Problem Saving Games [Archive]

Peter Ebbesen

October 12th, 2006, 01:13 PM

From a user perspective, the way it is handled in Dominions is just plain silly. Dominions 2 was not an "MP only" game and Dominions 3 is even less so. A considerable number of players play singleplayer only or primarily. Thus, not having save game functionality in-game because the game is multiplayer based is a poor choice, since having the ability avaible does not impact multiplayer adversely.

Yes, you can copy files manually by hand if you want to, but that takes considerably longer time than e.g. choosing save, enter filename, hit save button would do, [and given how Dominions 3 ****s up when alt-tabbing, you probably do have to leave the game to make that copy by hand] and as a result it is something you either write your own script to do automatically (requiring code literacy) or, for all practical purposes, don't do at all. Which leaves you in the cold when the game ****s up and corrupts a save file since this on the spot ends your game. It also presents the "irreversible-death" scenario to new players. YES, they learn by irreversible death, as I'm sure some of you will argue, but they learn much more if they after suffering defeat can retrace to an earlier save and retry their approach to see how they could have changed the outcome, than if they just have to say, tough cookies, let me start all over from the very beginning again.

As for the line of player groupthink that goes "the developers don't like people to cheat on random events/battles/whatever by not rolling with the punches"... as any good developer knows, as far as fun goes, the point of a game is for the players to have fun, not the developers (or even worse, the computer), and anybody not wanting to load an older savegame is free to not do so without any lessening of his gaming experience. (Though it is nice when the developers too have fun, even if it is vicious or satirical fun, it should never be the priority)

It is a baffling newbie-unfriendly design choice that is no doubt a legacy of the MP design of the game and which should have been reconsidered a long time ago. Players cannot be assumed to be Nethack-nerds used to that approach or assumed to be happy with an forced ironman-mode.

PDF

October 12th, 2006, 01:20 PM

It'll be cool that some of the Net-nerds you're talking about (Huh hello Gandalf, did we call you ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif) make a simple java or whatever mini-app to manage savefiles... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

solops

October 12th, 2006, 01:43 PM

Arralen said:

CHEATER !!!

Honestly,
opening up the dominions3/savedgames/*gamename* - folder isn't that hard to do, isn't it? And you should have a ZIP-program (or another packer) installed .. just mark the *nationname*.2h, *nationname*.trn and ftherlnd file and zip them up e.g. into "turn1.zip", and the next turn into "turn2.zip" etc.
That way, you can always decompress any turn you like... . Simply reload the game afterwards.

[i]edit: additonal text .. sry, hit the wrong button...

Cheater? A bit of a bizarre response (?). I replay a lot of games, sometime after 100-200 turns, just to see how things might go if I try something different.. I imagine most people do.

As far as making manual copies, sure, I can do that, even if it is a pain. Doing so constantly disrupts the game and interferes with play flow and enjoyment. But I suspect a LARGE number of players or, more importantly, Potential players would read your note on the mechanics and their eyes would glass over. My kids have already complained about the demo and my wife would not attempt to even understand such a process, but she spends a lot of money on games (and other stuff!) and it is silly to turn such folks and their $$$ away. One of the kids is interested in the game but, again, this issue may keep it off of the Christmas wish list, even if she thinks my full version is �totally cool.�

The whole save and load UI feature is really a no brainer, IMO. Put it in and let people play and have fun!

Amos

October 12th, 2006, 01:50 PM

thejeff

October 12th, 2006, 01:53 PM

Note that when the developers are working on the game part-time around their real jobs, the developers having fun is a priority.
If they don't, they'll stop developing.

dirtywick

October 12th, 2006, 01:58 PM

I agree that it is a little behind the times, but I think it's a conscious decision to add depth and strategy. In a weird way I think it's fun that an unlucky random event can knock off your unprepared pretender and you're forced to deal with it instead of reloading like the event never happened.

thejeff

October 12th, 2006, 02:18 PM

I agree.
I think it does change the feel of the game. It's part of the game and shouldn't be changed lightly. While individuals could always ignore it, that being the accepted default would change both the game and the community around it.

The game does many things against the conventional wisdom. This is one of them. It's a niche game. It will always be by nature a niche game. It's also the largest pre-order Shrapnel's ever had. (Which will hopefully translate into the highest sales as well.) It must be doing something right.

Ballbarian

October 12th, 2006, 02:51 PM

Sadly, I have no willpower. For example, Rome Total War has a save feature. I quit having fun because I became obsessed with saving & reloading between assassination attempts because I just couldn't bare the idea of losing my high level assassin. If a battle went poorly, I was immediately frustrated and would hit the reload button. For myself, the addition of a handy in-game save feature would be a bad thing.

Maybe a nice compromise would be a command line switch that would allow a user to enable/disable an in-game save feature... then if I could just resist the urge to enable it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Amos

October 12th, 2006, 03:27 PM

You would see pro-permanent death posts on every forum for every MMOG that ever proposed this idea. All of those games have failed. If we couldnt save in our backward sort of way like we do in Dom2-3, I dont think many people, that like playing SP games, would buy it. All I asked for and will continue to ask is that Save could be made an ingame option so that I dont have to go outside the game, and could even play in full screen mode. Flame away.

Manuk

October 12th, 2006, 03:32 PM

Well mainly saving a game and reload does not make much of a difference due to the scale of choices you make in DOM. Consequences you pay in the current turn are of decitions made several turns ago.
And mainly you don�t loose a game just because you mismove 1 army. but saving last turn in backup could be useful for this cases of mismove or forgetting to give orders you already decided.

and for the save-reload mechanic or cheats like "research all" or "1 million bucks" are pointless and I don�t see why some people cheat. What point is to win a game that way?

If I cas Haruspex searching sites in a province and detects no sites I could reload and search elsewere. AI would not have a chance to this kind of cheating. Reload if a fire destroyed my lab. etc

thejeff

October 12th, 2006, 04:00 PM

MMOG/TBS :: Apples/Oranges

I'm curious though. How do you usually use the save games? How often do you reload? What circumstances? Just to the last turn or farther back?

I tend to not use saves often in strategy games, even when they allow it, so I really am curious (I'm bad about remembering to save in games that rely on it, too.)

Morkilus

October 12th, 2006, 04:15 PM

Games like Jagged Alliance and Call of Duty would be ridiculously hard without save/loading. But games like Dwarf Fortress and Dominions encourage you to experiment, make mistakes, but then recover from them. Even if your god or prophet dies, you can always call him back or appoint a better prophet. The only true death comes after a long series of mistakes or bad strategies, so you might as well learn and have fun making a comeback. If you are so compulsively perfectionist that you have to reload after a horror kills one of your mages... well, you are a different person than I. Save/loading doesn't make you a very good competetive player either, if that's what you're into.

