Problem Saving Games

[Epaminondas]

Agrajag said:

Personally, I also doubt the sincerity of your mistake. After all, you did pull a post from 6 pages (and more than a month) ago, just to make a point against Arralen.
If you are going to accuse me of immaturity you might as well leave now, unless you want me to use my super-powers as Arralen's sidekick against you
Finally, if you really think this forum is so hostile, why are you even here?

The thread was a "current" thread, not from "more than a month ago." Someone had replied to it 13 minutes before I replied to it.

As for why I am here, because I was an avid fan of Dom II, and I would like to learn more about Dom III--in particular because I don't have a copy of Dom III yet? And it appears that there are some posters here who are indeed courteous and have not accused me of being a Dom III "pirate" recklessly.

[Agrajag]

Epaminondas said:

The thread was a "current" thread, not from "more than a month ago." Someone had replied to it 13 minutes before I replied to it.

Now look in my post at what I put in italic - "Post" not "thread". The post you quoted is over a month old, and is from six pages ago, no two ways about it.

As for why I am here, because I was an avid fan of Dom II, and I would like to learn more about Dom III--in particular because I don't have a copy of Dom III yet?

Obviously I meant "why are you here despite so much percieved hostility?".
I'm assuming you just mean that such hostility as you seem to complain about is negligible compared to how you value the information you hope to obtain by hanging around the forum.

And it appears that there are some posters here who are indeed courteous and have not accused me of being a Dom III "pirate" recklessly.

Again, no one accused you of anything, despite what you may think.
Furthermore, having spent quite some time hanging around this forum I can tell you most of the regular members in here are courteous, and all of them will treat you well (as long as you don't try to upset them.)

Endoperez said:

Err...

Sorry, I seem to have missed something, but when arguing someone, I'd suggest not proving his points. You are giving him a reason to think this forum is hostile.

I think your comment here is a bit too harsh.

I'm just interested, not really trying to pass any criticism (though I can see why it can be understood that way).
I've seen countless of posts on different forums from people who think that everyone is against them, yet they keep "coming back" for some more "abuse". If you feel the place is that bad - just leave, there is no point in starting an arguement about how everyone else is just a jack ***, especially since that just tends to make people more of an *** than they usually are.
Apparently, Epaminondas answer is (if you will allow me to paraphrase a bit) "Its more important to me to get the information I want about dom3 than the bad treatment troubles me" - a good enough answer. Even though I don't think he is being treated badly in any way.

[alexti]

neofit said:
@alexti:
I am not talking about saving the game during a combat sequence. Just a proper save/load menu in the orders phase - a friendly wrapper around the unforgiving save system we have now.

Then I think you're very much exaggerating the issue. Currently you can automatically save at the beginning of every planning stage, you can automatically save at the end of every planning stage. Also you can have one save in the current planning stage. So what missing is the ability to have saveral saves in the middle of the same planning stage and ability to keep saves from the middle of past planning stages. I'm not sure what is your planning pattern, but those missing options look very marginally useful. Personally, I can see only one scenario where I'd miss them: you're late in the single player game and want to make 'precaution' during the planning stage in case you accidentally press 'e'. Of course, I could reload from the beginning of that stage, but redoing the order is not fun.

[neofit]

alexti said:
Then I think you're very much exaggerating the issue. Currently you can automatically save at the beginning of every planning stage, you can automatically save at the end of every planning stage. Also you can have one save in the current planning stage. So what missing is the ability to have saveral saves in the middle of the same planning stage and ability to keep saves from the middle of past planning stages. I'm not sure what is your planning pattern, but those missing options look very marginally useful. Personally, I can see only one scenario where I'd miss them: you're late in the single player game and want to make 'precaution' during the planning stage in case you accidentally press 'e'. Of course, I could reload from the beginning of that stage, but redoing the order is not fun.

What I am referring to is page 10 of the manual:

page 10 of the manual:
Up until this time, you can change your orders. You can even quit the game, and save your orders up to this point so you can continue them later.

Why do I have to quit the game then launch a .bat file in order to make a proper save? Reading this thread, customers are apparently not even sure what files should be saved. It's not like we are asking for something revolutionary that has never been done before, we are asking for an option that is present in 99.99% of the games on the PC.
I've already done the "quit to save, launch self-made .bat file to really save" routine with an SPWAW megacampaign. I know it very soon becomes like work, more work than the game is worth. And if it's so easy to circumvent this "no-save" policy, why not let customers do it officially, from within the game?

page 10 of the manual:
But once you click on "End Turn," these orders are resolved. There is no in-game way to save the previous turn so you can re-load it an replay it, so more so than with other games, you have to live with the consequences of what you do.

Why? I don't see any point to this whatsoever, besides the "weee we're uber hardcore" factor that may be popular with some people. As has been said many times before, people are playing at home, a single-player game, their way of playing the game - with frequent saves or not, with the ability to replay from one point with a different strategy - not only does not hurt anybody but provides extra gameplay. And when starting out a game as complex as this one, it is very important to be able to try and retry different approaches, to get a feel for the way things work and all.

Frankly I don't see why some devs are getting a woody every time they frustrate a customer with their "gotcha, you can't retry" attitude. It's even more frustrating when you're a noob and are not even allowed to try various things. Looks more like weak excuses for not willing to code a couple of simple menus.

[Agrajag]

neofit said:
Why do I have to quit the game then launch a .bat file in order to make a proper save? Reading this thread, customers are apparently not even sure what files should be saved. It's not like we are asking for something revolutionary that has never been done before, we are asking for an option that is present in 99.99% of the games on the PC.
I've already done the "quit to save, launch self-made .bat file to really save" routine with an SPWAW megacampaign. I know it very soon becomes like work, more work than the game is worth. And if it's so easy to circumvent this "no-save" policy, why not let customers do it officially, from within the game?

I think it was said before - just run the batch file --prexec so it will autosave upon turn hosting.
Besides that there really is no good reason to save during the middle of the turn unless you are quiting, in which case the game saves anyway.

[alexti]

neofit said:
Why do I have to quit the game then launch a .bat file in order to make a proper save? Reading this thread, customers are apparently not even sure what files should be saved. It's not like we are asking for something revolutionary that has never been done before, we are asking for an option that is present in 99.99% of the games on the PC.
I've already done the "quit to save, launch self-made .bat file to really save" routine with an SPWAW megacampaign. I know it very soon becomes like work, more work than the game is worth. And if it's so easy to circumvent this "no-save" policy, why not let customers do it officially, from within the game?

I think you're totally misunderstanding how things work. You need to install save game system once (similar to how you'd install a patch for example) and you have all save games without any extra actions from you (except the multiple mid-startegy-phase ones). Your use pattern is perfectly covered by those automatic saves.

I think you're also wrong about "no-save" policy. That's likely just that it's deemed pointless writing something in-game that is already done (and likely much better) with existing tools. Saving the game is not really Dominions-specific task, so amount of effort to implement such feature would be disproportionate to amount of added value.