Memory Cards

Memory Cards shows the saves on your memory cards and in folders on your SD card the way the GameCube's own Memory Card screen shows its two slots: two stacks of small cubes, a save to a cube, side by side. It moves, copies and erases saves from one stack to the other. On Home, turn the cube to System, press A, choose Memory Cards and press A.

What's on the screen

Each stack shows a storage location, over graph paper. It opens on Slot A and Slot B when cards are inserted; an absent card opens that column on SD instead, when the Configuration Device is available.

• Each save is a cube with its game's icon on the front, animated as the game made it. The cube edges stay smooth as they float and turn. Free space shows as smaller, see-through cubes: a card shows at least 16 places, and always one free place after its last save.
• A stack shows four rows of four. An arrow above or below it means it holds more rows; it scrolls a row at a time as you move.
• Above each stack is a permanent L Choose storage or R Choose storage button. Below it are the slot's letter, Open and free blocks, or the SD folder or virtual card's name.
• The highlighted cube is larger and pale, and sways slowly. The other cubes float gently, each in its own time.
• The bar along the bottom shows the highlighted save: its banner (or its icon, when it has no banner), the game's name for it (the first line of its comment), its size in blocks in a box, and the rest of its comment. For a moment after you move, a save's name is its file name, until Indigo has read the save. A free place leaves the bar empty.

A slot with no card, or with something else in it, says so in its half of the screen, such as "Nothing is inserted in Slot B."; put a card in and press L or R, choose that slot and press A to look again. An empty card shows 16 free places.

The SD card

L opens Left storage and R opens Right storage. Choose Slot A, Slot B or SD card, then press A; B cancels. A physical slot already shown in the other column is dimmed. Both columns can show SD, with independent folder positions, so no physical memory card is needed to browse virtual cards and export saves.

The SD card's stack shows a folder on the SD card Indigo keeps its settings on, the Configuration Device. It opens on your Save Folder and shows its folders, as cubes with a folder on the front, then its saves: .gci files, and Action Replay (.sav) and GameShark (.gcs) saves, plus .raw virtual memory cards. Its header names the folder. A on a folder opens it, and B, with the cursor on that stack, goes back up, as far as the folder it opened on.

Settings on one card, games on another

When your games come from a different card than your settings, say settings on a GC Loader and games on an SD card in an SD2SP2, the storage menu names both cards in place of SD card: Slot A, Slot B, the Configuration Device (such as GC Loader), then the Source (such as SD Card - SD2SP2). Each column chooses either. A card the column wasn't showing opens on its own Save Folder, or at its top folder when it has none, and B goes back up no further than that. With two cards the header shows the folder with its card's prefix, such as sdc:/swiss/saves for the SD2SP2 and gcldr:/swiss/saves for the GC Loader, the way Y Folder shows a path. Both columns start on the Configuration Device.

The Source is offered when it is another SD card, GC Loader, M.2 Loader, IDE-EXI or MMCE device that Indigo can write to. A Source Indigo can only read, or one that isn't a card, such as a disc, a network share or a FlippyDrive, is not.

Identify and color a folder

Highlight a small folder cube or card-image cube and press Y Folder. The page shows its complete path, including the source device prefix. A folder also shows the number of direct save files, card images and subfolders, with up to two readable save names. A card image shows its save count and names; an unreadable image explains why its contents are unavailable. Long paths wrap onto several lines; Up and Down scroll through every part.

Left and Right preview a color. A Save keeps it, B Cancel leaves the saved choice unchanged, and Y Reset chooses Default; press A to keep the reset. The color marks that small cube's rim and folder symbol in either column. It is remembered by the full path on that device, so folders with the same name elsewhere have independent colors. Up to 32 folders or images can have a saved color; resetting one frees its place.

Colors are saved with Indigo's settings on the Configuration Device. If that save fails, the page stays open with an explanation and the previous saved color remains in place. A card image's color is saved there too, never in the image.

Virtual memory cards

Swiss's Emulate Memory Card keeps saves in .raw images such as swiss/saves/MemoryCardA.USA.raw, on the card the game starts from. These appear as folder cubes. With your games on another card than your settings, choose that card in the storage menu to reach them (Settings on one card, games on another). Press A to open an image and browse its saves and animated icons; B returns to the containing folder. An unformatted or damaged image gets a clear message and is left unchanged.

An open image works like a memory card: Move, Copy and Erase its saves, to and from Slot A, Slot B, an SD folder or an image open in the other column. Open the image on one side and the other place on the other, highlight a save, press A to see its details, then A Actions. Actions on an image start on Copy. An image takes a save the way a card does: not one it already has, not past its 127 saves or its free blocks, and a save its game marks no-move only copies. Indigo writes the save's blocks first, then the image's block map, then its directory, the order the GameCube itself uses, and reads every block back before the copy is finished, so a Move takes the original away only once its copy is safe. Formatting, repairing or resizing an image is not offered.

