Saving and loading games with AI player in them?

[secrecite]

Greetings all. This is my first post so I'll make it short and to the point.

I have installed TA:Spring and it is frankly amazing. I play the Absolute Annihilation Mod normally locally against NTai.dll (latest version at time of writing XE and it's pretty good!

I use the F8 key to save the game and it religiously creates the test.ssf file.

I searched about on the forums and heard some ppl talking about loading up replays and using the ".take" command to control players in replays. This method does not seem to work and I don't see how it would work.

1) So, how can I LOAD a game I saved and have the AI continue working?

At the moment, loading the test.ssf file after opening spring.exe does faithfully load the positions of all units. It does not put the AI player back in. The computer player's units just sit there receiving no commands. Also, all nanolathing stops and such orders must be re-issued.

2) So, the above question stands, but also, for future reference, how can I save a multiplayer game, involving AI players, and, equally importantly, how can I then LOAD that game later, with the AI functioning, and how do I get my friends to join again?

When answering, bear in mind that I am only playing using a local LAN as my internet is not fast enough (shared .)

I use TASServer to host these local games if that is any help.

I ask these questions in frustration as occasionally, for no reason that I can fathom (ping is excellent), my friends get kicked. This is only about an hour into the game, so a save would put an end to this misery, but also, due to the in-progress nature of the TA:Spring code it sometimes crashes, hangs and drop-to-desktop's sometimes just HAPPEN. I am no C++ whizz or even a modeler, so major respect to everyone writing and contributing this stuff - I am truly amazed!

On top of this, sometimes the game just seems to "decide" it doesn't like something and drop to desktop. Last time (today) it was that I captured a Core construction vehicle (playing as ARM) and started using Core tech. This was fine, until I built the Doomsday Machine. The incredibly ironic crash happened when I finished buildng the doomsday machine. Oh har har.

Desktop. No save. No load. Nothing. AAAARGH!

Please help as I don't dare get involved in a good long slugging fight now for fear of crying at my desktop with no save! (Well, at least none that I can load and play properly with the AI working again or any of my friends joining over LAN... (TASServer)...

Thanks in advance!

[Tobi]

Load and save keys are very experimental AFAIK: actually I don't even think they're supposed to work (apparently not in AI games and definitely not in multiplayer games)

[secrecite]

Do you reckon this functionality is being worked on and if so, what sort of timeframe we're talking about? (I have no idea how often releases come out...)

Thanks!

[Tobi]

Hm, I don't think anyone is actively working on this, but I think the functionality will be there sometime (it would be a first step towards a resync system). I don't want to give an ETA because it's pretty long term I think.

[jcnossen]

I could spend some time in implementing it, but it would not be very useful right now anyway. AIs don't support it, and it's going to break if we add scripting of some kind. We need to make a definite choice in scripting before I continue on savegames.

[AF]

We'd need a laod/save event in the AI interface before AI's could work. I'd be happy to modify NTai to support it should those events be created.