You do know that you can go back and forth between fullscreen and windowed with ALT+ENTER, right? And if you have a Mac, you can make Applescripts to save individual turns with a hotkey, I think. I don't think you can tell the devs that they screwed up because they didn't make it easy to cheat. I did reload games when was experimenting with tactical battles now and then, and it's really not much of a hassle.

DominionsFan

October 12th, 2006, 04:34 PM

Lads, I think that we gotta agree with new newbies. I don't see anything bad with having a save function, since you can backup your games anyways. That way they wouldn't have to do it.
Everyone who says that saving is cheating...well no comment. Now that the game is much better for SP fans also, a save function should've been added if you ask me. [Actually this is weird, I never thought that a save function would be so necessary, but that is probably because I am not a Doms newbie, but I try to "see" this from their perspective, so I can understand that they would like to see a save function in the game..]
Just my 0.02 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Peter Ebbesen

October 12th, 2006, 05:17 PM

Manuk said:
and for the save-reload mechanic or cheats like "research all" or "1 million bucks" are pointless and I don�t see why some people cheat. What point is to win a game that way?

Some people have fun using saving/loading or using cheat codes, some people have not, the only thing that is certain is that having access to those things does not adversely affect the gaming experience of either of the two groups whereas not having access to them certainly hurts one of the two groups.

The whole "I don't see the fun in feature X, so I choose to believe that others would not, despite their protestations to the contrary, have fun in it either, so I argue against it on the basis of it having no point" is reminiscent of the worst of early 1980'ies game programming and has been abandoned by just about everybody: People have different ideas of fun and the only people who are not worth listening to as a developer are those who argue against features that others would find fun but which wouldn't affect the one arguing or worse, those who argue against it on the basis of others "not playing the game as it ought to be played" (there are always a certain amount of such deadwood in any forum of fans for a game but they really aren't worth listening to as a developer once they begin arguing for limiting other players' fun rather than enhancing their own).

If I cas Haruspex searching sites in a province and detects no sites I could reload and search elsewere. AI would not have a chance to this kind of cheating. Reload if a fire destroyed my lab. etc

If you had fun playing like that, great! The game would be more fun for you than if it lacked a load/save in-progress feature. If you did not have fun playing like that, great! The game wouldn't in any way, shape, or form force you to play like that even with the best load/save feature invented enabled.

And if you'd make a stable save every 5 or 10 rounds or as the fancy took you [or how about automatic autosaves with different nations every fixed N rounds to go even further http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif], just in case the not-particularly-bug-free game engine decided to corrupt a save, such that you could return to a previous save in case of corruption and keep playing on, instead of having to abandon a game in progress, GREAT!

Tortanick

October 12th, 2006, 05:20 PM

Putting it there makes it so much more tempting, besides I'm of the forces them to learn side. Maby I'm wrong and experimenting is the key with easy backed up saves but my instincts say living with your mistakes is the only way to learn not to make them.

Potatoman

October 12th, 2006, 05:22 PM

Failing to support saving/loading is a huge mistake. One of the reasons dominions is so difficult to learn is because you can never revisit a decision and observe how different actions yield different results. Experimentation is discouraged in a game with the knowledge that, if something bad happens, you'd need to replay for 2+ hours to reach that position again. Everyone I've showed Dominions off to has found it incredibly backwards that a game with such a huge learning curve is so unforgiving about mistakes. I know I've wished for the ability to go back a turn and undo a game-destroying minor mistake or fluke (e.g. that newly summoned group of Summer lions got default-placed in the middle of my force and they burned 20 friendly mages to death with their auras on round 2 of combat) way too many times. You're essentially playing the entire game in Ironman mode- and while that's fine for hardcore fans, it's anathema for anyone unfamiliar with the system or less serious about the game.

If this were a democracy I'd place my vote for a real save/load mechanic. Because it's not, I'm just going to urge Johan or Kristoffer, if they're reading this, to DEFINATELY put in a save/load. People will love you for it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

PhilD

October 12th, 2006, 05:28 PM

OK, the "save game" feature is already there, only it's inconvenient as hell (it's called "save game, rename files manually, reload game").

What good is there in making people sweat over saving their games? The "it's good to learn" argument makes no sense - it's not like not making mistakes in Dom3 games were an important skill in today's society (I'm a teacher, and we deliberately make some things harder for the students - but then there is a good reason for this; with Dom3, we're talking about a GAME, whose only real purpose is to provide ENTERTAINMENT and FUN to the player - and for most people, juggling around with computer files is not particularly entertaining or fun).

In other words, not providing an in-game save function is just silly. I'll even go further: since the game doesn't let you see what the situation was X turns earlier, an automatic "backup files before hosting/sending orders" mechanism would be really useful for those long PBEM games - together with an easy way of loading a previous turn.

Morkilus

October 12th, 2006, 05:40 PM

Eh, I take it back I guess. The thing is, I'm not surprised save/loading isn't supported heavily given that there are links to roguelikes on the devs' website. (http://www.illwinter.com/links.html)

DominionsFan

October 12th, 2006, 05:41 PM

PhilD said:
The "it's good to learn" argument makes no sense -

Actually it does. Playing an SP game is very different in the first 30 mins and after 2 hours. This is not an ordinary TBS game. You always have new options as the time is passing. The save function would good for these newbies, so they could continue from a point, correct their errors, and continue the game from there...after that they could discover the mid/late game content also.
They can learn the game anyways, but it would be much easier with that save function for them, this is for sure.

MarcinM

October 12th, 2006, 05:42 PM

I'm a new Dominions player, and when I met the Kailasa holy units for the first time my army got nearly wiped out. Due to a long-time playing games that allow save anywhere I instantly reached for that button...and found out it wasn't there.

I played the rest of the game and defeated them because of that setback. If the option for a quicksave was there, I probably would not have learned from my setbacks.

So that's one newbie vote for no quicksave http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Mortibus

October 12th, 2006, 06:41 PM

I like the "ironman" style of play myself.

However, I understand the complaints of other new players besides me. I'm sure that a mod will be released in the future for those who want more control over save files.

But if I had a vote, I'd say keep it the way it is.

It's a niche game for a reason... it's different. This is one of the differences. Yes, it's very "old school" and behind the times, some people like that. Don't hate us because we're old. We can't help it.

PvK

October 12th, 2006, 07:09 PM

This was so sad to read. If you restore to a save whenever you lose something you didn't want to lose, then you aren't playing the game. This is a game that is not designed to require you to do that. You're supposed to live with what happens, not say, "nope! ya missed me! I'm bending reality and trying again!"

