Counter-idea for autosave
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Counter-idea for autosave
Hi,
A lot of people try to disable or restrict autosave, or save/load.
I have another idea not about restriction, but expansion.
I play a lot on weekdays. After work, tired, sleepy etc. Sometimes I can not concentrate enough. I calculate ZOC, move my injured unit to safe, and move another unit in a way what destroy my ZOC which saved the injured. It is a fault, a mistake. If I commit it I don't want to restart the scenario. Of course I forgot to double-check these before end of turn.
I think there would be usefull to add undo informations to saves. In this case loads are not about wait for fortune, but avoid a deadly mistake, or try a better tactic. Of course only deterministic moves can be undo, but it would be usefull, I think.
Any opinion?
Cheers,
Tomyellow
A lot of people try to disable or restrict autosave, or save/load.
I have another idea not about restriction, but expansion.
I play a lot on weekdays. After work, tired, sleepy etc. Sometimes I can not concentrate enough. I calculate ZOC, move my injured unit to safe, and move another unit in a way what destroy my ZOC which saved the injured. It is a fault, a mistake. If I commit it I don't want to restart the scenario. Of course I forgot to double-check these before end of turn.
I think there would be usefull to add undo informations to saves. In this case loads are not about wait for fortune, but avoid a deadly mistake, or try a better tactic. Of course only deterministic moves can be undo, but it would be usefull, I think.
Any opinion?
Cheers,
Tomyellow
Sounds good to me, but then I'm not the one doing the coding work. On a related note, if someone is touching undo, they might also consider adding a "force undo" for maps with shroud/fog. Time and again I make a tiny mistake in movement and find that I can't undo them on these maps. The classics are (a) clicking the wrong target hex (obviously) and (b) moving the healer along and then finding that the units it is supposed to heal can't keep up. Yeah I know I should play slower and I should calculate all movement ranges before moving the healer, but it is annoying to me nonetheless (Which I realise is a piss poor reason for taking the trouble of changing the game 
)
)
For saved games, I agree, it might be a good idea.
For fog/shroud maps, consider using "delay fog/shroud updates", in the right-click menu.
For fog/shroud maps, consider using "delay fog/shroud updates", in the right-click menu.
For I am Turin Turambar - Master of Doom, by doom mastered. On permanent Wesbreak. Will not respond to private messages. Sorry!
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Chris Byler
- Posts: 99
- Joined: April 14th, 2005, 2:32 pm
- Location: Blacksburg, VA, USA
It seems to me that a simple fix for these problems would be putting autosave at the beginning of the turn rather than the end. It always frustrates me when I misplace a unit because I didn't correctly anticipate the AI's move, unnecessarily lose units (or lose the map, if the unit I lost this way was a must-survive unit like Delfador), go to the autosave to correct my mistake.... and I *can't* correct my mistake because my movement was all locked in already.
At least as a beginner, I think it's necessary to be able to undo turns without restarting the whole map - not to reroll random factors, but to see how that turned out and try something different. With the current autosave, you can only keep replaying the AI's turn until they miss often enough to fail to kill that poorly placed unit (and even then, you have to hope that you can extract them). This is "cheap" and doesn't help me learn from my mistakes by improving on them. I don't mind (much) losing a few units to statistical flukes, but if I can see that a particular movement leads to disaster only in hindsight, and then can't correct it... that's very frustrating for someone still trying to learn how positioning works in Wesnoth.
Of course, I can manually save at the beginning of every turn where combat is likely (i.e. all after the first 2-3, on most scenarios). But isn't that what autosaves are supposed to be for?
The current autosave almost seems to *encourage* rewinding for random factors, because that's all you *can* do with it (well, unless Wesnoth or your machine suddenly crashes, but that's so rare it's hardly worth saving every turn just for that).
At least as a beginner, I think it's necessary to be able to undo turns without restarting the whole map - not to reroll random factors, but to see how that turned out and try something different. With the current autosave, you can only keep replaying the AI's turn until they miss often enough to fail to kill that poorly placed unit (and even then, you have to hope that you can extract them). This is "cheap" and doesn't help me learn from my mistakes by improving on them. I don't mind (much) losing a few units to statistical flukes, but if I can see that a particular movement leads to disaster only in hindsight, and then can't correct it... that's very frustrating for someone still trying to learn how positioning works in Wesnoth.