On a FlippyDrive or a KunaiGC, whose files Indigo can't change in place, images stay read-only: Move and Erase are dimmed, and Copy exports a save as a .gci file.

Save details

Highlight a save and press A to open its details. This works even when no action can be used. The save name is the headline; separate Blocks and KiB summaries sit above aligned source and date rows. Unreadable headers mark the size as estimated.

• Size shows blocks and KiB. One block is 8 KiB of save data; the GCI wrapper and a RAW image's system blocks aren't part of that size.
• Last updated shows the date recorded in the save, or Unknown when it has no usable date. It uses the console's recorded clock without assuming a time zone. The SD file's dates aren't substituted for it.
• Source names the physical slot, SD save or card image (Read-only card image when its device can't change it).
• Save icon explains its preview: Animated uses the game's stored frames, Static has one picture, and None stored means the save supplies no icon. Paused: UI Motion Off means an animated icon is held still by UI Motion; choose Full or Reduced to let it play. Preview unavailable means Indigo could not load or safely decode its artwork; Unavailable means its metadata could not be read.

GameCube saves record one last-update date. The format has no separate creation date. Some games intentionally use a static icon or store no icon at all; their cubes show the original artwork.

Press B Back to return without changing anything, or A Actions to open Move, Copy and Erase. A dimmed action always explains why it can't be used.

A save without a recorded update date shows Unknown. The dialog remains available when no action can be used.

A save on a physical memory card names its slot in Source.

Move, copy and erase

From save details, press A Actions. A box opens beside its cube:

• Move puts the save in the other stack's card, card image or folder, then removes it here.
• Copy puts a copy there and leaves the save where it is.
• Erase removes it.

Move and Copy always go to the other stack: to put a save somewhere else, choose that stack's storage first with L or R. When a save can't go there, Move or Copy is dimmed, and while it's highlighted the bar and the line below it say why:

Saves with the same name from different games or makers are separate saves: Copy, Move and Erase act on the one highlighted. A damaged save header with a wildcard game or maker code cannot be copied to a memory card; an SD save with such a header is not offered as an import. An entry with such a code on a memory card cannot be read or erased safely and is left untouched.

Choose Move or Copy and Memory Cards asks first, Yes highlighted: "Copy to Slot B?", "Copy to the card image?" for an image the SD card's stack has open, or "Copy to the SD card?" for the folder it has open. A pale cube pulses where the save will land. When that folder holds folders of its own, you choose instead between it and Another folder…, the folder chooser: A opens a folder, X chooses the one that's open, and B cancels. Erase asks "Erase this save?" with No highlighted, so an extra A doesn't erase anything.

While the card is read and written, a copy of the save's cube flies to where the save is going and waits there, and the line at the bottom reads "Accessing. Do not touch the Memory Card or the POWER Button." Indigo reads every copy back and compares it with the original before it calls the copy done, and a Move removes the original only after that. Then the cube lands, the saves after one that moved away or was erased slide along to close the gap, and a maroon box says "Finished copying.", "Finished moving." or "The data was erased." It closes by itself after two seconds, or press A or B. An erased save's cube shrinks and bursts into pieces.

If anything goes wrong, the cube flies back, and a message says what went wrong and that nothing was changed or moved; press A.

A save copied off a memory card or exported from an image is named the way Dolphin names the saves in a GCI folder, such as 01-GALE-SuperSmashBros0110290334.gci, so a folder of them can also be a Dolphin memory card. When the name is taken, the copy is numbered: …_2.gci. A save copied from a folder keeps its file name.

The Save Folder

Settings › Setup › Storage › Save Folder is the folder the SD card's stack opens on, so it's where saves copied off a memory card go unless you open another folder first. It starts as swiss/saves, which Indigo makes the first time you open Memory Cards. The games' card, when it is another one, opens on the same folder if it has it, and Indigo makes nothing there. A on Save Folder lists the SD card's folders: A opens one, X chooses the one that's open, and B keeps the folder you had. Leave Settings with Save & Exit to keep your choice.

Good to know

• The cubes take your Menu Color and the graph paper your Backdrop Color. With UI Motion on Reduced the cubes don't float, the highlighted one sways less and a copy glides straight across; with Off nothing moves, icons included.
• Memory Cards doesn't format a card. A card that can't be read says so; the GameCube's own Memory Card screen can check or format it.
• A slot holding an SD adapter that Indigo is using, for your games or its settings, isn't read as a memory card.

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From docs/guide/memory-cards.md in Indigo v2.8.0, rendered for the web. Spotted a mistake? Suggest an edit.