It's sad for me to read that people can play many many games for years and never encounter a well-balanced game that isn't based around the "backsies" save game abuse "feature. Bleh.

PvK

solops said:

Endoperez said:
There isn't an in-game system for this. You can copy the game's folder from savedgames subfolder.

There's been some discussion about this feature in here lately. There was also some discussion about this when Dominions II was released. I think there also was some discussion about this when Dom:PPP was released. It's been part of the series for a long time.

As a newcomer to the games I can only say that I am amazed and baffled. What is there to discuss? Its a simple and straightforward feature that is pretty much a standard convenience in PC games. Adding it should be simple and would save a lot of time for players. Players that are not PC literate are pretty much left abandoned.

Potatoman

October 12th, 2006, 08:38 PM

I think you're mischaracterizing our motives for wanting a real save/load feature.

To illustrate, put yourself in the shoes of a person who has spent the last two hours fighting to enter land as EA R'leyh. Your morale 8 troops are completely unable to breach PD anywhere on the map, so you need to rely on summons. You've taken and pillaged several smaller provinces, but Maverni his beginning to dominate the land mass and you know that once that happens, you're history. Fortunately, you've just managed to reach lvl 9 alteration and have scraped together (via alchemizing all your gems to astral) enough pearls for one casting of Wish. You need somebody big, bad, and amphibious to Thug their way through the armies of Maverni.
You've heard somewhere on the forums that Doom Horrors are the toughest unit in the game- and toughest sounds pretty good. You wish for "Doom Horror". Next turn: the sum total of all your gems are gone, your pretender is dead, horror marked, and feebleminded. Your nation has no way to heal and it'll take you roughly 100 turns to empower another person up to the level needed for another casting. The game is now over because you did not know that wishing for that particular minion will not work- an unsatisfying way to cap off two hours of gaming by any estimation.

Loading when that kind of thing happens is not "save game abuse", it's a way to avoid having to throw an otherwise entertaining session away because of a fluke, bad decision, or honest mistake.

Mortibus

October 12th, 2006, 08:46 PM

Why does losing a game "throw an otherwise entertaining session away?"

Potatoman

October 12th, 2006, 08:51 PM

It's not losing, it's losing in such an arbitrary manner. If there was a button labeled "Fish" which, if clicked, quit and erased the game files it would be essentially the same thing.

Mortibus

October 12th, 2006, 08:52 PM

Potatoman said:
It's not losing, it's losing in such an arbitrary manner. If there was a button labeled "Fish" which, if clicked, quit and erased the game files it would be essentially the same thing.

What? It's not losing, but it's losing? Fish button? Huh?

solops

October 12th, 2006, 09:09 PM

Potatoman said:
To illustrate, put yourself in the shoes of a person who has spent the last two hours fighting to enter land as EA R'leyh. Your morale 8 troops are completely unable to breach PD anywhere on the map, so you need to rely on summons. You've taken and pillaged several smaller provinces, but Maverni his beginning to dominate the land mass and you know that once that happens, you're history. Fortunately, you've just managed to reach lvl 9 alteration and have scraped together (via alchemizing all your gems to astral) enough pearls for one casting of Wish. You need somebody big, bad, and amphibious to Thug their way through the armies of Maverni.
You've heard somewhere on the forums that Doom Horrors are the toughest unit in the game- and toughest sounds pretty good. You wish for "Doom Horror". Next turn: the sum total of all your gems are gone, your pretender is dead, horror marked, and feebleminded. Your nation has no way to heal and it'll take you roughly 100 turns to empower another person up to the level needed for another casting. The game is now over because you did not know that wishing for that particular minion will not work- an unsatisfying way to cap off two hours of gaming by any estimation.

Not to mention simply forgetting things because of a screaming child, not recognising the itty bitty people characters for what they are or, for that matter, remembering what they are or what they do or, worst of all, playing for 4 hours, have some nutty thing happen that ends the game for you and not being able to re-play it without going back for 4 hours.

I had no idea that not having a save and reload feature (like almost all other games do) was such a critical design component. What a shame. It detracts from my enjoyment and I suspect that, if widely known, would negatively impact potential buyers, helping keep this marvelous game in a niche rather than expanding its base to a much, much wider market.

I think that it is rediculous that a request for a simple and standard UI feature should generate such a voluminous debate about the philosophy of GAME playing.

Look Mr Developer Guys, just please give us a flexible save and reload in the UI and let people choose for themselves how they will enjoy the game.

Frostmourne27

October 12th, 2006, 09:22 PM

My Opinion: Save functions are incredibly irritating. I am in the crowd that if it doesn't work, and I have a save game, odds are 3:1 that I will load the save and try untill it works. However, I don't think that protestations that it is including a cheat function into the game are really worth anything. I can cheat very easily without a save function. It looks like this:
#selectmonster "xxx"
#pathcost 5
#magicskill 0 10
#magicskill 1 10
etc etc etc

Mods/.map files (if that's what thy're called?) make it very easy to cheat, and, compared to save game function in a more drastic/game altering way. That said, I don't really think this is a priority, but that if we get a save function, there should be limits. Maybe one save file for each game? that would allow reload/try again irritation, but since decisions in Dom are usually delayed, and have an effect only later, it wouldn't allow outrageous try again stuff. OR you could keep the save like 10 turns in the past, which allows more undoing, but the computer might do other things instead, so foreknowledge is limited.

Why is this worth it? To me, games that allow unlimited saves, especially RPGs, are kind of stupid; if it's that easy to win, there is no value in winning. I don't enjoy cheating to win.

That said, games like Oblivion or Neverwinter Nights come with really elaborate consoles that let you do all sorts of fun things. (In Oblivion it was also needed to bypass the ten quadrillion bugs that showed up in the game) Things like leveling a character in NWN to allow play to begin halfway through a module are technically cheating, as is giving yourself just a touch more gold to make that uberspell to kill the archmage at second level. There are also types of cheating that are funny and somewhat interesting to try, but but that don't really help build a sense of the game actually being something. Those sorts of cheats are what make reloads usefull; you can do stupid/funny stuff and not suffer for it.

Regarding the doom horror example; I don't see the problem; it does warn you to be careful what you wish for, and it doesn't say that wishing for Doom Horrors is safe. Are you saying it should list every unit/thing that can be wished for and what happens if you wish for them/it? That takes all the fun out of experimenting with it. Besides which, I really doubt that your example situation is that bad. Marnerni isn't aquatic and computers aren't great at water conquest. Sure you've lost a bunch of gems, your god dies and loses one astral (you'd kill him off and call him back I hope), and Horrors may or may not hunt him down for the rest of his immortal life (If it's a strong Horror Mark, well, there's some debate about whether or not those are balanced) If that was a multiplayer game, well you aren't advocating a reload function in multiplayer are you? That's like saying: play with my mod that makes me superpowerfull or don't play with me at all!

