Problem Saving Games

[alexti]

I think that "save anywhere" would not be very practical in Dom3. Just consider how save mechanism from more conventional strategy game worked in Dominions: Niefel Jarl attacks your militiamen and misses - save - both your militiamen attack Niefel Jarl and miss - reload - one militiaman misses, another hit for 12 of damage - ok, save - Niefel Jarl attacks and kills one of militiamen - reload - etc Considering number of battles and number of combatants this doesn't look like something practical to do. I believe that the current way of "save at the start of the planning stage and anywhere during the planning stage" is the right choice. With simple script one can also add auto save at the end of the planning stage. You can't make multiple saves in the middle of planning stage, but it's not very limiting, because unlike other games you can change your orders, so it's not like you can't get back to some previous point.

[Cainehill]

Mind Elemental said:
I vote for savegame (or backup savegame) functionality, built in, without the need to copy and paste in Windows Explorer.

Because I play SP, and perfectionist I am, nothing annoys me like forgetting one little, but somewhat important, thing (such as rehiring a mercenary band).

That's nice. If you're such a perfectionist that you can't be bothered to cut and paste once to set up a batch file / script, as has been posted just a few messages back, I gotta say I pity you - you probably will never cook, because something might come out imperfect, and because sheesh, all that repetitive folding, stirring, turning?!? Not to mention that some divine being was so _stupid_ and lazy as to not provide a save mechanism for cooking.

[neofit]

Gandalf Parker said:
Game saves might grant a slight increase in game sales. But we would all be inflicted with the players who require game saves.

Slight increase... I'm not sure it hurt sales that much, since people don't expect a game of this kind not to support the generally available save features. When doing my research about a potential purchase it is the first thing I check before buying a console port, for action games like RPGs and shooters, not for 4x/strategy games. I will from now on.
Now those who have already made the purchase (and if I understand the second sentence correctly then we are a burden) and cannot play because of the lack of a basic feature should just shut up and forget about their money? Can I have a refund? Do you have stats about how many people quit silently? And those who are still playing regardless, despite the frustration, don't they deserve a bit of consideration?

It would be a heck of a patch. If a person isnt able to do their own game save the way the game allows it, then any game save put into the game will tend to fill their machine up. There would have to also be menu options to delete old saves and do other file cleanups. The game already creates quite a few files which are going to be a problem for those people since this is a game which tends to live for YEARS on our machines.

You already have the basic code to dump the state of the game onto the disk and to load it back. Just wrap a simple interface around it. And don't treat everyone as dummies who cannot delete a few files from their machine. You'd be hard pressed to find an HD with less than 80GB nowadays anyway. You want people to play with batch files, backing up stuff into rotating directories, possibly making mistakes, ruining their fun, and now these people cannot delete a few files nor can figure out how their HD space is being used?

Nowadays games make an unlimited number of saves of quite a few megs each and I've never heard anyone complain about it. Just limit the number of save slots to like 10, with the ability to give them some meaningful names) and everyone will be happy.

@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.

[Epaminondas]

Arralen said:

CHEATER !!!


[/i]

I guess Arralen is really the resident forum jack ***, and I am not the only new poster who has been greeted with a rude message.

Getting back on topic, I agree with the thread starter fully: It really is inexcusable that a turn-based strategy game at this day and age would not have such a feature.

[Agrajag]

Epaminondas said:

I guess Arralen is really the resident forum jack ***, and I am not the only new poster who has been greeted with a rude message.

Epaminondas, you are the one that completely twisted Arralen's words.
Arralen said "CHEATER !!!" as a joke, and promptly explaing exactly how to "cheat". (and you can tell its a joke because of the explaining directly after it )
I think you are the one being a jack ***, trying to make Arralen look bad.

[Epaminondas]

Agrajag said:

Epaminondas, you are the one that completely twisted Arralen's words.
Arralen said "CHEATER !!!" as a joke, and promptly explaing exactly how to "cheat". (and you can tell its a joke because of the explaining directly after it )
I think you are the one being a jack ***, trying to make Arralen look bad.

What, are you his sidekick or something?

Arralen edited his original post. More important, the response of the original thread starter, proceeding immediately after Arralen's original post, clearly indicates that he too thought Arralen was being a jack ***.

[Agrajag]

Epaminondas said:
What, are you his sidekick or something?

Arralen edited his original post. More important, the response of the original thread starter, proceeding immediately after Arralen's original post, clearly indicates that he too thought Arralen was being a jack ***.

What are you? A Journalist? Constantly twisting people's words to your way of things...

Let me quote a nice little snippet from Arralen's post now, I'll even bold it:

edit: additonal text .. sry, hit the wrong button...

[Epaminondas]

LOL, a pretty funny and uncanny stab in the dark!

Yes, I am a journalist--at least part-time, given that I've published numerous op-eds for newspapers and short pieces for magazines.

Of course, you can accuse me of being a liar too, and we'd then have an impasse, because there's no way I am going to try to muster the effort to "prove myself" in an online forum--esp. in an online forum where not all participants are oh so "mature."

[Agrajag]

Epaminondas said:
LOL, a pretty funny and uncanny stab in the dark!

Yes, I am a journalist--at least part-time, given that I've published numerous op-eds for newspapers and short pieces for magazines.

Of course, you can accuse me of being a liar too, and we'd then have an impasse, because there's no way I am going to try to muster the effort to "prove myself" in an online forum--esp. in an online forum where not all participants are oh so "mature."

*sigh*
If you would've gone a few posts below you would have also seen solops's post, quoting Arralen's post with the added text, showing it was added at that time and not right now to cover his tracks, as you seem to be implying.
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?

[Endoperez]

Agrajag said:
Finally, if you really think this forum is so hostile, why are you even here?

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 also think Arralen's comment was too harsh. And I also think the way Epaminondas has been handling this issue is too harsh.

That said...

1) Remember the pot and the kettle.
2) Turn the other cheek.
3) Wait a week. If you still are angry, request that the "Forum etiquette" post is updated. A neutral, polite PM to a moderator makes them consider it, and if needed, do something about it. I suspect few regulars would like to have it mention something about proper punctuation and grammar as well.