Of course, I can manually save at the beginning of every turn where combat is likely (i.e. all after the first 2-3, on most scenarios). But isn't that what autosaves are supposed to be for?
The current autosave almost seems to *encourage* rewinding for random factors, because that's all you *can* do with it (well, unless Wesnoth or your machine suddenly crashes, but that's so rare it's hardly worth saving every turn just for that).
Autosave at the end of a turn is for debug reasons as a developer feature. It could probably be changed at 1.0 to be a user feature with beginning-of-turn saves. Good idea.
Hope springs eternal.
Wesnoth acronym guide.
Wesnoth acronym guide.
Someone help me here, I can't see how autosave at the beginning of the turn would help correct simple mistakes.
If you misplaced a unit or want to try a slightly different approach, you are mostly likely to notice that after the AI has made its move. The earliest time you can react to that (unless loading during the AIs turn is not a problem) is when its your turn again. And then, the new save will have overwritten the old save, so you won't be able to go back.
Right?
As far as I can see, your best chance to redo a bad move is undoing it, followed closely by the current autosave, because there might be some movement left for the unit (or some other unit), allowing you to cover it after the fact.
If you misplaced a unit or want to try a slightly different approach, you are mostly likely to notice that after the AI has made its move. The earliest time you can react to that (unless loading during the AIs turn is not a problem) is when its your turn again. And then, the new save will have overwritten the old save, so you won't be able to go back.
Right?
As far as I can see, your best chance to redo a bad move is undoing it, followed closely by the current autosave, because there might be some movement left for the unit (or some other unit), allowing you to cover it after the fact.
You can load during the AIs turn.markus_2 wrote:Someone help me here, I can't see how autosave at the beginning of the turn would help correct simple mistakes.
If you misplaced a unit or want to try a slightly different approach, you are mostly likely to notice that after the AI has made its move. The earliest time you can react to that (unless loading during the AIs turn is not a problem) is when its your turn again. And then, the new save will have overwritten the old save, so you won't be able to go back.
Right?
If you make a mistake during the turn, like accidentally move a unit into shroud and can't undo, or if you were too bold and put your fighters out without protection, you can reload from beginning-of-turn to try it again.
Yes, you would have to know this before the AI goes (or load during the AI's turn per claus), but without knowing exactly how it will turn out AI-wise, it seems less like cheating to me. It makes saveloading easier if you want to squeeze more out of your attacks but makes it harder to repeat the AI's move - the abuse of which I think is worse. It's not such a big deal either way.
Yes, you would have to know this before the AI goes (or load during the AI's turn per claus), but without knowing exactly how it will turn out AI-wise, it seems less like cheating to me. It makes saveloading easier if you want to squeeze more out of your attacks but makes it harder to repeat the AI's move - the abuse of which I think is worse. It's not such a big deal either way.
Hope springs eternal.
Wesnoth acronym guide.
Wesnoth acronym guide.
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Chris Byler
- Posts: 99
- Joined: April 14th, 2005, 2:32 pm
- Location: Blacksburg, VA, USA
If you turn on the "it is your turn" box, you can load before you acknowledge that and start your turn and the autosave is saved... even if you don't realize why your move was a bad idea before the AI is done moving (which you usually will).
Since even the easiest (does not mean easy) level seems to be written with the assumption that the player will make essentially zero mistakes, saveloading to correct your mistakes is indispensable if you haven't yet learned not to make any. (Whether or not saveloading to reroll random factors is necessary, cheating or both is beyond the scope of this thread.) An autosave that saves when you start your turn would spare the player the necessity of saving at the start of every turn (except the first few turns with no enemy contact - if you want to rewind those, you probably *want* to go back to turn 1 and recall/recruit differently.)
Either type of autosave is nothing you couldn't do with manual saving except that it would be more work. Beginning of turn is just a bit more convenient for a beginner that can't anticipate how the AI will move until it actually does.
Since even the easiest (does not mean easy) level seems to be written with the assumption that the player will make essentially zero mistakes, saveloading to correct your mistakes is indispensable if you haven't yet learned not to make any. (Whether or not saveloading to reroll random factors is necessary, cheating or both is beyond the scope of this thread.) An autosave that saves when you start your turn would spare the player the necessity of saving at the start of every turn (except the first few turns with no enemy contact - if you want to rewind those, you probably *want* to go back to turn 1 and recall/recruit differently.)