A type of save/load function I would like to see is something that let TC/IP games be shut off by the host then resumed, so that the host computer doesn't need to be on for an eternity.

Mortibus

October 12th, 2006, 09:24 PM

Well, I disagree, no harm in that, is there?

I find it refreshing to play a game that's different, one in which the usual save/load shuffle is no longer an issue.

Like you said, almost all other games have the save and reload feature. Some people don't like that. This game is for those people.

The save and reload fans have enough games already, don't you think?

KissBlade

October 12th, 2006, 09:41 PM

Save and Reload can appease both types. If you're a stickler, then just don't use it. Simple as that. Unless you're saying you don't like it because you'll want to reload? That makes little sense to me actually. And to say "The save and reload fans have enough games already, don't you think?" just sounds a little off to me.

Theonlystd

October 12th, 2006, 09:46 PM

Id like one cause when you get into 80,100 provinces empires its easy to forget to do something that gets you pwned.

I was rather baffled y it wasnt there. No one makes you use it. Cause some have a weak willpower not everyone else should be kept from using it.

And save and reload fans?!?!? LoL do poeple make fanclubs for this or something?. No one makes you save and reload. There arent save and reload games those are just options that come with those games.. Games arent designed and sold on the premise of save and reload. You wont see them advertising that feature on the box

Mortibus

October 12th, 2006, 09:56 PM

Games are designed on the premise of not saving and reloading.

It may sound off to you guys, but there are people out there that enjoy games like "Roguelike" where save and reload is not an option... it makes the game more challenging.

Roguelike is linked from this webside, I would assume because the programmers enjoy that game. That game has no save and load feature.

No one makes me save and reload, indeed. No one makes you play a game where you cannot save and reload conveniently, ya?

KissBlade

October 12th, 2006, 10:06 PM

Last time I checked, this is a save and reload game. You just need to specifically save the folder if you choose to save a specific turn. The ability to save your turn and reload of your choosing doesn't make the game any less challenging. (since as many people declared you can a) mod troops very easily and win and b) you can save the folder anyway) As said, the ability to save costs you /nothing/ if you choose not to activate it. However, to suggest that someone should just not play the game because of a lack of save optiono is ridiculous. Dom III isn't at that point of the market yet where it can say "well [censored] the customers". The annoyance of what a save and reload option will cause you should be far less significant than it's appeal to people who desire one.

Frostmourne27

October 12th, 2006, 10:08 PM

KissBlade said:
Save and Reload can appease both types. If you're a stickler, then just don't use it. Simple as that. Unless you're saying you don't like it because you'll want to reload? That makes little sense to me actually. And to say "The save and reload fans have enough games already, don't you think?" just sounds a little off to me.

That is pretty much what I'm saying. It's not that I'm 'weak-willed' (a better test of willpower would be like, refraining from personal atacks on the forums for a week or two) it's just that I don't want that option. It's like saying DnD is too easy: play without a cleric. I want to use all the options out there. I don't want this as an option because I don't want to be paying for a game that has features that are (IMHO) spurious and unneeded - that would be a waste of the developers time, my money, and my time. Would you be happy if Dom3 came with a 500$ gold ingot attatched, and you had to pay an extra 500$? even though gold prices are rising and you could maybe offset the extra expence of shipping it all the way to wherever?
When people complained about the lack of difficulty in Heroes of Might and Magic 5, Nival's lead developer suggested playing without saving/reloading. People were furious, saying that it was a demonstration of the grossly capitalistic game industry that tries to make money, not games. Atleast Illwinter isn't like that. However, they aren't conventional. They do some strange things. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif This concept, along with the idea of allowing certain spells to be banned from cast by mages, has been around for quite a while, and is fairly simple to implement, I think that they probably look upon it as a bad thing.

Theonlystd

October 12th, 2006, 10:15 PM

Mortibus said:
Games are designed on the premise of not saving and reloading.

It may sound off to you guys, but there are people out there that enjoy games like "Roguelike" where save and reload is not an option... it makes the game more challenging.

Roguelike is linked from this webside, I would assume because the programmers enjoy that game. That game has no save and load feature.

No one makes me save and reload, indeed. No one makes you play a game where you cannot save and reload conveniently, ya?

i enjoy and regularlly play rogue likes. But That Rogue like game doesnt involve me remembering my 20 armies placed over 100 provnces and the building of new armies and assembling of those new armies,then orders for them while remembering to set research,spells and everything else for my 80plus mages... Im not wanting to reload to save my army cause the Ai was just better than me that time.. But cause i have a hetic life and forget things from time to time

And thats just stupid. Illwinter is in the market to make money. So your saying poeple would would like saving and reloading just shouldnt buy the game? Instead of you just not using that feature.

That makes perfect sense http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

KissBlade

October 12th, 2006, 10:15 PM

Exchanging $500 dollar gold ingots and ignoring a save/reload option are not apt analogies. And Heroes of Might and Magic 5 is a totally different game because it was too easy because the AI was inept. To suggest playing without saving/reloading would've made very little difference.

Mortibus

October 12th, 2006, 10:18 PM

I get what you are saying... I'm just trying to explain why it is not an easy UI feature in this game.

It's a niche game for a reason, right? I would assume this is one of those reasons. The programmers got the exact same complaints with D2, and yet they decided deliberately not to include save/load as a feature.

They want an ironman game. They're not doing it to spite people, that's just the kind of game they wanted to make.

If they wanted a mass market game to get more customers, it would be a 3D RTS with a convenient autosave, ya?

I'm sure there well be a download shortly that will resolve the save issue for you. I would like the option myself in case of a corrupted save file, at least a named save on exiting the game.

Frostmourne27

October 12th, 2006, 10:25 PM

KissBlade said:
Exchanging $500 dollar gold ingots and ignoring a save/reload option are not apt analogies. And Heroes of Might and Magic 5 is a totally different game because it was too easy because the AI was inept. To suggest playing without saving/reloading would've made very little difference.

What (should) make a game difficult other than AI? A game should be sufficiantly hard that losses vs. the AI are common (like maybe 30-40% of the time) but it should allways be close. As for the analogy, it's not the greatest, but it's not too bad, even if it's far fetched: It's an added 'feature', since it is basically decreasing the eventual cost of the game, but it isn't really something that many people will want. The differance (other than the rediculous scope of a 500$ gold ingot) is that MOST people want save games, whereas most people don't want to become envolved in speculating on the prcie of gold.

