SE4 Savegame format? - for developers
 

Well, as a newcomer, let me introduce myself. I'm a developer from Hungary, playing all kinds of strategy games, with a special love for 4x space strategy (the kind of game moo / se4 is)

At the moment, i'm working on a SE4 Multiplayer tool with a friend of mine, which is supposed to make multiplayer games really fast.

When i first started to use it, i realized that transmitting savegames trough the net is kinda slow.

See, im on a DSL, and the other player (the host) is on a DSL as well. It has a rather limited, 16k/s upload bandwith, so transmitting 1000k savegames can take quite some time.

A while ago, i discovered an old tool, called rsync. It is basically a filecopy tool, with a very smart algorythm, that only copies the differences between files.

Whoa, i tought, this is what i need, after all, there cant be so big differences between the savegame files of turns compared to the previous turn's savegame file.

Before i started to implement the above mentioned algorythm, i ran a few tests, and guess what i've found.

THERE IS NOT A SINGLE BYTE IN THE WHOLE SAVEGAME FILE, THAT MATCHES THE PREVIOUS SAVE.

Well, as there must be others, who develop tools for SE4, i tought i could as well ask it here:

Does anyone know why exactly that is? Its obviously some kind of compression or encoding, i just wonder if there is a way to tell se4 not to do it.

Does anyone have an idea?

Thanks in advance,
csebal

[ August 06, 2004, 12:10: Message edited by: csebal ]

Re: SE4 Savegame format? - for developers
 

The savegame file is encrypted.
It contains all data for every player in the game, so alot of info changes for every turn.
There is only a small header that's unencrypted.
And you can't turn it off, it's to prevent cheating and it works pretty well.

I'd be interested to know when your app is finished so that I can make the SE4 companion co-work with it.
(Se companion thread)

You can ask Aaron about it next friday on the chat session on #SE4.

[ August 06, 2004, 12:25: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

Re: SE4 Savegame format? - for developers
 

Well, thats sad. I mean the encryption. Maybe in SE5, they'll include some patching mechanism, so you will not have to download a full savegame for every turn, but just the changes made since the Last turn.

Until then, i'll have to live with compressing the savegame.

As for your question, i have no idea when i'll be able to release the tool to the public. I guess we'll do it, when its done http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

As my 'favorite' game developing Groups would say:
soon (tm) - [this may be misleading unless you are actually playing the MMORPG called EVE-Online]

Its being rewritten at the moment (i use .NET / C#), as the client had some nasty multi-threading problems http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif