Spring won't open saves!

[Xiozee]

I am in the middle of the most intense spring battle I have played yet, against AI, on Balanced Annihilation. I then have to stop playing for a long period of time, so I want to save. I press Esc, click save, and wait for 15 mins. Now, it either locks up or it keeps going. If it keeps going, I close out of spring, and when I get back, I open the lobby, go to "Saved Games," click my saved game, and I get the error message: "No compatible installed Spring version has been found, this savegame requires version:
Your current installed versions are: 0.80.4"
And after I click OK I get an invalid replay error: "I don't think you'll be able to watch this replay. Try anyways? (MIGHT CRASH!)"
I have tried clicking yes, and it just brings up a grey loading screen of which remarkably does absolutely nothing. Help please!

[MidKnight]

In its current state, the engine does not support the loading of saved games. There is a long and complicated explanation for why this is so, but suffice to say that you probably won't be able to save and load games reliably anytime soon.

However, most players tend to make extensive use of spring's online multiplayer service, which is quite fun, and cannot use savegames (how do you get thatt same group of players together again to continue? ). I recommend you try some multiplayer matches to fill up your time, and perhaps bug the developers to try working more on adding save/load functionality.

[lurker]

Mk is saying wrongthings. Save and load are buggy, but generally work. But it sounds like your lobby it trying to load it as a replay rather than a save. I'm not sure what the correct process to load a save is, is there an option when you just run spring itself without the lobby?

[MidKnight]

Sorry, I was just going on what others have said. Ignore me.

[hoijui]

there are reports about load & save working, but all reports of games wiht AIs -> no go!
and as 90+% of the times you want to save a game it is agaisnt AIs, what MK said was quite right.

[Xiozee]

Ok, thanks everyone for your help. I have one more question, can you pause spring against an AI, I have noticed after pressing Esc the game continues playing.

[Beherith]

Press the pause button next to print screen and scroll lock.

[lurker]

You can't save with AIs, or you can't load with AIs? But that won't apply to properly coded lua AIs at the very least, so use CRAIG.

[Tobi]

I don't think that one is properly coded though (according to your definition of it), at least recently I figured it didn't handle /luarules reload properly, so I guess it can't handle save/load either.

[YokoZar]

Ok, thanks everyone for your help. I have one more question, can you pause spring against an AI, I have noticed after pressing Esc the game continues playing.

Press the pause button next to print screen and scroll lock.

He makes a good point -- escape should pause in single player.

[lurker]

Oops, I worded that badly, didn't actually intend to imply that without testing. That's what you get for editing sentences. But do you disagree that handling reload is part of being done properly?

[fsalas]

Is it possible to save multiplayer games now? You may think is useless, but at least for me is important, I usually play with my sons, so the players are there to continue, and big games tend to be long ones, so it is really very usefull feature if you can save and continue later, and there is no AI there.

Thanks for all

Fer

[id10terror]

Look i don't want to complain.... i like spring but i won't use it until it has save/load support (including the ai's).
i have 3 systems at various locations i have ta+(taucp,aa,5000k unit patch (in so many ta folders its hard to know which is which)) and i play against mostly harmless with the ai nuke silo.

But due to the reliability of:
a. the systems
b. the game in the epic long(8 hours+) battles i like to have.
c. my ability to crowd pathfinders and cause resonace cascades.

I'm sorry but i just wont put myself through that frustration. I will keep looking at spring with hope in my eyes. and i hope at some point in the future both the ai's and spring support load and save.

[slogic]

Try playing with KAIK AI only. It is promoted as serializable thus you are able to save/load games.

[id10terror]

Thanks for the reply slogic but no luck.
started a game of spring with ba7.04 and kaik 0.13 spring 0.80.5.1 springlobby 0.35 on speedmetal. upon loading in springlobby i get the message "no compatible spring version found required version: your version 0.80.5" then i'm asked if i want to try loading of the 'replay' anyway if i click yes the game starts to load crashes and produces Attachment A

i tried associating the spring save files(.ssf) with spring and launching a similar thing occours and i get Attachment B

Its safe to say that save/load with AI does not work.
As this isn't mentioned in the faq or readme i'm guessing its a sore point.
Would love to enjoy the hard work everyone has put in to this game. Will continue to lurk in wait of new engine releases.

[hoijui]

translated stack trace attackment B:
http://buildbot.eat-peet.net/spring/sta ... 64144.html

translated stack trace attackment A:
http://buildbot.eat-peet.net/spring/sta ... 64392.html

its the same. looks like the Legacy C++ callback is not initialized.

it is known to not work with any AI, as much as i know.

a plan is to make them die on save and reinitialize them on load, which is in my eyes the most easy to do, and would be the most stable.

[id10terror]

Just tested the new version of spring 0.80.5.2
Looked at "AI: Properly fix Lua AI loading" thought to myself this looks good.

BA 7.04 + Kaik 0.13

Upon loading save made with this version i have the same experience as before.
Save and Load do not work in spring 0.80.5.2.

[Pressure Line]

afaik KAIK isn't a Lua AI.

[id10terror]

I know, it says so on the ai selection screen. However as no one will say there is no save/load support in the faq and readme, and as people seem to post replies to these suggestions that either A. they haven't tested despite the fact they have spring installed or B. are completely unhelpful (or c are helpful and suggest to wait until spring reaches maturity).

Everytime there is a new release i'm going to test and post my results so when some poor noob tries searching for "save not work" they actually get something relevent to the version they are using.

I expect when they realise these implications they might keep that trustworthy old cavedog folder around.

To cut right down to the bone applications/subcomponents are usually kept in thier own address space and if someone really wanted it they would be able to dump that process to file and reload it later making sure that anything the code touched outside its address space was preserved. Or at the very least dump the ai's data space to file and reload that however this would require 'jimmying' the ai to start again.

Before someone says thats not possible, suggest to the ai that it should stop but not unload (by releasing its thread at the end of the main loop) after this happens dump the ai, reload the ai and start a thread beginning with the main loop. That was hard. If you were desperate you could suspend the ai's thread but more use of 'jimmy' would be required, the ways ARE endless but the 'will' seems non existant.

<Cut here to prevent myself unloading more emotional baggage on
pressure line. Ranting continues for about 3 more paragraphs. I'm sorry i'm so emotionally invested in this, i'd love reflective water and a proper 3d render as much as the next guy but until i can save and load spring is just a 'concept car' to me, it looks great showcases excellent ideas and concepts but theres only one of them and if you were to 'push' it and it broke you'd have to start again.>

[R-TEAM]

Hi,

@id10terror
I think you will be REALY notice IF Save/Load work ....
(A big thread will comming with MANY Thanks to the Devs ..)

Regards
R-TEAM