Theonlystd

October 12th, 2006, 10:38 PM

Mortibus said:
I get what you are saying... I'm just trying to explain why it is not an easy UI feature in this game.

It's a niche game for a reason, right? I would assume this is one of those reasons. The programmers got the exact same complaints with D2, and yet they decided deliberately not to include save/load as a feature.

They want an ironman game. They're not doing it to spite people, that's just the kind of game they wanted to make.

If they wanted a mass market game to get more customers, it would be a 3D RTS with a convenient autosave, ya?

I'm sure there well be a download shortly that will resolve the save issue for you. I would like the option myself in case of a corrupted save file, at least a named save on exiting the game.

Uh hows it not an easy UI feature? I managed to add saving and reloading to a crappy game with just book knowledge in Visual Basic.. Its not brain surery esp since evidently someone managed to make a 3rd person mod in dom2 do it.

And yes they didnt do it. And im saying i wish they'd add it.It can still be an ironman game. No one is forced to use it.

If illwinter wasnt in this for the money it would be freeware right?

And yes im sure a 3d party mod will fix it. Just would of be handier to allready have it in game

Mortibus

October 12th, 2006, 11:07 PM

I wasn't talking about the difficulty of programming the save/load UI feature at all, that's easy.

It's a weird game, they aren't catering to the mass market despite the fact that it is not freeware.

Maybe they'll let us know why they didn't include the save/load option. Did they ever address this in the D2 forum?

Twan

October 12th, 2006, 11:25 PM

No one makes me save and reload, indeed. No one makes you play a game where you cannot save and reload conveniently, ya?

I'm very neutral about a save feature, as I've said I prefer to see Kristofer spending time on the game system than on this kind of things, I rarely want to save and if I want to save I can copy/paste files. But I find the anti-save arguements more and more ridiculous.

Nobody (except you perhaps) play dominions because they cannot save and reload. People play dominions because it's the best game in the fantasy TBS genre. Not having a save game option is not a "game feature" but an annoyance for some players... and nothing for most others.

Mortibus

October 12th, 2006, 11:53 PM

I don't play it for that reason alone either, what made you think that? Don't be ridiculous.

You may say that nobody likes the fact that it doesn't include the save/load feature, but the game programmers, the posts of some other people in this thread besides me, and the fact that D3 is selling well despite the fact that it has no convenient save feature just like D2 say otherwise.

Twan

October 13th, 2006, 06:51 AM

IMHO Dominions is selling well because the number of comparable games is very small, not because you need to copy/paste files if you want to keep a save.

DominionsFan

October 13th, 2006, 06:57 AM

There is an old Hungarian phrase..it sounds something like this in english: "It is a bad man who thinks bad things about the other man."
Most of you lads [especially the old players] tends to think, that the newbies would use a save feature for "cheating". You've never realized that it could be helpful for them. I guess it was discussed already that why. I think that most of the newbies will surely miss this feature. Personally I absolutely don't need it, and the same is true about the Doms 2. players. However try to accept their opinion also in this topic, a save function is not necessary bad. Not to mention that as someone has pointed out, young kids would surely need it.

Mortibus

October 13th, 2006, 07:43 AM

Yeah, that's true. I think at least a named save file in case of corruption like some one pointed out before would be a good idea.

I just consider it another flavor of a familiar game, like some MUDs I have played with permanent death for the character.

It personally does not matter to me how you choose to play the game, knock yourself out.

Amos

October 13th, 2006, 07:51 AM

DominionsFan there was a program made for Dom2 with one function- Save. There where threads for Dom2 and 1 about need for Save. I myself copy pasted in Dom2 for years. So its not a correct assumption that only newbies need Save. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I've never accepted an enforcement of Ironman mode in any game (not even Nethack). It should be a personal choice whether to save or not.
But if the devs withhold Save function out of personal ideology then this argument is moot.

PvK

October 13th, 2006, 05:42 PM

This IS save game abuse. This game is not balanced on the "backsies" principle, unlike other games which become pointless because they expect you to cheat until you win. If things don't go your way, live (or die) with it. Live and learn. Die, and learn faster. Otherwise, you're cheating yourself, and breaking the game balance, removing the tension, etc.

If you insist on doing this, you can. Just back up the game file and save it under a different name or under a different folder. It's fairly easy, but not so easy that players will start to rely on it and end up ruining their experience or misunderstanding the game design and thinking it's like the bazillion other games out there that are balanced on the bizarre concept that players will cheat when something goes wrong for them.

PvK

P.S. If you wish for a Doom Horror and he doesn't show up and eat your soul, consider yourself more lucky than you deserve. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Potatoman said:
I think you're mischaracterizing our motives for wanting a real save/load feature.

To illustrate, put yourself in the shoes of a person who has spent the last two hours fighting to enter land as EA R'leyh. Your morale 8 troops are completely unable to breach PD anywhere on the map, so you need to rely on summons. You've taken and pillaged several smaller provinces, but Maverni his beginning to dominate the land mass and you know that once that happens, you're history. Fortunately, you've just managed to reach lvl 9 alteration and have scraped together (via alchemizing all your gems to astral) enough pearls for one casting of Wish. You need somebody big, bad, and amphibious to Thug their way through the armies of Maverni.
You've heard somewhere on the forums that Doom Horrors are the toughest unit in the game- and toughest sounds pretty good. You wish for "Doom Horror". Next turn: the sum total of all your gems are gone, your pretender is dead, horror marked, and feebleminded. Your nation has no way to heal and it'll take you roughly 100 turns to empower another person up to the level needed for another casting. The game is now over because you did not know that wishing for that particular minion will not work- an unsatisfying way to cap off two hours of gaming by any estimation.

Loading when that kind of thing happens is not "save game abuse", it's a way to avoid having to throw an otherwise entertaining session away because of a fluke, bad decision, or honest mistake.

Arralen

October 13th, 2006, 06:02 PM

Doing save/reload GUI interfaces which work on Linux, Mac and Windoze equally well is not an easy and fast done task.

And don't forget - this game is programmed by Johan in his spare time.

I'd rather see him fix bugs and alter some things in the game engine than have him do 2 more GUI windows which call the different OS APIs to present those players a comfortable reload feature which seemingly can't live without. You know what - if you really need that feature, play windowed and move the files yourself. Of write some script to do it for you. Or even wrap up those scripts or do a 'real' application as George McGinn did with the "backupper" for Dom2 in 2001.

