1.1.4 Autosave feature

General feedback and discussion of the game.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Truper
Posts: 139
Joined: May 16th, 2006, 6:06 pm

1.1.4 Autosave feature

Post by Truper »

The changelog mentions "intelligent autosave". What that seems to mean is that the game makes a save every 3 turns. Do I have this wrong? Because what it seems to mean in practise is that if I have a problem on turn 9, I have to go back to turn 7 to fix it, and since there is at least one crash-to-desktop bug in 1.1.4, there will be problems...
User avatar
Wintermute
Inactive Developer
Posts: 840
Joined: March 23rd, 2006, 10:28 pm
Location: On IRC as "happygrue" at: #wesnoth-mp

Re: 1.1.4 Autosave feature

Post by Wintermute »

Truper wrote:The changelog mentions "intelligent autosave". What that seems to mean is that the game makes a save every 3 turns. Do I have this wrong? Because what it seems to mean in practise is that if I have a problem on turn 9, I have to go back to turn 7 to fix it, and since there is at least one crash-to-desktop bug in 1.1.4, there will be problems...
If you are getting freqent crash-to-desktop bugs, it would be helpful if you reported them.

The autosave saves after 1 and every 3rd turn after: 1, 4, 7...

The idea behind this (AFAIK) is that the game is not ment to be played with frequent saving/loading. You can of course still save as often as you want anyway.
"I just started playing this game a few days ago, and I already see some balance issues."
User avatar
Elvish_Pillager
Posts: 8137
Joined: May 28th, 2004, 10:21 am
Location: Everywhere you think, nowhere you can possibly imagine.
Contact:

Post by Elvish_Pillager »

What if my Wesnoth crashes on turn 9? If anything, this is a step backwards.
It's all fun and games until someone loses a lawsuit. Oh, and by the way, sending me private messages won't work. :/ If you must contact me, there's an e-mail address listed on the website in my profile.
Yogibear
Retired Developer
Posts: 1086
Joined: September 16th, 2005, 5:44 am
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Re: 1.1.4 Autosave feature

Post by Yogibear »

Wintermute wrote: The idea behind this (AFAIK) is that the game is not ment to be played with frequent saving/loading. You can of course still save as often as you want anyway.
Exactly :) .

Also, if i am not mistaken it now saves at the beginning of your turn and not at the end. It is meant to force players to rather think about a different tactic and change their moves than just rolling dice over and over again and hope that the computer gets unlucky.
Smart persons learn out of their mistakes, wise persons learn out of others mistakes!
User avatar
Elvish_Pillager
Posts: 8137
Joined: May 28th, 2004, 10:21 am
Location: Everywhere you think, nowhere you can possibly imagine.
Contact:

Post by Elvish_Pillager »

I thought the autosave existed in case of crashes, rather than intentionally for the ease of saveloading...
It's all fun and games until someone loses a lawsuit. Oh, and by the way, sending me private messages won't work. :/ If you must contact me, there's an e-mail address listed on the website in my profile.
Ragwortshire
Posts: 36
Joined: May 9th, 2006, 8:31 pm
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Post by Ragwortshire »

Is it completely moronic of me to suggest that which, if either, forms of autosave to use be optional? I can see why 3-turn saves make for "better" saveloading (if this isn't an oxymoron), but in some cases (e.g. running a buggy campaign) you really want the old autosave system.

You can tell that my will is fairly weak when it comes to saveloading :oops: .
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow. (The Lake Isle of Inisfree - W.B. Yeats)
Yogibear
Retired Developer
Posts: 1086
Joined: September 16th, 2005, 5:44 am
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Post by Yogibear »

Elvish Pillager wrote:I thought the autosave existed in case of crashes, rather than intentionally for the ease of saveloading...
It did so. However, many people got frustrated playing campaign scenarios for a couple of reasons:
- they choose a wrong strategy
- they discover unexpected things in between that screw up everything

We do not want to encourage people use excessive saveloading but we also don't want to frustrate players more than necessary. So we help them a little bit and give them the opportunity to adapt. Saving at the beginning of the turn supports that as well as having savegames throughout the whole scenario.

