Tomorrow's PTE Release - save/load feedback here please

We plan on waiting for save/load to be ready to go out before pushing PTE to Stable.

@jables give @forrestthewoods a cookie and a sticky on the forums

There is no save/load support for mods at this time. Server script state isn't stored in history. There is only script state for "now". And it's not even saved to replay files. For our official game modes this is fine. With a moderate amount of fixup code we can regenerate server script state based on what's in history.

Mods may not have that luxury. Some mods may be possible to fixup. But some mods definitely won't. Letting mods choose if they wish to try to fixup or explicitly disable save sounds reasonable. That's pretty low on the save/load priority list so for the time being save/load for mods is going to stay classified as unsupported.

Considering the current server scripting API is close to non existent I'd say that isn't important right now. Might need to think about it when you add real server scripting APIs with specific calls for gameplay logic beyond the bare minimum what there is now. Something like a "game loaded" hook that gives as as much data as you can reasonably give about the history of the game.

oh exciting!

and I'm stuck writing an essay proposal for a history class... seriously, whoever came up with the idea of writing an essay to just talk about what you want your next essay to say. Guess this is why I'm in computing science, we understand brevity...

The thing that makes me most happy about this thread is that @forrestthewoods is still here and posting stuff

[BUGS]
Well, here's your first bug report.

• After reloading a game, previously scouted locations are invisible again. With that I mean, you don't see previously discovered buildings in the fog of war anymore. Actually, it's funny. If you use the Chronocam to return to a time before your safe, the scouted buildings will appear again in the fog of war, but as the Chronocam moves past the point of save, the scouted buildings disappear.
  
• The planets current positions do not seem to be saved. This is most evident when you are watching the Chronocam before the point of save. As the Chronocam moves through the point of save, the Sun jumps to a new position.
• Impact craters for Halleys are gone *unless* you rewind the Chronocam, watch the impact and then to go to real-time again.

(Also posted this in the PTE thread, but Quitch pointed out it should be here. And there is one more bug in this report. )

So the save game is actually just the history and not a serialized snapshot of the simulation?

Ok, makes sense, given that one of the goals was to be able to continue the game from any earlier point in time. And that is now probably a confirmed feature as well.

That also means that server side mods won't have any type of classic serialize / unserialize interface, but will instead be required to actively dump their relevant state transitions into the history as well.


So far, the architecture sounds quite promising. Thank you for that little information.

EDIT: Just read the changelog, and saw it actually is a confirmed feature.

Paste-unit appears to have been broken during it's relocation. Another report.

A subdirectory for saves would be nice.

Will write this as I go, excluding the known problems.
Saves at the bottom
The good:
- Love that the game starts paused, so you can orient yourself and safely tab away until the game finishes loading

Big problems:
Units:
- Units lose their build queues after loading, very annoying. (Only happened once)
- Factories lose their settings, but infinite build /energy setting is reset to default.
- Tanks didn't want to go on patrol after a load (rendering problem save) (The tanks were on the lava planet, after another save it didn't occur)

Replays:
- Commanders seem to have multiplied themselves several times when going into replay mode: Link to save below. After another save the replay showed 5 sets of all commanders. Every save adds one set of commanders that show up in the replay! My final save had 6 sets of commanders here. And the one before that 5.



- Armies and alliance tab also didn't work in this replay.

AI:
- 2 out of 3 of the relentless AI's in this test game went with only one factory in 20 minutes... They were reawakened after another load as can be seen in the rendering problem save.
- AI's seem to forget their units for a while after a load, boats were in my base and attacked at what was in range, but did nothing else afterwards. My torpedo launcher kept attacking them until it stopped doing damage? (AI forgetting units save)

Others:
- The following instantly after loading, tried to load 3 times, 3 times the bug!! Sadly enough, after restarting the game it didn't happen. Maybe the save helps: (Replay problem save)


