Why no Save game Feature

[PvK]

Sigh...

[RamsHead]

HoneyBadger said:
And Ramshead, ofcourse kids deserve respect, often a specific "kid" will be far more deserving of respect than a given "adult" of whatever age. I think I was going for an "it's what you do that makes you who you are" kind of feeling.

I was just being facetious.
*Looks in dictionary*
Yep, I spelled that right.

[alexti]

Newthought said:
-THERE IS A CHOICE BETWEEN THE TWO. LET THOSE WHO WANT SAVES USE THEM, AND LET THOSE WHO DON'T WANT SAVES LET THEM TURN THEM OFF.-

Compare this to the current: "Let those who want saves turn them on". So what was your argument about, once again?

[alexti]

Diorj said:
If that means I want so save a game before a big battle to try different options, I just dont know how that would hurt anybody that doesn't like to do that.

I also understand that there are ways to save manually, but (and I know the Devs work hard) for $55 buks I wolud expect a professional means of saving the game.

You can set Dominions to auto-save every turn - no need to waste time saving it manually at all (whether through professional or non-professional means). That's probably the most convenient approach for your playstyle.

[Saxon]

I may have missed this, there are a lot of things in Dom. How do I set it for auto save each turn?

I would like to repeat what Diorj has said. I am an old guy who has a lot of other responsibilities. I don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring out how to do this, I want to have fun for a few extra minutes when I don’t have to work, change diapers, chase tenants or agree with my wife that her boss is evil. I would really, really, really, like a save feature in the menus. Gandalf mentioned that those who want saves already have them, which myself and several other posters disagree with. I would like to note that several of the posters who agree with this point have very low post counts, they are new community members. They are the marginal people, the ones who may or may not stay. They are the growth area of the game, they are the ones we need if we want to keep this game healthy and moving on to another edition.

The Devs may not be doing this for money, but they charge us for it like every other game. Between Shrapnel and Illwinter, they have roughly $150 for my copies of the three different games. I will argue that makes them for profit developers, just like everyone else. You can argue that they don’t do it for the money, but I think that one will find that most developers are pretty much the same. Seriously, tell me that Sid M. or Cormack do it for the cash. They do it because they love it. When Cormack got bored, he started to build rockets, because he also loved that. In any case, I just trying to point out that as a consumer, I pay the same to both, so I expect the same from both, regardless of their motivation.

As a final argument, I too want the Devs to focus their scarce time on fixing things I see as problems with the game.

[HoneyBadger]

I've got a lot of posts because I post like ten times a day, not because I've been here forever.
I'm an old gamer myself, I've bought two games from Shrapnel, Space Empires IV and Dom3.
I've got a family and plenty of responsibilities. My wife doesn't complain about her boss being evil, because she's got two or three evil co-workers and everybody's in "a huge clique". Whatever that means.
I don't chase tenants, I chase fliers.

I represent the new community just as much as any other "marginal" person, both because I never owned or heard about Illwinter until they were counting down to releasing Dom3, and because I'm relatively new to these boards. I haven't ever posted to this forum before October. That's 4 months, give or take.

I like Dom3 because it's different, both better and not afraid to not appeal to everyone.

Honestly, how many game designers or business people in general do you know that reference sacrificing blind pre-teen girls in the name of demon-summoning? I don't think too many.

I don't think that you're going to see them caving and giving in to what the "average" gamer who walks in the door, looks around and says "well I would buy it, if they did this and this and this".

Dom3 is made by people who are hardcore enthusiasts, for people who are hardcore enthusiasts, and it gives people who aren't, a good reason to become.

[Saxon]

HB,

Oh, the clique of evil co-workers. We had that last year, but they reshuffled the offices, so now we have an evil boss. I suspect it he was hit by lightening, we would find another source of untold evil. It is important she continue to work, for if she was at home, I would be the next candidate to be the source of all evil…

Your points are well taken and you always discuss things in a cogent way, which is great. I do not mean to imply that all new posters are pro-save, as that can not be logically supported. My point is more that there is a pro-save group and that there are non-hardcore players out there. I would argue they are a lot quieter than the hardcore and their opinions are underrepresented. Of course, there exceptions like you and I. I would wager we both post from the office, which is very naughty…

I agree that the game has a lot to pull in the casual gamer, but my opinion is that a simple save feature would pull in more. It helps the gaming community and the pocketbook of the Devs. We know they don’t care much about the later, but they do about the first.

[calmon]

For me Dominions is a MP game only. I play SP only to test some things or play for 1-x turns to try out a starting strategy. For testing a save/load function would be ok, but i'm still happy to just copy the save game files.

I've some problems to understand why people discuss about a save/load function in prior of a better single player AI. I mean is it only me but i find it quite boring, the strategical AI doing always the same:
Make useless attacks against high province defence every turn. There isn't any visible difference playing against different nations. It seems they are all replicates from only one AI.
In fact its really impossible to make a good AI for such a complex game. But anyway they could improve it, make some different play styles, reduce AI bugs like not conquering neutral provinces, etc.

This would be a worthy improvement before we discuss a save/reload feature.

Thats my oppinion.

[Wyehl]

calmon said:
I've some problems to understand why people discuss about a save/load function in prior of a better single player AI.

Improving the AI is a difficult, intricate and open ended goal with no clear finish line. Adding a save feature is a very attainable goal that can be achieved before moving on to larger changes.

[Gandalf Parker]

AutoSaves
Much of Dominions doesnt bother writing into the game for each of the operating systems, things that are already possible. Some of it by third party programs that exist or that other players can provide. We have seen the same discussions about screenshots, taking notes, keeping history, redefining keys, alarms so we wont miss real world responsibilities, backups, restores, configs for starting a game, email support since it is a PbEM (Play by EMail), etc etc etc.

The "autosave" feature is pretty simple for people on Linux or really old computer users who remember DOS. The game has a switch for telling it a file to execute before a hosting, and one to execute after a hosting. So if a windows person has batch files for it they can change the game icon to add
--preexec before.bat --postexec after.bat
The pre-execute batch file can copy the game save to a backup directory, or zip them up, or keep multiple copies.
The post-execute batch file can make a noise to tell you that the hosting is done (good for really big games) or display the scoreboard or anything else you think of.

Its not as simple as a menu option for save/restore but its much more powerful. I think Ive seen examples of files for Windows, and for Mac, and for Linux to make use of that powerful feature.