Multiplayer Save a Must, Pause is also really good

Here's why.

1. Doesn't matter how good you think your software is, it will crash, or other software on your system will crash, or the network will blip etc. So frustrating when you've been playing a large game with friends and bam, someone crashes or disconnnects.

2. If you're playing a large / long game, at some point you have to stop and you'd like to have have to start from scratch again.

100% of the time I played a large game in TA/Supcom/FA/Supcom2 it was (is in the case of FA/Supcom2) with friends or family. We're going to spend a long time playing together, we enjoy playing with each other. We're not worried about cheating. Save games can be as simple as allowing one player to save the game state and restoring to everyone.

Sins of a Solare Empire does it, and this is great because we don't have to abandon large games when it's time to end a session. Even if it's implemented in a "fancy" way (say we are required to share the save game state file with everyone before we pick up a saved game) that's ok.

Pause is great (and should be an option you allow before the game starts, like in FA - setting # of timeouts etc.) because sometimes something happens IRL and you want to stop - again the context is you're playing with friends/family since you're investing a lot of time in the game, and these types of folks will be ok w/occasional pauses for bio breaks etc.

With the loss of GPG recently, it is encouraging to see some folks who worked on those awesome games having success with this project.

Keep it up guys, can't wait to buy copies for myself, the kids and friends.

You might want to check the Confirmed Features and Suggestions Sticky.

Mike

Thx for the link, I didn't see pause (timeouts) there, and multiplayer save is still unconfirmed, so I thought I'd add another data point.

Joining game in progress is there, which is awesome for crashes, but not quite the same (assuming you lose all your stuff when you crash and don't get it back when joining a game in progress - but I have nothing to base the assumption on).

If you time out it wont slow it down for the rest of us who want to get on with the game. I would hate for it to do that.

Multiplayer saves have definitely been confirmed. Pausing is hardly a feature .

They haven't stated specifically what happens if you disconnect, but in a 1v1 you'd likely get a loss (after a possible timeout period). In team games, your stuff would stick around and you'd just reconnect and take command again.

The server/client architecture means that even if you drop out, the other players don't need to wait around for you to totally drop (like supcom does), you just lose control for a bit until you reconnect.

As far as I know, multiplayer saves are in replays, if something happens, you can rewind replay and start again from that moment. Simple as that.

will there be autosaving? beacuse i don't see it in confirmed features?

I couldn't seem to find that they have been speaking about ingame pauses, but I really think that the feature should exist if not for random matchmaking atleast for custom made games with your friends or in tournaments!

Not that I'm aware of, but there has been talk of replays and saves being essentially the same thing possibly, so one could potentially start a game from any point in a replay IF that system can be done.

Mike

A replay and save are the same thing. No need for autosave because you have the replay.

Told ya

I really think the idea of replay as a same game is really great.

I have only one concern with this, on a non-synchronous client/server architecture, the full replay will only be available on server side wich is doing the full simulation...

So will the replay will need do be downloaded from the server ? And if yes, I'm a little bit afraid that big planetary fights will have really huge replay files that will takes big times to download (especially with a big number of player downloading it)

Don't quote me on this, but I tihnk the Replay is only based on the inputted commands, the game then 're-simulates' it when you're viewing a replay, so it's not like a giant video file or something, so I can't imagine it being THAT big of a file, thought I obviously can't quote how big it would be.

Mike

I'm fairly sure that the replay isn't going to be a set of all the commands given by the players - this is how games like Zero-K save their replays, but Neutrino has said it's going to be quite a bit different (storing equations instead of variables?)



Although, it occurs to me - if you've got a huge game, 40 players+, whatever, and it's run on this massive server with 64GB of RAM, 64 bit etc... the question is.. Can a 32 bit client even VIEW the replay?

Or would you only be able to view a replay if you are able match the server specs? Are we going to need 'Replay Servers'?

I am not very technical when it comes to how things work in replays but I would love to have the ability to go back and forward in the replay, pause whenever, check all commands from all players, what are they building, what are they planning.

Basically know everything that they do. I have absolutely no idea how those things are made but having a great replay system will give us future commentators a very nice way of presenting battles to our viewers.

Of course the replay will be smartly recorded, but do not forget that the game will be bigger than most on us think (according to Neutrino)

You will have it ! It has been explained in a livestream. If I remenber well, you will have feature like cliking on a dead unit and see the replay of its death !

That is very good news my friend! I was too busy to be a part of the development until a week ago so I gotta catch up with some details. This will be an excellent uber cool creation :ugeek:

Well done!

Now for pausing FA called them timeouts and let u set the number per game. Could be 0 or finite number or infinite. We always play with infinite timeouts and adjustable game speed. Would love to have the same flexibility in PA.

Keep up the good work guys. I just read that Sorian of Sorians AI is on the team, this game certainly has the right talent working I it. Too bad Chris Taylor is not part of it somehow.


Anyway keep it up we can't wait.

So what happens if your replay/save is bugged out? I've seen that in a few RTS games (one mentioned in the topic)?