Small problems / nitpicks:
Units:
- 3 powered off factories were turned on again after loading. After switching them off the factory unit build animation continued showing.
- Orbital factory forgot what it was building, although the half completed orbital fabber kept still showing. Building a new unit worked fine, but after launch that forgotten unit was still there. This also occurs for the AI, and the unit remains visible to the end of the game. Even when the orbital launcher is destroyed or commander annihilated, the unit still shows up on replays. (Replay problem save)
- Units coming out of factories which have a planet-wide patrol get stuck in the ground or start flying on the factory pathfinding boxes. Happens for bots and vehicles. Fixed after selecting and moving them though: (Unit Factory Angle Save)


Others:
- The voiceover told me 'enemy commander detected', while it was my commander
- The save button should give a list of recent saves, so you can pick the name accordingly.
- Saving under the same name of your previous save overwrites it without popup.
- Maybe the pause screen shouldn't show up when the game is still generating planets, I thought the button didn't work at first until it finished generating.
- Are there filesize improvements coming? My one hour game had a compressed save of 250mb, unzipped 340mb!! And I only had a small game with 4 AI's, not that many units. How many storage do you guys not need for all those replays?

Not saving related:
- (Known bug) The changed factory build layouts make it harder to build since the preview shows up white, as in buildable, while the server doesn't build it.
- Didn't know combat fabbers were submergable :3
- The new walls were to show that bullets can go through but on sea torpedoes go through the solid stuff:



Links to saves:
PTE replay problem: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35624709/PTE replay problem.rar
PTE rendering problem: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35624709/PTE Rendering problem.rar
PTE AI forgetting units: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35624709/PTE AI forgetting units.rar
PTE Unit Factory Angle: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35624709/PTE Units Factory Angle.rar


</bugreport> //Good enough?

Great feedback. Most of them you're just correct about and I'm adding them to a list. I have to fix them one by one but so far nothing has jumped out at me as hugely problematic. A few quick comments.

Unit stances aren't restored.

AI is not currently loading personalities. So any loaded game will use whatever the default AI settings are. Which is pretty easy mode as I recall.

Planets that are soaring through the solar system en route to smash another planet aren't loaded properly. It should be created in the correct location but settle into some orbit, most likely around the sun.

Systems that did not have any haileys *should* restore planets to the correct position. That planet will have it's rotation snap and may have a different rotational velocity/direction. But the position should be correct. If it's not correct then I'd love to have the system you used. There were a lot of complications with all things celestial. I got planets working for a handful of test systems but more systems are definitely needed. Gimme your system, or tell me what default system was used, and I should be able to repro locally.

Great posts everyone. Keep it coming.

and cannons that shoot bacon.. mmmm bacon!

Nice job adding the feature! I've only had a single game to put through the ringer, with 2 minor things beyond elements like anchor points not saved and such.

First was just after a long game, went to load the system up I'd periodically saved while playing on and though it loaded up fine, it kept the 'generating planets' text up and the 'resume game' button didn't appear. After a hard restart this worked fine 2nd time, but at least can say it did hang at that original point.

And second, minor one, using the surrender option when I was testing the features spins the camera to the commander, but doesn't actually delete it. You can manually delete it fine but it didn't finish off the game otherwise. Least that happened to me.

More as I find them - carry on the great work!

technically no. you have to know how to access PTE first and be willing.

Ah, you are right. Looking back at the save (how neat is that!), it was indeed the rotation of the planet that snapped, not it's position. I did however notice that the planet I had used to halley the metal planet was still visible in the system. Only visually though, it had no orbit line and you couldn't zoom into it, not was it in the list of planets. I think destroyed planets are supposed to hide inside the Sun right? In any case, rewinding the ChronoCam back to before the smash and back again made it disappear. This was on the Pax Prime system.

I've uploaded that save here.

it reminds me of alpha

No

This is almost helpful.

[My post is clearly the gold standard in "helpful." You should all take notes]

outrageous, saying "no" is my job alone