No Saves makes it impossible to play the greatest games.

[Forboding Angel]

*To the native english speakers: Why do you (at least according to my English-teacher and English-schoolbook) never use a colon before because? It irritates me every time.

You need new English books.


The colon

A colon consists of two dots, one above the other:
:
The colon is often used to introduce a list of items. For example:



You will need to bring three things to the party: some food, something to drink, and a small gift for the hostess.
This sentence contains a list of three items. The first part of the sentence tells you that there will be three things; then the colon tells you "here are the three things".

You can also use a colon to introduce an explanation or a definition of something. For instance:



I'll tell you what I'm going to do: I'm going to quit!


"Elephant (noun): a large grey mammal found in Africa and India."


___________________________



The semi-colon

A semi-colon consists of a comma with a dot above it:
;
The semi-colon is often used to join together two independent clauses -- in other words, it joins two clauses that could be sentences. For example:



Mary drives a Mercedes; Joanne drives a Chevrolet.
These two clauses could be separate sentences: "Mary drives a Mercedes. Joanne drives a Chevrolet." However, when we use a semi-colon, we are usually suggesting that there is a relationship between the sentences, but we are not making that relationship clear. Usually, you can tell from the context what the relationship is. In the example above, the relationship is probably CONTRAST; we could also use "but" to make this clear: "Mary drives a Mercedes, but Joanne drives a Chevrolet." When we use a semi-colon, it is often because we want to make the reader think about the relationship for herself. This is useful in many situations, such as when writing cautiously, ironically, or humorously.

One more very common use of the semi-colon is to join two clauses using a transition such as however, therefore, or on the other hand. Here are some examples:

Transition
Example

in addition
She works all day in a store; in addition, she takes classes in the evenings.

however
John is Canadian; however, he lives in the United States.

otherwise
You should get your brakes fixed; otherwise, you might have an accident.

therefore
Hundreds of people cross the border from the US to Canada every day; therefore, it is not possible to search all of them carefully.

[hoijui]

ok, just to be perfectly clear:
if you ever arrive at a solution, it will be so ugly, that we will not include it in the main repo (side-note: you would spend a lot of time adjusting to changes in the main repo, in your branch).
thus, your whole adventure will be worth: you having learned to use some techniques that nobody wants in his/her software.

you may think it will not be ugly, and continue anyway. it is your right to do that of course, as maybe all engine devs are wrong, and you are right.

just do not come whining at the end.

[PicassoCT]

just do not come whining at the end.

You ve heard the man. That job is allready taken, by me. Hey, wait a sec thats even worser then unemployed. Why are all the good jobs taken... life is so unfair..^2

[Fast2]

Forboding Angel: No, just a lookup of the word on leo.org …
I think this was a misconception on my side, I have no idea why I thought that colon was the right word …
Anyways, thanks for your clarification on that topic.

So, what I really would have liked to know was: Why do you not use a comma before because?
Additional question: Why is it “Why don’t you use”, but “Why do you not use”?
I have already startet to read the article about English grammer on Wikipedia [a few weeks ago], but haven’t finished by now.

hoijui:
What if it wasn’t ugly?

you may think it will not be ugly, and continue anyway. it is your right to do that of course, as maybe all engine devs are wrong, and you are right.

For sure! I have used a spork to eat all the world’s wisdom, YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!! :D
Won’t happen (at least I hope so).
By the way, what’s wrong with learning about serialization and TMP?

With kind regards,
Fast2

[PicassoCT]

Its looked down upon as necromancy by the church of the spaghetticode monster. Something that died, is revived, that means you drag the game back from the afterlife, were it was punished or enjoyed the things games enjoy once they are gone. (Delicious Micro and balanced teams i guess)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ6TrKhpqO8

[Pako]

Instead of making a yet another save/load system and writing a programmer AI to code it, you should set your goals higher and do a fast forwarding/reversing with replays.

Opening a replay is already the perfect savegame, just Spring is too unoptimized to load long games very fast; still 20 minute game will load under a minute and replays can work for saving/continuing online games too and only the host needs to have the replay file. With local savegames everyone needs the savegame file and syncing is not guaranteed.

The first step would be heavy optimization for the simulation. Spring could be made 1000 times faster and still seem like a same game(TA actually looks better than Spring and is about 1000 times faster).

Second step is storing the simulation state every 5 minutes or so; just copy the whole simulation memory, maybe 100Mb or so. This copying might be slightly similar to saving a game but probably easier because modern compuers have Gigs of free RAM but 100Mb for a savegame is barely acceptable.

Third step is switching that memory back for using in the simulation.

Just like implementing engine savegame this can take maybe a year or two to get working perfectly.

Optimizing engine is probably the best to start with, it helps to understand Spring coding and easy to achieve something productive.

[AF]

Forboding Angel: No, just a lookup of the word on leo.org …
I think this was a misconception on my side, I have no idea why I thought that colon was the right word …
Anyways, thanks for your clarification on that topic.

