New savegame option

[vodalian]

My suggestion is to add a config option to share a persistent universe across multiple save games. In other words, all details about the universe would be saved in a separate file from the player details. So that way all the news, faction relations, station stocks etc would be the same across save games since it would be in a different file. This way you can play multiple characters in the same world so to speak, or for instance, let's say you have a little brother who plays, you may read in the dynamic news about something he did while he played on his savegame, or vice versa. I think it would be cool if every one of my characters contributed to the overall storyline of the universe.

[loki1950]

Nice idea but will probably wait in the to-do list a while unless one of the developers thinks it's easy to implement and sexy.

Enjoy the Choice

[vodalian]

Nice idea but will probably wait in the to-do list a while unless one of the developers thinks it's easy to implement and sexy.

Enjoy the Choice

Thanks for the response

Here's a final sum up of my suggestion for the devs:

- Add a config option called "persistent_universe" (or whatever)
- While loading/saving, save/load the player details before the universe details.
- After the player details are saved/loaded, check for the config option, if it's on, switch file handles to the 'master file' to continue saving/loading,otherwise, just continue from the savegame as usual.

Thanks for listening

[chuck_starchaser]

Could be expressed more succinctly as "Multiple Player Characters", I think.
I don't believe the state of the dynamic universe is saved, except for the news, but I may be wrong.

[safemode]

I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that that is likely impossible to do without rewriting a lot of stuff. Loading would have to be completelly redone to handle what _should_ be loaded in graphics memory and such given the state it loaded from the saved universe, the order of everything would have to be preserved, as GL and other parts of VS use hashes to look things up sometimes.

I dont envy such a person who's job that would be

[vodalian]

I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that that is likely impossible to do without rewriting a lot of stuff. Loading would have to be completelly redone to handle what _should_ be loaded in graphics memory and such given the state it loaded from the saved universe, the order of everything would have to be preserved, as GL and other parts of VS use hashes to look things up sometimes.

I dont envy such a person who's job that would be

I'm just talking about splitting up the save file into 2 files. For instance, this line:

Code: Select all

Crucible/Cephid_17^15790.679688^Llama.begin 120000778750.229930 -6511096.972601 -109994409225.456800

Would stay in the regular save game, along with the other player related stuff.


And this line would go in the new file, along with other stuff which doesn't affect the player directly, such as the race relations, news etc:

Code: Select all

21 FG:(CivReg) Aarhus|233 1 018 Aantutpt/Azzaanizz1 0

I don't see how this would affect graphics memory,opengl or anything of that sort considering we're talking about splitting up a text file..

[safemode]

ahh, i thought you wanted to save the entire state of the game, dyn universe and all, everything exactly as you left it... sort of like putting the game into hibernation.

in that case, i dont think it is beyond possibility. Perhaps you could have "new campaign" this generates a new universe and new player. Then you'd have the option in-game on the computers for saving your "character" and spawning a new one back from the beginning (physically not temporally) but within the same universe. You could do this multiple times. You could swap between characters when inside the game but not swap universes. To swap universes you'd have to quit to main menu (future) and hit the Load menu where you'd see a list of saved universes and then a subtree of characters in that universe. You could then choose any character.

That's how i'd do it.

Each character spawning or resuming would be linear, meaning you start where the last player left off (temporally, not physically, you start off physically where you saved). We can say your character went to sleep or decided to stay at whatever base/ship he saved at. If the base or ship ends up destroyed, oh well, you die.

[vodalian]

ahh, i thought you wanted to save the entire state of the game, dyn universe and all, everything exactly as you left it... sort of like putting the game into hibernation.

in that case, i dont think it is beyond possibility. Perhaps you could have "new campaign" this generates a new universe and new player. Then you'd have the option in-game on the computers for saving your "character" and spawning a new one back from the beginning (physically not temporally) but within the same universe. You could do this multiple times. You could swap between characters when inside the game but not swap universes. To swap universes you'd have to quit to main menu (future) and hit the Load menu where you'd see a list of saved universes and then a subtree of characters in that universe. You could then choose any character.

That's how i'd do it.

Each character spawning or resuming would be linear, meaning you start where the last player left off (temporally, not physically, you start off physically where you saved). We can say your character went to sleep or decided to stay at whatever base/ship he saved at. If the base or ship ends up destroyed, oh well, you die.

Cool, that's pretty much the idea I was going for here.


Thanks for the responses, hopefully one day in the future it will be considered

[Keller]

Having a persistent universe would go a long way towards a much more dynamic economy. Presently, the economy is canned in terms of both quantities and prices. With a persistent universe, quantities and prices on various planets and systems can be saved, allowing players to generate surpluses or demands, as well as making it more difficult to amass large fortunes by the usual techniques. Going this route however would require the creation of an interface to allow players to examine pricing and quantities for the current system (and perhaps a few surrounding systems to represent the local source model in economics). Longer distance transports would be riskier undertakings as they should be.