Save game in progress

[exodus]

I'd like the ability to save games in progress.

[Migow]

I'd like the ability to save games in progress.

:thumbup:

[cichlidfan]

Fairly difficult in a combat flight sim, which is why it pretty much does not exist.;)

[Jona33]

The problem I have with it is the save just before an important bit and then go in all guns blazing. Restarting is just a button's press away.

[PeterP]

I have wrote a little essay (:P)some time ago about exactly this matter:

Better .trk editor

 

And in this thread is also a theoretical "robust" solution for saving during a mission provided by Bucic.

Edited January 27, 2012 by PeterP

[Irregular programming]

Fairly difficult in a combat flight sim, which is why it pretty much does not exist.;)

 

Not really, I am sure that the game isn't designed for it. But technically saving and loading all the information needed wouldn't be difficult.

 

There might be a design decision behind it, as you would be able to save in a location where you cannot escape death but hardly due to it somehow being impossible to do.

[Druid_]

An early version of Op Lagavulin allowed the player to land and taxi to a specific location and then save his position in the mission or to be more specific save the last task that he completed satisfactorily. Then when starting the mission again he could Load that previously saved game. This all worked flawlessly through using in game lua scripts in 1.1.0.8 versions and earlier.

 

Later patches have restricted the use of lua os. commands which allow the modification of files. This is purely down to security since anyone could write a simple script for example which could delete your C: drive or worse infect it with a virus without your knowledge.

 

There are a number of ways of allowing game states to be saved safely but it will involve some work on basic game code to do so. Given that its a feature that would not be utilised very much by the majority of the few mission builders anyway you'd be right to assume I think that its not high on their priority list whilst at the same time other projects need attention.

[Frostiken]

Why would saving and loading in a flight sim be any different from any other game?

[Druid_]

Mainly because it runs as a sim and not a scripted game. Its a very dynamic environment so the amount of data to save can be very large in large missions. Very few other games have mission editors that allow scripting. Allowing uncontrolled coders access to potentially damaging OS functions is undesirable for reasons stated previously.

 

DCS is always a work in progress so it may well happen in the future. Just not soon I think.

[PeterP]

Why would saving and loading in a flight sim be any different from any other game?

because of this ...damn! #5 ... Better .trk editor

[cichlidfan]

Mainly because it runs as a sim and not a scripted game. Its a very dynamic environment so the amount of data to save can be very large in large missions. Very few other games have mission editors that allow scripting.

 

Indeed. It's not like your average FPS where the only thing to save is in a small hemisphere around you. Even most of those have gone to the checkpoint system because it is so much simpler.

[exodus]

I mention this request for two reasons:

 

First, I can do it in FSX. That seems like a large environment, but what do I know.

 

Second, i really would like to be able to break up long missions. It's not so much saving during the middle of a gunfight. It's saving during a long trip home or re-arming on the tarmac.

 

Just my 2 cents...

[213]

Not really, I am sure that the game isn't designed for it. But technically saving and loading all the information needed wouldn't be difficult.

 

There might be a design decision behind it, as you would be able to save in a location where you cannot escape death but hardly due to it somehow being impossible to do.

 

actually they're both impossibly hard to do. if they were possible, it would be 1 year of work that could be used elsewhere, more effectively so imo. and the save file would probably be 100mb.

[Migow]

Mainly because it runs as a sim and not a scripted game. Its a very dynamic environment so the amount of data to save can be very large in large missions. Very few other games have mission editors that allow scripting. Allowing uncontrolled coders access to potentially damaging OS functions is undesirable for reasons stated previously.

 

DCS is always a work in progress so it may well happen in the future. Just not soon I think.

nothing difficult to serialize the mission on live;) the only huge data is texture but we don't serialize texture ;)

[asparagin]

Saving is something that I really don't want to have. It gives the mission immersion, and changes your flight mentality. (..heck, I saved, let me try some Rambo shait now) I flew a lot of missions over and over again because getting shot down, and didn't regret it (except the getting shot part :))

In DCS you can use easily the mission editor to get directly in a fight or practice something. For me it is enough. Well that's my opinion.

[EtherealN]

I agree with asparagin regarding flight mentality, but I'd actually like the feature anyhow. To take something like Skyrim, I actually save like a machinegun with the autosave feature - a habit learned through a particularly buggy game (that is, anything Bethesda... :P ) It helps protect your gaming from things out of your control, be they game bugs, family intrusions, power outages, windows programs that dump you to desktop because something happened (I've lost SC2 matches because MSN decided I absolutely had to know that GG was b******* at me :D ) and so on.

 

Specifically for DCS, the biggest deal (IMO) is that not being able to save is a hindrance to playing realistic missions - few people have time to play for 5-6 hours straight, and pausing the game until the next day might not be an option. :P

 

That said, yes, I definitely do get a different mindset in games where I can't control saves, and as long as I'm not hindered by bugs or computer problems it does really help immersion. So humm humm, I guess I'm stuck in the middle of that question. :P

[sobek]

(I've lost SC2 matches because MSN decided I absolutely had to know that GG was b******* at me :D ) and so on.

 

Was that a match against GG? :D

[Speed]

There are so many reasons why saving would be very difficult. First off, saving the positions of objects and restoring them would be easy. However, then you have to restore the object's weapon state- such as how many gun and missiles they were carrying, and on what stations. Then you would need to restore the AI's current state- exactly what each and every AI unit was "thinking" and doing when the save button was hit. Restoring a partially used up weapons loadout and restoring an AI think state are two things that ED's engine quite likely cannot do at this time. But you're still not done. Restoring the status of flags and triggers wouldn't be that hard- I could do that myself, actually. But flags are more than just on/off- a flag also includes the time when it was turned on (for "time after flag" type triggers), and there is no way that I know of set a flag with a time already advanced. So time since flag triggers might all get messed up.

 

But there is still more that would need to be done. You'd need to restore all the missiles and bullets that were in flight. AFAIK, that is not something that can be done via Lua, so I donno if ED has the capability in their C++.

 

Oh and you'd need to restore the Lua state of, at the very least, the mission scripting environment. That's not TOO terribly difficult... I think I know how to do that between dumping _G and the string.dump function. But if you wanted to be compatible with mods, and more and more people are using them, then you would really need to get and restore the Lua state of every Lua environment.

 

Oh and getting and restoring the alive/dead state of static objects might be a little tricky.

 

Oh and, of course, you need to get and restore all avionics settings and cockpit switches.

 

Simple, right?

Edited January 29, 2012 by Speed

[Druid_]

The simplest implementation of game saving would be when you have a typical CAS mission with multiple tasks that would mean sitting down at PC for most of the day to complete. Game saves would be allowed after completion of a task when you have landed and taxied to a specific ramp area. Of course when you reloaded you may not be in the shutdown position exactly & the battlefield would be a little cleaner if you looked closely but I doubt you would notice it if the next task took you to a different area on the map. This does work well, I know as I had it working for Op Lagavulin before patch 1.1.0.9 took out the ability to use OS commands.

 

As for any other type of save, I reckon it would be easier to do a 2GB memory dump to disk !!

Edited January 30, 2012 by Druid_