Gandalf Parker

October 13th, 2006, 06:33 PM

Personally Id like to see it NOT be included. I for one would abuse it to death which would ruin one of my favorite games. Yeah yeah "just have willpower and down save". Well hell if I had that kindof willpower my whole life would be different, but it aint. DONT TEMPT ME SATAN!

Gandalf Parker
--
Deja Vu is proof that God is into game saves

Kristoffer O

October 13th, 2006, 06:50 PM

> And thats just stupid. Illwinter is in the market to make money. So your saying poeple would would like saving and reloading just shouldnt buy the game? Instead of you just not using that feature.

Actually were not in the market to make money, not me at least, and I think JK shares this sentiment to a degree. Money is nice, but I don't know what to do with it.

Still, we like it if people like our game and might change it in that direction, even though it is more important if we like our game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'm personally quite fond of the no-save functionality, but I can understand if people prefer saveability. It would probably mean some 'meckande' to make it work, and there are other features and bugs that will need a fix, so don't count on a change in the first patch.

Still, it is nice to hear what people think, so keep up the discussion.

NTJedi

October 13th, 2006, 06:56 PM

I would say don't add the save feature because I have some nephews which sometimes play the game and if the save feature is added they will cheat not only in SP, but MP games against each other causing arguments, accusations and other messes.
The nephews know nothing about editing game files or even just browsing with windows explorer so this game provides great fun and peace when they visit.

Amos

October 13th, 2006, 07:21 PM

You could release a patch like addition. If people want to use Save they could download it, if they dont then they are not being tempted by Save in the game. That should satisfy most objectors.

Potatoman

October 13th, 2006, 08:01 PM

Not supporting save/load punishes non-expert players and stretches the game's learning curve. The Wish situation I described happened in my first Dom3 game; it left me dissatisfied because I felt that I could not have avoided that situation unless forewarned. I also think that this is not a terribly rare occurrance in a vast vast game like dominions that gives you so many opportunities to make catastrophic mistakes. What exactly is ruined by having the option to go back and learn from those mistakes without spending several hours to restart a new game?

And as other posters have pointed out, saving and loading is an opt-in feature. Several people have objected on the grounds that they wouldn't be able to resist the siren song of "abusing" the save. I think that, in games, people do what they find most entertaining. If you find that you have more fun saving each turn and loading whenever anything goes wrong, I think maybe you should do that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif. And I don't look down on you if that's what you want to do. You're playing SP, you should be able to do what you want.

Mortibus

October 13th, 2006, 08:13 PM

You are able to do what you want to do (save games at will), you just don't want to learn to shuffle the files around yourself.

The programmers apparently don't want a quick save feature in their game. Should they be forced to do something they don't want to do?

PvK

October 13th, 2006, 11:57 PM

IW balanced the game with the idea that people would play it without frequently restoring to a saved position whenever their favorite wood elf died, even though they sent her into a situation where she had a 90% chance of dying.

Players coming from extensive experience with the craptastic ocean of games where players are expected to do things that should get them killed 90% of the time, and are expected to restore to a saved position tons of times as part of the gameplay, would tend to use that in Dominions too if it were an option easily at hand. The result is they might not even realize they weren't really supposed to do that, and would cheat themselves out of having a much better experience, and might even whine about how "easy" the game is, etc.

PvK

Peter Ebbesen

October 14th, 2006, 04:46 AM

You are able to do what you want to do (save games at will), you just don't want to learn to shuffle the files around yourself.

Yeah, personally I don't see why the stats of units are shown when clicking on units in the game either. Players should learn the strengths and weaknesses of each unit by observing them in battle, but they just don't want to, the lazy bastards, and fall back on complete knowledge easily available at their fingertips.

Now in MY day we had to deduct, BY HAND (heads weren't invented yet), the properties of the soldiers we sent into battle, and as each of them were unique, we had to make generalised assumptions about their capabilities and send them off, by jingo, to show the enemy the taste of cold steel - or rather, we would have done, had steel been invented. As I grew older, sinister forces began introducing such information directly in the manual!!! This led to people actually KNOWING STUFF when they took the time to leave the game and read the manual.

But these days!? Pfah, everybody is too lazy, and the information is right in the game instead of being where it belongs, comfortably outside the game requiring players to divert their attention from what they are actually doing. That sucks. Why, I've heard that some people even - yes, I know it leaves a bad taste in the mouth even to discuss it - click on a stat to get EVEN MORE INFORMATION because they are not "satisfied" with the wealth of information provided to them gratis!

They claim it makes the game "funnier" and "more user friendly", but we all know what it is an excuse for, don't we? Communism, that's right, and the worshipping of idols, and they don't even had to look up the stats of THOSE in obscure places to be able to build them in the first place.

Players just don't want to learn to shuffle the brain cells around themselves, these days, lazy bastards that they are.

The programmers apparently don't want a quick save feature in their game. Should they be forced to do something they don't want to do?

Forced to? Ultimately, none of us have the ability to force them to do anything. We do have the ability to urge them to introduce something that is a common feature across most games across most platforms and which is, widely, considered a boon to players - the ability to save at any time and later recall that save.

As for the tools talking about "the time spent on coding GUI to load/save in windows/mac/linux"... FWIW, it is already there. You can already save/load games, it just happens at specific times with specific names.

If you REALLY don't want to have the complexity of an "enter filename here", it isn't a major reshuffle to take a game named FOO and save games by hitting CTRL+S (to make it hard enough to mistype for the hardcore oldtimers who despise anything that might, inadvertently, make them play differently from they've always done, heck, make it CTRL+X CTRL+S if you really want to cater to the crowd) as

FOO/turn%05d/<files>

And use the exact same nomenclature when saving at end of a session/uploading to host. Heck, you could have an "autosave every nth turn" that would save as
FOO/turn%05d_auto/<files>

[Anyone playing a game for more than 99999 turns need to be hospitalized anyway]

And, when loading (and it is quite OK if the only place to load a game is from the main menu so you don't have to code the major GUI changes in the game screen), you get a menu with
FOO1
FOO2
FOO3
...exactly as now, then, when selected,
you get a menu with the contents of the directory you selected in alphabetical order (and don't any of you dare claim that this is difficult, as it is already done with FOO1, FOO2...), with the bottom item selected as default (== highest numbered save)

Am I annoyed by this at the moment? Yes, I am. My current agitation is not just because it is simple to implement and something that has, over time, shown itself to be a great boon to players, it is also because a recent game played of Dominions 3 suffered from corruption and with the save game corrupted too, I had to abandon it on the spot. If I had had prior saves, I could have reverted to the last save that worked losing some time but not having to start all over. Had it happened in MP, that game would have eliminated me as a player with NOBODY of the participants or the host having anything they could possible to do about it. I'd hate that - and I'd hate it happening to others.

