Technical information

Sega Saturn Software Development Standards, SOA version 2.0 50
2.4 Save
Required During the save operation, the following operations must be
Compliance Item performed:
• Check for write errors.
• Check for available memory.
• Set file names.
• Set data size.
Check for the available memory status when saving data.
If there is insufficient memory, then notify the user. Check
whether the backup data was saved correctly or not.
Note that the application’s file name must be authorized and
registered with Sega in order to avoid file name conflicts among
existing game applications.
Example:
Phantasy Star X (data required in three locations):
First Location:
PS_SCENE_01
Second Location:
PS_SCENE_02
Third Location:
PS_SCENE_03
Shared file name
consisting of 8
characters.
3 character file extension.
Do not use generic file names such as GM_DATA_000. The
characters that can be used in file names are limited to numbers,
upper-case Roman characters, and the underscore character (_).
However, note that a number cannot be used as the first character in
the file name.
Required File names must always be 11 characters in length. If there are
Compliance Item fewer than 11 characters, use the underscore character to pad
the name out to 11 characters. The “space” character is not
allowed.
Required When multiple save files are required in a game, the first eight
Compliance Item consisting of three characters (the underscore character and 2
numbers) are allowed to change.
Up to 99 save locations are allowed per game title. The file
extension begins at _01 and ends at _99.
The legal ASCII characters that are allowed in file names and
comments are shown in the following table.