CreamyBlood
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2005
- Messages
- 1,392
All very nice. Well done. If you can use C++ to get some veins exploding out of the eye sockets, you can colour me impressed.
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Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread
- Thread starter 20 Eyes
- Start date
Fits right in.
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2014
- Messages
- 1,229
If I can inherit someone else's savegame system--even if it means mucking through JSON--I'd rather do that than write my own from scratch.
Zep Zepo
Titties and Beer
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2013
- Messages
- 5,233
What?
You need HELP saving savegame data? Maybe programming is not for you...just sayin'.
Zep--
Mustawd
Guest
Who said he was a programmer?
Dude Zep, no need to be a dick. I don't feel the need to justify my programming chops to you. But I will let you know that when you're a singleton developer working on a project of this size, you save time and effort where you can. And if that means using an off-the-shelf savegame solution, then that means there's extra time for me to work on something else.
And Mustawd I haven't seen you in a while. I guess now I know to avoid pissing off DU?
And Mustawd I haven't seen you in a while. I guess now I know to avoid pissing off DU?
gaussgunner
Arcane
You don't want to, but you should.
Zep Zepo
Titties and Beer
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2013
- Messages
- 5,233
Dude, Not trying to be a dick. When you have 80 MB of shit (or however big it is) that your tools won't open, it's time to rethink your language and/or method.
Zep--
Aiff((AimpliesA)ImpliesA)
Artist Formerly Known as Prosper
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2016
- Messages
- 287
To be fair Zep he did not indicate File I/O is insurmountable. But that it's too much effort. Which I have to agree. It has no relationship to the resources being managed, does not in and of itself manage the resources, but has performance costs.
Meanwhile what resources themselves are needed to be loaded/saved are determined not just by a map's design, but its intial state, current state, future states and let's not forget individual save games onced drawed on a common initial set of data.
Add also:
1) save game switching between potenially very different saves without having to restart the application,
2) editors
3) configuration files
4) individual file formats
5) endian and ansi/unicode retardation
6) picking appropriate folder structure layout and crossplatform directory path derps
7) temporary cache folder bullshit some OS' have
8) a mod plugin system potentially
9) network streaming of bullshit
Zep by telling him to switch tools you merely doubled down for him to find something that's already made.
hint: it's project specific.
gaussgunner
Arcane
JSON doesn't solve any of those problems, though. A simple text format would solve half of them, at least.
Zep Zepo
Titties and Beer
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2013
- Messages
- 5,233
Example from the Old School
Armor Byte
1st 4 bits 0x0000<0000 Heavy,Medium,Light,Clothes
2nd 4 bits 0x0000>0000 Plate,Chain,Leather, Cloth.
Example - Heavy Chain
0x10000100
In 1 byte you can have 4 armor types and 4 Weight Types
Need more? Use Words or Double Words or whatever...add actual weight, color, whatever...
Zep--
Armor Byte
1st 4 bits 0x0000<0000 Heavy,Medium,Light,Clothes
2nd 4 bits 0x0000>0000 Plate,Chain,Leather, Cloth.
Example - Heavy Chain
0x10000100
In 1 byte you can have 4 armor types and 4 Weight Types
Need more? Use Words or Double Words or whatever...add actual weight, color, whatever...
Zep--
Reinar
Scholar
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
- Messages
- 145
Maybe that was all you needed for Zork, but this is what I'm saving:
Army
Squads
Supplies (such as food and crafting materials)
Soldiers not assigned to squads
Soldiers
Equipment not currently equippedEquipment
Character classes
Enchantments, upgrades, stats
RPG info (name, stats, portrait, sprite sheets)Character classes
Level and xp earned in this character class
Cards remaining in the level-up card deck
Cards remaining in the level-up card deck
Supplies (such as food and crafting materials)
Soldiers not assigned to squads
I do that for every one of up to about 100 armies on the map. Most of the information has to be there because you can see every individual soldier on the map and a lot of them are randomly generated. But still for the NPC armies I leave out some of the information. For every single object that gets saved, I have to record its location and a reference to the "archetype" that was used to build it. (And players can make their own campaigns with their own custom archetypes for character classes, equipment, crafting supplies, crafting recipes, and pretty much everything. The game has to be able to load those.) For that structure, JSON works pretty well. And that's only about half of what the game has to save:
Campaign variables (for the state of each quest, for example, and these are unique to each campaign, and players can make their own campaigns)
Levels currently loaded (once again, unique to the campaign, and players can make their own levels)
State and location of generic gameplay elements (movable platforms, open doors, for example)
Characters not assigned to an army
Types and counts of armies on the map (so that there could be a max of say 20 bandit armies but only 1 dragon army on the map at a time, and when the respawn timer hits, the correct number is already known)
Game type (in case a modder gets really ambitious and decides to write his own game code that extends the vanilla game type, and the save game system has to be flexible enough to save all his stuff too)
And with all that, the savegame files weigh in at about 4 MB. That's more than I would like, but it is what it is.Levels currently loaded (once again, unique to the campaign, and players can make their own levels)
State and location of generic gameplay elements (movable platforms, open doors, for example)
Characters not assigned to an army
Types and counts of armies on the map (so that there could be a max of say 20 bandit armies but only 1 dragon army on the map at a time, and when the respawn timer hits, the correct number is already known)
Game type (in case a modder gets really ambitious and decides to write his own game code that extends the vanilla game type, and the save game system has to be flexible enough to save all his stuff too)
And JSON isn't the only way I save data. It's just what makes sense for me for the save games. For the list of available campaigns, and for sound and video options I save .ini files.
And maybe there is a better way to save the game than using JSON. I haven't ruled that out. But I can say that there is no other way to save the game that is already working so any other option already has that count against it.
Last edited:
Excidium II
Self-Ejected
I don't think he's developing games to run on security camera hardware
At the end of the day, I'm the one who has to program this. You're not responsible for keeping it to any kind of a schedule, but I am. I've wasted enough time feeding the trolls.
Mustawd
Guest
Yah, I totally have zero idea what you're talking about.
Zep Zepo , you said you're not trying to be a dick, but guess what. Everything you say here is just you showing what a dick you are. Let me tell you could have not been a dick:
Me: Hey guys, can you recommend a good JSON viewer?
You: No man, I don't use JSON.
Me: OK, cool. Thanks anyway.
You: You know, you could get a lot more storage in a lot less space if you just saved everything as bytes.
Me: Yeah, you're right, but you know what? I already have a savegame solution that works for me.
You: OK, then. Good luck!
There, wouldn't that have been nicer? Instead here you are accusing everyone of not knowing anything about programming just because I'm not rewriting my savegame system and because Mustawd tried defusing the tension with a joke.
Me: Hey guys, can you recommend a good JSON viewer?
You: No man, I don't use JSON.
Me: OK, cool. Thanks anyway.
You: You know, you could get a lot more storage in a lot less space if you just saved everything as bytes.
Me: Yeah, you're right, but you know what? I already have a savegame solution that works for me.
You: OK, then. Good luck!
There, wouldn't that have been nicer? Instead here you are accusing everyone of not knowing anything about programming just because I'm not rewriting my savegame system and because Mustawd tried defusing the tension with a joke.
Hoaxmetal
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2009
- Messages
- 9,173
That's 50 lines of code you could have written for your new savegame system.
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