And yes, I could write a script to take care of copying saves outside the game, but I really, really, shouldn't have to - nor should other players, especially the less computer literate.

And for those who STILL think that "I learn more by not having the ability to save*/I would be tempted, I prefer to avoid temptation rather than confront it/I am oldschool and did a naked ascension in Nethack**, who would ever need a save" - that's why most games that provide 1-save-per-game provide it as an ironman**** mode you can CHOOSE to set at game creation (so you are bound by your choice throughout the game and cannot get "tempted" once you've made your choice).

* Note that the "YOU learn more by not having the ability to save" people are not worth listening to since they are acting against others, not for anybody.
** I actually did that many years ago.***
*** Do you believe me on that? I sure hope not, that would be masochistic beyond belief even for me, way too many random death factors to be fun - for me. Your sense of fun might rightfully differ.
**** Yes, it could be named "Classic Dominions: Only Wusses Don't Enable This Option" if that would make you feel better.

PhilD

October 14th, 2006, 08:08 AM

I can completely understand people not wantint to use savegames and the like - and I've played a lot of roguelikes, probably even before some of the people in here were born (that was starting 1989 or 1990, for the record). Ironman can be fun, no problem with that.

But then, what I cannot understand is why anybody would actually argue against having the feature. Are they so weak-willed that the existence of a save button would keep them from playing, and enjoying, the game as if it were not present? (I'm not discussing the devs who would have to code the UI and actual file swapping - they may not want to do it, and prefer to code interesting stuff, and that's their total right as they're not exactly professional game developers)

Nobody is talking about forcing you to use a save/reload feature. Having it as an easy-to-use option would simply make life simpler for anyone who's not an expert PC/Mac user with whatever their OS is, and would help anyone who cannot (or doesn't want to) spend the time and effort to become an expert Dom3 player - and would remove exactly ZERO options from anybody else.

About 12-13 years ago, I started playing Angband (roguelike, derived from Moria). IIRC, Angband didn't have save games, and used tricks to prevent the player from simply copying saved characters, and I didn't have a hack for that - so I played Ironman Angband, and lost tens of characters to silly mistakes and bad luck. And I enjoyed it. But then, at the time I was 24 and had lots of free time on my hands (OK, I had a PhD to do at the time, but I wasn't exactly the hardest working PhD student in the world at the time). Now I still like to play games, mostly solo, but I simply don't have the amount of time that I had back then.

Cainehill

October 14th, 2006, 09:00 AM

Eh, remember that Angband's Ironman mode wasn't a lack of save capability. It was originally a self-imposed style of play that usually said "No going back to town, no buying stuff, no going back up stairs and (often) taking every stair down ASAP." Later variants actually provided a programmed in Ironman mode that couldn't force you down the stairs, but locked all the stores (so you couldn't buy / sell) and removed stairs up.

Side note : We _have_ the ability to save at any time. Ain't yall noticed that if you hit "Esc", there's a "Save game and quit" command in the menu, so you _can_ go away and come back to your turn.

What some people seem to want is a "backup save file (and other critical files" ability, which as Peter notes would be very nice for hosted games, but actually isn't as simple as he makes it out to be. (Error checking for file permissions, directory paths, etc, all not just for Windoze but Linux and Macs as well.)

Frankly, I'd think that if some of the people who have created their own scripts (or even just pre/post exec command lines) would share them, that should suffice for 99% of the players who aren't too lazy to cut and paste. (Could be really simple - for example, pre-exec command to copy/zip files to one directory/zip file name, post-exec that does the same to a different file/directory.)

freykin

October 14th, 2006, 12:51 PM

My view on this is that it's kind of like nethack and other roguelikes, where in those games when you die, you die, and have to start over. If I could have saved in those games, I would have finished them long ago and they wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

That said, while I would never use a save feature, in a game like this I think it should be included for those who would. The only downside to it being in that I can think of is getting used to relying on it, then going into an MP game and getting destroyed because of that reliance.

Campy

October 14th, 2006, 03:45 PM

Kristoffer register me as a vote for a save game feature. Perhaps you could also have an ironman mode for those that don't want it and don't have the willpower to not use it if it is available. However, for newbie's and for trying different strategies at key points, it would make the game much more accessible. I vote for accessibility and fun over hardcore.

In the meantime, for those looking for something easier than doing it all manually, here is the batch file I use to keep three backup files:

copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak3\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savedgames\Yomi\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"

I have this batch file in my Dom3 directory with a quicklink to it. I play in windows and then just have to click on the quicklink to backup to bak1 and simultaneously move the backup to bak2 and bak2 to bak3. Any of these three can be restored manually by copying the files back to your save file or by creating another batch program to do this for you. You of course will have to change the directory locations to where you have Dom3 saved and this will backup a game called Yomi. Each time I start a new game, I change that line to reflect the name of the new game. So to backup the tutorial, that line would have been:

copy "c:\games\dominions3\savedgames\Tutorial\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"

Hope some of you find this helpful. Would like to see better methods by others that may have spent more time on this than I did.

Agrajag

October 14th, 2006, 04:37 PM

Campy said:
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak3\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savedgames\Yomi\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"

You'd probably be better off copying *.2h and ftherlnd, because currently you'd also be copying the game's random map, which could get quite big, and you'd be wasting lots of space.
EDIT: and *.trn http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Gandalf Parker

October 14th, 2006, 05:06 PM

Campy said:

In the meantime, for those looking for something easier than doing it all manually, here is the batch file I use to keep three backup files:

copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak3\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savedgames\Yomi\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"

I have this batch file in my Dom3 directory with a quicklink to it. I play in windows and then just have to click on the quicklink to backup to bak1 and simultaneously move the backup to bak2 and bak2 to bak3.

Excellent.
If that batch file is named something like DomSave.bat then you could add
--preexec DomSave.bat
to the icon that runs dom for you. That way it would shell out and run that batch file before each hosting.

Gandalf Parker

thejeff

October 14th, 2006, 05:49 PM

Is there anyway to make it more generic?

Postexec doesn't pass any arguments does it?

I was really hoping for turn number and game name.

That would allow a much more generic and useful script.

Campy

October 14th, 2006, 09:18 PM

Good idea Gandalf. That way you wouldn't have to do anything to keep saves from the last three turns (or more if you wanted to set up more directories and add additional lines to the batch file). Another idea would be to do that to save the last few turns and then set up a separate directory and a quicklink to another batch file to do a special save to that directory that could be used to capture some point of particular interest.

