Enhancement] Saving and loading states

[smoscar]

Considering not everyone will add shoulder buttons to their builds, adding a way to easily load and save states would be greatly appreciated.

Currently, the hotkey SELECT + RIGHT/LEFT allows you to select the slot to load and save. The idea would be to add a new functionality to HUD + LEFT that would allow you to loop through the options "SAVE STATE" and "LOAD STATE". With addition to the currently selected slot, this new option would save and load accordingly.

PS: I know this isn't currently open source but if you need any help regarding any of this, we could create a new repo for it and submit it a PR for it.

[djbriane]

Like this idea - I was wondering how save states would work with the limited buttons as I use them a lot!

[chilvence]

I think even if manual save states are a bit awkward, a good compromise would be to enable the 'save on exit / restart on load' feature by default that exists in Retroarch. I can't remember offhand how to enable it, but it is definitely in there somewhere because one of my pi images I couldn't remember how to disable it :)

It's really hard to think of a design squeeze all these options into a device with only two buttons.

Speaking of buttons... If I could have anything out of my circuit gem, it would be to have some sort of integrated input controller with a load of extra solder points to wire loads of buttons to. I was looking for something that works on the i2c bus (is that correct?) but even though you can get some tiny little boards from China, this is still so small to work with...

I've already built a miniature 6 button capcom/sega style assembly out of decorative plastic beads and strands of old network cable, and you can get some silly small microswitches off aliexpress, but I just can't think of a way to squeeze it all in there because it is already so jam packed...

God I love this damn thing so much though. Sometimes I just like looking at it on my desk for hours.