Is there an option for a special user in Nestopia?

[ouso1999]

I wonder if there is an option in Nestopia enabling me to have a special user with its own saved games..if so , how can I do that?

Thanks in advance

[rainwarrior]

Maybe just make a second copy of the program for the second user?

[ouso1999]

Maybe just make a second copy of the program for the second user?

ok but is this option in the program itself?

[koitsu]

You're using the term "user", which to me means "account". Otherwise the term being used makes no sense to me.

If you're talking about on Windows -- no, this is not the responsibility of a program. If you want a separate user, you should create a separate account/user on the Windows machine. You can configure two accounts to be part of the same "group" (ex. Power Users, Snake Biters, Dog Meat Men, whatever you call it) and then set permissions on the Nestopia binary and related folders/etc. so that they're accessible (read/write/executable) by anyone in that group. You'd then adjust the nestopia.ini file to point all the paths/etc. to a folder accessible (read/write) to that group, so either account X or account Y could access those saves, ROMs, or whatever else you want.

This is done at the Windows and filesystem level. There are guides/walkthroughs all over the web on how to do this, and no I will not go looking for a bunch to link here. It's part of Windows system administration (if there even is such a thing ;-) ) but it's how you do it properly.

[tokumaru]

Maybe just make a second copy of the program for the second user?

ok but is this option in the program itself?

No. Just copy the emulator to another folder and make a shortcut to each copy. What's done to a copy will not interfere with the other. Or do what koitsu said and work with actual Windows accounts. Personally, I hate messing with that stuff.

[koitsu]

FWIW, I also hate messing with that stuff -- I still to this day believe in every way/shape/form that Windows is a single-user desktop OS, and that all -- I repeat, ALL -- attempts Microsoft has made to make it multi-user are just utter and complete failures. I guess that's also why when I see people hemming and hawing over the implications of "the security model on XP/Vista/7/8" and how account X can access account Y's stuff through some exploit, I'm just like "who gives a sh**, the OS was never made for this crap, use some *IX OS if you want such". ;-)

But in ouso1999's case, given that he's already talking about "users", I'm left thinking that what he really does want is a separate Windows user/account. Because otherwise I have no idea what "enabling me to have a special user with its own saved games" would mean/imply.

[tepples]

Perhaps what someone wants is one of these:

• Ability to select one of several .sav files for a single game, like the PowerPak can. This would be useful for my NES graphics editor even without multiple users.
• Ability to create a user account without the 15 minutes of "one moment please" text on a slowly color-changing background that Windows 8 imposes.
• Ability to create sub-accounts of your own user account if nobody in the sudoers/administrators group happens to be home at the time. This has happened in my aunt's household when someone couldn't create an account for a house guest because the PC's administrator was spending the day with the other (joint custodial) parent. Treating user accounts as a tree (making "root" actually meaningful) would solve this.

[Zepper]

Looks like you got it all wrong! He wants an option in Nestopia to enable user accounts (of the emulator). So, different Nestopia accounts means separated savestates and stuff. Got it? Heck, it's NOT a matter of two (or more) instances of the program!

Absolutely great idea if you ask me.

[tokumaru]

So, different Nestopia accounts means separated savestates and stuff. Got it? Heck, it's NOT a matter of two (or more) instances of the program!

Sure, but if the emulator doesn't have this feature, having multiple instances of the emulator (each configured to use different folders for saves, etc.) is a way to simulate this.

[qbradq]

It should be a pretty straight-forward program patch to make it use the user's home directory for retaining data. That's assuming anyone cares enough to patch it. Honestly I've never used Nestopia other than to test it's mapper support.

[tokumaru]

Man, I hate home folders, document folders, media folders, all of that crap... I can't stand this trend of operating systems telling me where to store my stuff, like their organization system suited everyone in the world.

Most people have their own computer nowadays, my home for example has way more computers than people... I really wish I could just drop this whole account nonsense...

[3gengames]

Linux (Posix maybe?) does it best....everything is based off a home folder, each user has their own with their data. You can get to other folders...I mean it's sorta like Windows, except it isn't as big of a huge mess and a hack, it's actually done right.

[Zepper]

So, different Nestopia accounts means separated savestates and stuff. Got it? Heck, it's NOT a matter of two (or more) instances of the program!

Sure, but if the emulator doesn't have this feature, having multiple instances of the emulator (each configured to use different folders for saves, etc.) is a way to simulate this.

I dunno. Usually (I don't know Nestopia deeply), the settings are saved in the system registry. So... it could be a mess.

[koitsu]

Nestopia's settings are stored in nestopia.ini, the path of which is always the path where the nestopia.exe executable is (i.e. if D:\snakes\nestopia\nestopia.exe, there will be D:\snakes\nestopia\nestopia.ini).

This is what's colloquially called a "portable application".

Sometimes "portable apps" are also advertised as "U3 compatible", which is a Sandisk-proprietary software thing that lets you stick a U3-compatible program on a USB flash drive/memory stick and it runs completely off that. I detest U3 -- you don't need installed software to accomplish portability.

I absolutely detest %APPDATA% (which is what people are talking about above, re: "home directory" equivalent on Windows) and/or %USERPROFILE% and/or %HOMEPATH%. This is mainly because my entire workstation is designed so that I can format C: at any moment/on a whim and lose almost nothing application-wise (only things I'd lose are my PuTTY sessions settings (stored in registry) and my Firefox bookmarks (stored balls deep within %APPDATA%) and I have scripts/methods to back both of those up in advance). %APPDATA% is a complete/total crap repository in most cases, and I love finding programs that dump all sorts of garbage there that never gets cleaned up. I really like portable apps (I drop them on my D: drive in their own directory and use them until the cows come home (moo)).

So if someone's going to code this change, please at least make it so that if a nestopia.ini is found in the same directory as nestopia.exe, it operates in "portable app mode" (how it operates today), otherwise can use %APPDATA%. This is how many programs today support both methods (MPC-HC**, uTorrent, KeePass, etc.).

** = They actually have a completely broken/hilarious design for this: there is a GUI checkbox to enable/disable storing settings in an .ini (vs. registry; default is registry). Think about why this is broken -- it means that out of the box it uses the registry, but then if you check the checkbox, it begins saving to .ini (you have to exit/restart the app), but then leaves leftover cruft/settings in the registry that it isn't even using any more EXCEPT for that one setting in the registry which needs to remain so that it can determine if it should use the registry or an .ini file. ;D "We really thought this out well..." Or they could just do away with the idiocy and do a file-exists test for mpc-hc.ini in the same directory as mpc-hc.exe and if it's there use it. *gasp*

[thefox]

I dunno. Usually (I don't know Nestopia deeply), the settings are saved in the system registry. So... it could be a mess.

Not a problem, registry has separate branches for every user and for the system.

Man, I hate home folders, document folders, media folders, all of that crap... I can't stand this trend of operating systems telling me where to store my stuff, like their organization system suited everyone in the world.

It's possible to move the My Documents folder in Windows. I moved it to another drive so that if/when I have to reinstall Windows all my files would be safe (as long as they're saved in that folder...)

Linux (Posix maybe?) does it best....everything is based off a home folder, each user has their own with their data. You can get to other folders...I mean it's sorta like Windows, except it isn't as big of a huge mess and a hack, it's actually done right.

I don't think the *nix method is that different from what Windows does. One problem with Windows though is that back in the Win95 days there was no need to have separate data for each user, and FAT32 didn't support file rights, so applications stored the data wherever they wanted and that has been carried over to many applications today. Fortunately most Windows apps nowadays are aware of AppData and friends.