By the way, I run in windowed mode so I can easily use the quicklink. I would also be interested in thejeff's question about accessing turn # and game name. I had thought about inputting those manually, but besides taking longer, the command I used to use for keyboard input for batch files doesn't seem to work under XP. Anyone know how to do keyboard input to a batch file under XP?

solops

October 17th, 2006, 03:45 PM

Campy said:
Kristoffer register me as a vote for a save game feature. Perhaps you could also have an ironman mode for those that don't want it and don't have the willpower to not use it if it is available. However, for newbie's and for trying different strategies at key points, it would make the game much more accessible. I vote for accessibility and fun over hardcore.

In the meantime, for those looking for something easier than doing it all manually, here is the batch file I use to keep three backup files:

copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak3\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savedgames\Yomi\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"

I have this batch file in my Dom3 directory with a quicklink to it. I play in windows and then just have to click on the quicklink to backup to bak1 and simultaneously move the backup to bak2 and bak2 to bak3. Any of these three can be restored manually by copying the files back to your save file or by creating another batch program to do this for you. You of course will have to change the directory locations to where you have Dom3 saved and this will backup a game called Yomi. Each time I start a new game, I change that line to reflect the name of the new game. So to backup the tutorial, that line would have been:

copy "c:\games\dominions3\savedgames\Tutorial\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"

Hope some of you find this helpful. Would like to see better methods by others that may have spent more time on this than I did.

I guess I'm gonna have to put out the effort to do something like this. Manually saving every turn or two is a pain. I gave up trying to play without saving often when in 10 hours of play I progressed zero. I can not seem to get more than 5-10 turns without a major screw-up. Most common is not sending the army along with the mages (I swear I did, but after the third time, I guess not), forgetting to load units into commanders, forgetting to cast spells, etc. There is simply too blasted much going on to expect to get everything done correctly every turn. And yeah, I have now lost 5 out of 5 games, but I did not lose because of some silly UI mistake - i.e. the AI kicked my rear. Who wants to play if perfect UI management can determine success?

And even our ham-handed DOS bat files are still a pain. The lack of a renaming save-and-reload is a major drag on this otherwise enjoyable game.

Gandalf Parker

October 17th, 2006, 03:58 PM

Even though I "grew up" in DOS Im afraid that my answers now tend to be Linux.

Game choice could be doing a directory view by access date and select the last one?

There are ways to get the turn number. One way is if you have it set to do scores.html on each turn then the turn number is in there. Another way is to run dom3 with a --verify switch on the game and the .chk files it creates has the turn in it.

I wonder if it would prove useful to have a preexec and post exec display the environmental variables? Or for windows probably have it save them to a txt file for viewing. Maybe Dom3 sets variables that get passed?

Campy

October 18th, 2006, 11:35 AM

Here's another batch file option:

copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak4\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak5\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak3\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak4\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak2\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak3\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak1\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak2\"
copy "c:\games\dominions3\savedgames\Machaka\*.*" "c:\games\dominions3\savebak\turnbak1\"

Based on Gandalf's suggestion, my Dominions 3 desktop shortcut includes the command line switch --preexec D3TrnSav. D3TrnSav is the name of the batch file above and I keep it in my Dominions 3 directory. Then all of the saving is done automatically. All I have to do is edit the last line of D3TrnSav.bat each time I start a new game to reflect the new game name.

The above batch file saves the last 5 turns of the game Machaka into the five turnbak directories in their state just before I pressed end turn. This is all done automatically. If I ever want to restore any of those turns (which I rarely do), I can do so by copying their contents back to the savedgames folder, in this case Machaka.

I also run a batch file from a quicklink that allows me to choose whether I wish to save or restore and then which of three saves I wish to use bak1, bak2 or bak3. I use those folders to save points of special interest. However, this approach requires your system to have choice.exe to input keystrokes (s, r, 1, 2, 3). That is no longer included with Windows XP, but is available if you have access to to the Windows NT 4 Resource Kit. Wish Microsoft would provide better and more available ways to get keyboard input to batch files.

neofit

November 26th, 2006, 05:27 AM

So where are we on this front? Has a proper save/load feature been implemented? I received the game last week, started reading the manual, and then this. I don't even feel like installing the game anymore. There is absolutely no way I am going to learn a game that looks as complex as this one without a safety net, or writing my own savegame feature.

Last time I fiddled with turnarounds for a missing proper savegame feature was in the first Matrixgames' megacampaign for SPWAW. I didn't even consider buying anything else from that team after that. I wouldn't have bought Dom3 if I could have even imagined that a 4x game could come without a proper save-anywhere feature.

So, has it been patched in, or planned maybe?

Mind Elemental

November 26th, 2006, 05:44 AM

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).

B0rsuk

November 26th, 2006, 05:57 AM

Dominions way is the roguelike or multiplayer way: you prepare for whatever bad may happen to you.

Gandalf Parker

November 26th, 2006, 12:52 PM

Pros and Cons.
Game saves might grant a slight increase in game sales. But we would all be inflicted with the players who require game saves. Next we will have the same conversation about cheat codes.

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.

alexti

November 26th, 2006, 02:06 PM

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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif 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

November 26th, 2006, 02:39 PM

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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

neofit

November 26th, 2006, 03:14 PM

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

November 26th, 2006, 03:27 PM

Arralen said:

solops said:
How do you save games with different names? I.e. I want to save a game at every few turns so that I can re-start it from that point if disaster strikes.

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

November 26th, 2006, 03:40 PM

Epaminondas said:

Arralen said:

solops said:
How do you save games with different names? I.e. I want to save a game at every few turns so that I can re-start it from that point if disaster strikes.

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.

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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif)
I think you are the one being a jack ***, trying to make Arralen look bad.

Epaminondas

November 26th, 2006, 03:53 PM

Agrajag said:

Epaminondas said:

Arralen said:

solops said:
How do you save games with different names? I.e. I want to save a game at every few turns so that I can re-start it from that point if disaster strikes.

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.

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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif)
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

November 26th, 2006, 04:23 PM

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

November 26th, 2006, 04:29 PM

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

November 26th, 2006, 04:38 PM

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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif
Finally, if you really think this forum is so hostile, why are you even here?

Endoperez

November 26th, 2006, 05:16 PM

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.

Epaminondas

November 26th, 2006, 05:23 PM

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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif
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

November 26th, 2006, 05:42 PM

Epaminondas said:

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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif
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.

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:

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'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

November 26th, 2006, 06:21 PM

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

November 28th, 2006, 08:28 AM

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

November 28th, 2006, 08:39 AM

alexti

November 29th, 2006, 01:39 AM

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.