Some remark from a stars! player

[Bman]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"On the inability to save the order file compared to stars: It strikes me cruely because in stars PBEM (16 players per game routinely) there was a lot of diplomacy and to be efficient it was mandatory to wait for responses from other players (how you coordinate attacks then ? )"

The inability to save doesn't affect this at all. You can't save and wait for another person's actions to play out; you COULD save and wait for their email message, but nothing in game. But, then, if you're waiting for email, you can just do your turn and then not send it. If something comes in that you need to change plans, open the turn file again and play again (that can be done, you just start from scratch on the turn)

Phoenix-D

Of course that is the whole complaint When it takes 30+ minutes for some of the more involved turns it becomes a chore to have to replay it all now that you have gotten your email reply.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"Not allowing people to save & restart their PBEM turns was intended (IIRC) to prevent the exploit of saving immediately before combat, letting the combat play out, and, if the combat went poorly, reloading the saved Version of the turn and avoiding said combat. Or other similar exploits (re-trying colonization of a ruins planet until a "good" tech appears, for instance)."

You can't do that in simultanious play..

Phoenix-D

I've never played simultaneous, so I'll take your word for it. So, while the "feature" of not saving mid-turn for multiplayer makes sense for non-simultaneous, it may not cause an "exploit" to be able to save a simultaneous-mode game in mid-turn & come back later. Of course, maybe that's difficult to program...

[PvK]

No, the way simultaneous works is that nothing involving commitment to decisions occurs until the turn is sent in by all players. There is no way anyone can ever know the results before commiting their orders and getting the next turn back from the host to see the results.

I've never understood why simultaneous mode doesn't allow saving mid-turn. I think there must be some internal code reason that MM hasn't changed it yet, because it's been requested since before SE4 was released.

PvK

[Bman]

I cannot imagine what those reasons would be:

1) It can obviously save the moves to a file already (saves .plr files when you hit End Turn)

2) It can obviously read the .plr files back in to construct the moves.

Seems a small leap to combine those two pieces of code to allow you to continue your turn. Or am I wrong?

The only thing I can think of is that maybe when you save your .plr file (hit End Turn) it gets encrypted such that you need the host password to unencrypt it and so you as a player are unable to open it back up since you do not know the host password.

Of course, you might say, don't encrypt it when saving your session. But the problem is that if the turn file is unencrypted, you might go figure out how to hex-edit in some moves that defy the gamerules and then that means when processing the turn, there would have to be a new piece of code which validates all the moves. This is all conjecture of course

Originally posted by PvK:
No, the way simultaneous works is that nothing involving commitment to decisions occurs until the turn is sent in by all players. There is no way anyone can ever know the results before commiting their orders and getting the next turn back from the host to see the results.

I've never understood why simultaneous mode doesn't allow saving mid-turn. I think there must be some internal code reason that MM hasn't changed it yet, because it's been requested since before SE4 was released.

PvK

[Wardad]

I've done a fair bit of programming, in a lab environment that requires a lot feature creeps. I am so glad there are only 2 Users tops!!!

It is a real pain to add capabilities that weren't planned for. Often the added variables have to be passed up and down the subroutine tree. C++ with it's inheritance makes it easier but it's not SE4s language.

SE4 is an impressive one man show.

[DirectorTsaarx]

ISTR reading someplace that SE4 was written in Delphi... maybe on MM's site, or maybe in one of the interviews with Aaron Hall that were floating around when SE4 first came out...

[Wardad]

Naa, he uses NADA, an objection oriented language.

[Athena]

ahah we now speak of programming language. In which language is written SE IV? From the data files, with keyword like "begin", "end" and even the ":=" it speaks to me as being written in Delphi (or Pascal), but perhaps not... who knows?

saving the turn and being able to reload it was routinely done in stars! The files were encrypted, and all orders were with the client/server philosophy. In SEIV simultaneous turn thats the same thing: you only do requests, no real orders. So what is the real issue in not supporting this feature? Too few people complains perhaps