Why Save/load games is important!

[id10terror]

1. It will allow spring to be 'portable', as it currently stands you cannot take a 'game that you are playing' to another computer. So while you can load spring on a pen drive why would you want to?

2. It will speed up debugging, by allowing players to submit bug reports with savegames you are allowing developers to see the bugs in action which speeds the debugging process.

3. It is wanted/needed by those who don't have the internet access.

4. You will make spring more popular as a game engine, increaseing your userbase/beta testing thus increasing the overall care factor for spring.

5. There is no RTS in existance bar Tower Defence that lacks a save/load system.

6. You will add value to spring and existing users will benefit from the increased functionality.

Come on guys, i'm tired of banging dev heads together. If you will not at least commit to this part of spring becoming important, will you at least commit to some version number/objective where it will rise in importance.

If its never going to be important we may as well just give up now, there will be no point in continuing. I for one will delete my forum account a cease testing of any further spring versions.

[Neddie]

It is important for any sort of single player campaign, but the engine is primarily used for multiplayer, and multiplayer saving with the physics components and sheer complexity of the sim is not trivial. Developers work on what they wish to as they wish to. It will eventually come back to be, but that will take work and patience.

[CarRepairer]

Your post has a lot of very good points, some which I didn't consider before. It is a shame that you ended it off with a threat aimed toward people who have worked so hard to make a free game and ask nothing in return. You won't encourage anyone to work harder with threats of leaving (you'll encourage mockery more likely).

[zwzsg]

You can keep on playing Kernel Panic, it has savegames*.

*Assuming there is no space in the install path.

[id10terror]

It wasn't supposed to be a threat, tho in hindsight i can see how it could be taken that way. With that in mind, its nice to know that someone might actually miss me . I don't think hoijui would tho.

[Auswaschbar]

The good thing about open source software is that if you miss a feature of importance to you, you can always go and implement it yourself.

[id10terror]

Trouble is that the feature is already 'half' implamented and is being maintained by someone who claims that all the framework is already there.

[Tobi]

1. It will allow spring to be 'portable', as it currently stands you cannot take a 'game that you are playing' to another computer. So while you can load spring on a pen drive why would you want to?

Because you can also play games shorter then for what you need savegames.

2. It will speed up debugging, by allowing players to submit bug reports with savegames you are allowing developers to see the bugs in action which speeds the debugging process.

A little bit, maybe.

Compared to this replays are more valuable though, as they record an entire sequence of events, and not just a snapshot of the gamestate without any temporal element.

I.e. a savegame could just act as replacement for instructions on how to reproduce a bug like /give 5 armflash, /give 1 armllt just out of range of the flash, etc.

This can already be done using a replay tho, so not really any added value unless savegames would be more compatible between Spring versions then replays currently are.

3. It is wanted/needed by those who don't have the internet access.

4. You will make spring more popular as a game engine, increaseing your userbase/beta testing thus increasing the overall care factor for spring.

6. You will add value to spring and existing users will benefit from the increased functionality.

Yes. Same applies to many more features though.

[lurker]

How many of those games have a true, 100% save and load, including animation and projectiles, and how many get you back to just about where you were before? If you're satisfied with just about, then use the code in KP, and bother other game makers to adjust and include it.

[Tobi]

The current system is indeed wrong, however the biggest problem isn't that it's possible with it to save everything, the biggest problem is one which you'll also have when you try to implement simple load save in the engine (which I found out when I tried this a few weeks ago): it is that the entire startup procedure is as untransparent as it could be. It's a big bunch of spaghetti code in particular when loading save games (and even more so when considering the different execution paths for loading savegames).

Personally I won't look further at the actual save/load, as that is relatively straightforward (compared to cleaning up the startup sequence), before I (or someone else) has made considerable changes in the startup sequence of the engine.

[CarRepairer]

Personally I won't look further at the actual save/load

Oh noes. Now id10terror will delete his forum account a cease testing of any further spring versions. If only we took him seriously and heeded his warning. Now we must live with these consequences knowing it is our own fault for not giving in to his ultimatum.

[Argh]

If you're satisfied with just about, then use the code in KP, and bother other game makers to adjust and include it.

That's the route I think we should all be taking.

I think a generic save-game Widget should be possible, for games that support a game-loader Gadget (i.e., save-slot 3 == KP, myMap, state, and the Gadget would allow for you to switch games at the same time you're loading up a new save).

I just haven't had time to look at KP's source yet to see whether it's preferable to just modify that or to write a more generic solution from scratch, but I think that's the way to go forward with this- a frontend / backend that is drag-and-drop easy to install for all games.

[zwzsg]

If you had the time, you should instead look at Gundam's one: it's a little more recent, and isolated into a small mutator.

[Argh]

Excellent, I'll take a look.

[id10terror]

See car repairer got my point of view right, i wont be missed. So its not a threat, its a solution, to all your problems. Death to ID10TError!!!! get him boys!

Tobi:
If i want to save a replay can i just hit esc and save it or do i have to do somthing special before starting the game. if you have to do somthing special then replays arn't as good as saves.
How would you create a replay in 'real time' without having to restart the game saving the replay and then try and reproduce the bug? no you need somthing you can hit mid fight for review later on.

[Tobi]

For every game a replay is saved.

[Argh]

I am working on this.

[id10terror]

Thanks argh.

3. It is wanted/needed by those who don't have the internet access.
4. You will make spring more popular as a game engine, increaseing your userbase/beta testing thus increasing the overall care factor for spring.
6. You will add value to spring and existing users will benefit from the increased functionality.

Yes. Same applies to many more features though.

I am curious and would like to know what other features fall into this category?

[Neddie]

SM3, random map generator, game agnostic basic AI, campaigns (For particular games)...

[SpliFF]

MD3 model loading, headless server, stability, multi-threading.