Either type of autosave is nothing you couldn't do with manual saving except that it would be more work. Beginning of turn is just a bit more convenient for a beginner that can't anticipate how the AI will move until it actually does.
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Invisible Philosopher
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There could be both a beginning-of-turn autosave and a separate end-of-turn autosave.
Play a Silver Mage in the Wesvoid campaign.
just autosave to a NEW file at the BEGINNING of EACH turn.
that gives you a chance to replay every turn if it went badly.
or you can go back 10 turns if you made a big mistake at the beginning.
i do that by hand now and sometimes plain forget it. i have to rewind two or more rounds then and that is disappointing.
and this is not cheating because you can do it by hand anyway. just automate that to make it easier for beginners to learn what you can do wrong and how to do it right in the wesnoth.
keep the 'now way back' to multiplayer.
that gives you a chance to replay every turn if it went badly.
or you can go back 10 turns if you made a big mistake at the beginning.
i do that by hand now and sometimes plain forget it. i have to rewind two or more rounds then and that is disappointing.
and this is not cheating because you can do it by hand anyway. just automate that to make it easier for beginners to learn what you can do wrong and how to do it right in the wesnoth.
keep the 'now way back' to multiplayer.
I agree
To err is human; education and training cannot possibly hope to eliminate mistakes, only reduce them. I agree that this is a great idea, but not just for beginners.Chris Byler wrote:saveloading to correct your mistakes is indispensable if you haven't yet learned not to make any.
If you simple added a previous autosave then the player wouldn’t have to do anything special to load the last turn. In fact the names could be “autosave this turn� and autosave last turn� to make what is getting loaded crystal clear.
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Yogibear
- Retired Developer
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We discussed this on irc and this is the outcome:
1.
We don't want to encourage redoing turns to wait for better random numbers, since it does not add both to learning strategy and to player satisfaction. So we will skip the "end-of-turn" autosave
2.
It is a good idea to be able to correct mistakes when still learning the game. Having an autosave at the beginning of your turn surely adds to that. It will make the learning curve less steep and less frustrating and at the same time speed persons up on becoming better.
Since it is pretty useless to do that automatically right at the beginning of the turn (it overwrites the previous save) and to still keep things simple for the player, we will always have two saves: begin-of-this-turn and begin-of-last-turn.
3.
We also think that having an autosave for the beginning of every turn is too excessive. It would stuff peoples directories with files, even if they don't want it. And yes, it could be turned off in the preferences, but it is still more effort to implement that with little benefit. So if you want to do this you have to do it manually for now (until some other dev thinks this is a "must-have" ).
4.
I personally like undo functionality very much. But i also know that as a coder you will have a hell of a time to implement it. It is much work and it has to be maintained all the time. So we will stick with what we have at the moment.
I will probably be the one to make these changes. They have one of the upper positions on my todo list, since they are closely related to a nasty bug of broken replays in savegames, that i will tackle soon.
1.
We don't want to encourage redoing turns to wait for better random numbers, since it does not add both to learning strategy and to player satisfaction. So we will skip the "end-of-turn" autosave
2.
It is a good idea to be able to correct mistakes when still learning the game. Having an autosave at the beginning of your turn surely adds to that. It will make the learning curve less steep and less frustrating and at the same time speed persons up on becoming better.
Since it is pretty useless to do that automatically right at the beginning of the turn (it overwrites the previous save) and to still keep things simple for the player, we will always have two saves: begin-of-this-turn and begin-of-last-turn.
3.
We also think that having an autosave for the beginning of every turn is too excessive. It would stuff peoples directories with files, even if they don't want it. And yes, it could be turned off in the preferences, but it is still more effort to implement that with little benefit. So if you want to do this you have to do it manually for now (until some other dev thinks this is a "must-have"
).4.
I personally like undo functionality very much. But i also know that as a coder you will have a hell of a time to implement it. It is much work and it has to be maintained all the time. So we will stick with what we have at the moment.
I will probably be the one to make these changes. They have one of the upper positions on my todo list, since they are closely related to a nasty bug of broken replays in savegames, that i will tackle soon.
Smart persons learn out of their mistakes, wise persons learn out of others mistakes!