Of course, if you want you can still save at the end of every turn like it used to be...
Smart persons learn out of their mistakes, wise persons learn out of others mistakes!
Liminiality2
Posts: 53
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 10:21 pm
Location: a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

Post by Liminiality2 »

Ragwortshire wrote:Is it completely moronic of me to suggest that which, if either, forms of autosave to use be optional? I can see why 3-turn saves make for "better" saveloading (if this isn't an oxymoron), but in some cases (e.g. running a buggy campaign) you really want the old autosave system.

You can tell that my will is fairly weak when it comes to saveloading :oops: .
I agree mabye there should be another check-box in preferences that says "Enable every turn auto save" or something to that effect.

First, while saveloading, this could allow you to replay the last 3 turns better then before and learn from the concequences of your first go round.

On the other hand, you could use the old autosave system in order to playtest buggy campaigns
NO FOG is certain - Elvish Pillager
Campaign: Revenge of the Elves http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11477
User avatar
Elvish_Pillager
Posts: 8137
Joined: May 28th, 2004, 10:21 am
Location: Everywhere you think, nowhere you can possibly imagine.
Contact:

Post by Elvish_Pillager »

Yogi Bear wrote:
Elvish Pillager wrote:I thought the autosave existed in case of crashes, rather than intentionally for the ease of saveloading...
It did so. However, many people got frustrated playing campaign scenarios for a couple of reasons:
- they choose a wrong strategy
- they discover unexpected things in between that screw up everything

We do not want to encourage people use excessive saveloading but we also don't want to frustrate players more than necessary. So we help them a little bit and give them the opportunity to adapt. Saving at the beginning of the turn supports that as well as having savegames throughout the whole scenario.
I fully support switching the autosave to the beginning of the turn. What I do not support is decreasing the overall frequency of autosaves.
It's all fun and games until someone loses a lawsuit. Oh, and by the way, sending me private messages won't work. :/ If you must contact me, there's an e-mail address listed on the website in my profile.
Yogibear
Retired Developer
Posts: 1086
Joined: September 16th, 2005, 5:44 am
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Post by Yogibear »

Ragwortshire wrote:Is it completely moronic of me to suggest that which, if either, forms of autosave to use be optional? I can see why 3-turn saves make for "better" saveloading (if this isn't an oxymoron), but in some cases (e.g. running a buggy campaign) you really want the old autosave system.

You can tell that my will is fairly weak when it comes to saveloading :oops: .
Hmm. I don't know. I can't think of anything at the moment that would benefit much from saving every turn.

I can see that playing a buggy campaign is annoying, but i wouldn't accept that as a reason to put a feature in that becomes obsolete as soon as we fixed the bugs. We sometimes do such things for ourselves to help with debugging but we almost always keep it internal. There are exceptions like the "debug"-command for example. It proved to be so useful that we decided to support it officially.

You mention "some cases". Have you got other examples?
Smart persons learn out of their mistakes, wise persons learn out of others mistakes!
scott
Posts: 5243
Joined: May 12th, 2004, 12:35 am
Location: San Pedro, CA

Post by scott »

If I remember right, end-of-turn autosave served to help test the original AI.
Hope springs eternal.
Wesnoth acronym guide.
User avatar
Elvish_Pillager
Posts: 8137
Joined: May 28th, 2004, 10:21 am
Location: Everywhere you think, nowhere you can possibly imagine.
Contact:

Post by Elvish_Pillager »

Yogi Bear wrote:Hmm. I don't know. I can't think of anything at the moment that would benefit much from saving every turn.
2/3 of all crashes.
It's all fun and games until someone loses a lawsuit. Oh, and by the way, sending me private messages won't work. :/ If you must contact me, there's an e-mail address listed on the website in my profile.
Soliton
Site Administrator
Posts: 1680
Joined: April 5th, 2005, 3:25 pm
Location: #wesnoth-mp

Post by Soliton »

Every-turn-auto-saves have been reimplemented already. (Now as well for the beginning of the turn.)
"If gameplay requires it, they can be made to live on Venus." -- scott
ILikeProgramming
Posts: 837
Joined: April 14th, 2005, 4:17 am

Post by ILikeProgramming »

Did you keep the 3-turn ones as an option?

It would be great to have a number field in the preferences to change autosave frequency.
quartex
Inactive Developer
Posts: 2258
Joined: December 22nd, 2003, 4:17 am
Location: Boston, MA

Post by quartex »

Yay! Every turn autosaving is really useful. Saving at the beginning of each turn is also a huge boon to players who want to try different strategies.
Post Reply