So, what I really would have liked to know was: Why do you not use a comma before because?

Because the comma can come before and after, and it changes the meaning of the word. The comma also indicates a brief pause in speech, albeit not one as lengthy as a full stop.

Additional question: Why is it “Why don’t you use”, but “Why do you not use”?
I have already startet to read the article about English grammer on Wikipedia [a few weeks ago], but haven’t finished by now.[/url]

Wikipedia isn't the best source. Also, both statements are valid, "Why don't you use" means the same thing as "Why do you not use". The apostrophe indicates that don't is an abbrieviation of "do not". Having said that, people do say don't out loud, rather than "do not" as its quicker and easier.

hoijui:
What if it wasn’t ugly?

you may think it will not be ugly, and continue anyway. it is your right to do that of course, as maybe all engine devs are wrong, and you are right.

For sure! I have used a spork to eat all the world’s wisdom, YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!! :D
Won’t happen (at least I hope so).
By the way, what’s wrong with learning about serialization and TMP?

With kind regards,
Fast2

As I understand it, it's been stated already that we already have a save load system. The missing part is in lua gadgets etc, and that is where your efforts are best focused.


What exactly must be done to implement the engine save load routines in a games lua and where is the documentation?

[smoth]

ZWZSG...

[jK]

What exactly must be done to implement the engine save load routines in a games lua and where is the documentation?

[AF]

Unusually, that page is actually quite well written and explains in nice english how to do the task at hand. Credits to Tobi

[sanguinebrah]

I'm not sure if most of you realise it or take it entirely seriously, but there are a large number of gamers out there who do not enjoy Multiplayer experiences at all. And while I am grateful that many people have gone to a great deal of effort to make AI skirmishes a reality, it is the lack of common features such as savegames and a standard frontend menu that drive this section of your audience away.

I always expected these features to turn up as the project matured but it seems to be in a fairly mature state now and it is still the norm to have to mess about with unattractive external multiplayer lobby programs to start a skirmish and then have to abandon long games half way through.

Please understand that I am not trying to be confrontational here. I just think that Spring might be missing out on a wider audience (that may bring with them potentially valuable supporters and contributors).

[smoth]

it's like you didn't read the thread.

[Cheesecan]

Wonder where Pako gets this 1000x from. Does not make a whole lot of sense. Saving game state is conceptually easy and space is not really an issue. You can always compress it after you serialized it.

Reason for nonexistence is simply stubbornness and lack of interesy in sp.

But if you are playing alone is it too much to ask that you wait 20 min for game to replay? You are getting the Spring experience here. User friendliness is our nemesis.

[smoth]

Your nemesis? You do something to fix it? I didn't realize that you wmere working on it. What are you working on to improve it?

[Cheesecan]

Your nemesis? You do something to fix it? I didn't realize that you wmere working on it. What are you working on to improve it?

I'm working progressively to imbue the community with the equitable drive to realize its dreams and revitalize Spring to bring back the golden days of yore. From time to time one encounters nemesis, the inalienable cosmic entity which is leeching the life force out of Spring with its many tentacles. Each tentacle is a part and a demon upon itself, woe unto he who would stumble across a minion of the great vampire.

[PicassoCT]

no grammarcheck makes it impossible to form the greatest sentences.

[smoth]

Your nemesis? You do something to fix it? I didn't realize that you wmere working on it. What are you working on to improve it?

I'm working progressively to imbue the community with the equitable drive to realize its dreams and revitalize Spring to bring back the golden days of yore. From time to time one encounters nemesis, the inalienable cosmic entity which is leeching the life force out of Spring with its many tentacles. Each tentacle is a part and a demon upon itself, woe unto he who would stumble across a minion of the great vampire.

So you are just going to nag others instead of doing actual work.. Disappointed, I am.

[KingRaptor]

On an unrelated note, it'd be leagues easier for gadgets to be compatible with the current save/load system if the units (and features) could be recreated with the same unitIDs they had (unitID arg to Spring.CreateUnit(), perhaps)?

Currently you have to remap all the new unitIDs to the old ones, which is extremely difficult when the gadget in question is 4000 lines long and uses unitIDs all over the place (CAI).

[PicassoCT]

Your nemesis? You do something to fix it? I didn't realize that you wmere working on it. What are you working on to improve it?

I'm working progressively to imbue the community with the equitable drive to realize its dreams and revitalize Spring to bring back the golden days of yore. From time to time one encounters nemesis, the inalienable cosmic entity which is leeching the life force out of Spring with its many tentacles. Each tentacle is a part and a demon upon itself, woe unto he who would stumble across a minion of the great vampire.

So you are just going to nag others instead of doing actual work.. Disappointed, I am.

Its the MetaGame of Spring. Those who cant stand the bitching, either leave, or do the work.

[Cheesecan]

So you are just going to nag others instead of doing actual work.. Disappointed, I am.

If you call that nagging..just wait until you get kids.