Oolite Bulletins

It looks like autosave is not particularly helpful as it is at the moment: immediately after dying at least two people tend to launch their ship, and autosave gets overwritten with a fresh jameson.

I'm thinking that maybe having more than one autosave file might not be a bad idea. We could have autosave, then autosave2 ...

The thing is, if it's good to have 2 autosave files, maybe it's even better to have 3 of them!

How many autosave files should we actually have?
Or is there a better way to handle this problem, and I simply haven't thought of that yet?

Any advice gladly appreciated!

How about not autosaving on the first launch after a game restart? If not that, then I think a maximum of three autosaves is more than enough. Even two is good enough, actually.

Kaks wrote:

How many autosave files should we actually have?
Or is there a better way to handle this problem, and I simply haven't thought of that yet?

Only one autosave :-) Players can store their savedgames under different names (MYNAME1, MYNAME2) to avoid losing their status. The quicksave is also very helpful - so, I think, no need for more autosaves (or how many ways of storing do we need?).

another_commander wrote:

How about not autosaving on the first launch after a game restart?

Second that. Good idea.

Thargoid wrote:

Why not have autosave's (file)name linked to the Commanders name. That way unless you're flying along and still named Jameson you won't over-write (as the new fresh commander will be Jameson and not whatever you normally fly as.

Also it will save the slightly embarrassing situation of being hailed in game as Commander Autosave

I like this idea.. I kinda wondered why it wasn't this way anyway..

After not-so-careful consideration I've decided that my initial idea was rubbish.

Changes made to autosave:

Autosave won't kick in immediately after restart, so pressing 1 instead of 2 after dying won't mean overwriting anymore.

The autosave name is now 'CommanderName (autosave)'. Anyone with parallel careers - or a tendency to die prematurely - autosave won't mix your commanders anymore.

While I was there, I finally found out the reason for ( & fixed ) that slightly annoying 'forward view / game saved / forward view' graphical glitch when leaving stations & autosaving.

Since they correct usability problems, these changes will be in both maintenance and trunk

We now have a slightly less embarassing autosave name, but you're all actively encouraged to only use autosave aliases for just the briefest of time!

Thargoid wrote:

Also it will save the slightly embarrassing situation of being hailed in game as Commander Autosave [/color]

What's wrong with Commander Autosave

Beats me! Maybe it's an obscure Thargoid insult...

suggestion: after I die - I see the load menu - instead of getting respawned as Jameson Lave with 100credits. (who needs that??)
if this is the case then autosave will be a something I use because I save before I leave space station (last thing I do) - so I would leave with F1 after respawn. - > autosave overwrite.

thx for reading.

Err, to repeat myself: the changes already in trunk as of Sunday: F1 after respawn, no autosave overwrite.

If before pressing F1 you buy cargo, (or buy/sell equipment) autosave will now create / overwrite Jameson (autosave) instead of overwriting Neverlast (autosave): no more Commander Autosave, to spare Thargoid & Diziet Sma's feelings...


Plus, as of last night, we seem to have reversed a snafu we made 'a few' moons ago. While using trunk, after dying you should be restored automatically to your last saved commander, just to make life a little bit easier...

A word of caution, use trunk at your own risk. It's great to check out/provide extra feedback on upcoming features & bugfixes, but it shouldn't really be used for playing. The good news: the autosave fixes have already been committed to maintenance, and at the rate we're going, we might even have Oolite 1.73.5 in the not-too distant future...

Kaks wrote:

A word of caution, use trunk at your own risk. It's great to check out/provide extra feedback on upcoming features & bugfixes, but it shouldn't really be used for playing. The good news: the autosave fixes have already been committed to maintenance, and at the rate we're going, we might even have Oolite 1.73.5 in the not-too distant future...

Interestingly, I just found out that where 1.73.4 is dying without any reports, the trunk version does not crash. Sadly, 1.73.4 has great performance while the trunk version only gives me 4 FPS ?!?!?!?

I think that going back to the last saved commander automatically after death is the best solution to the autosave problem anyway

How about also autosaving the player when he's docking (maybe two autosaves in that case, named for last launch and last docking). There are good reasons to request that:
On several occasions I had survived a horrible battle just to be force-launched due to some thargoids outside and then my turrets made me a fugitive.
On some other occasions, especially recently, the game (1.73.4) did crash shortly after docking, before I did save myself.

Screet

Kaks wrote:

Plus, as of last night, we seem to have reversed a snafu we made 'a few' moons ago. While using trunk, after dying you should be restored automatically to your last saved commander, just to make life a little bit easier...

And what about the quick-save feature. Its not working anymore since 1.71. (At least not on a mac). Before 1.71, when using it, a copy of the commander was saved in memory and that copy was loaded on death.

I used it often but since 1.71 I end up with a Jameson so I stopped using it.

Eric, that 'Plus...' applies to quicksaves too. Any type of saves, actually. Do try it in trunk, and tell me what you see!

Kaks wrote:

Eric, that 'Plus...' applies to quicksaves too. Any type of saves, actually. Do try it in trunk, and tell me what you see!

I flew to the neighbouring system, docked, did a quicksave, launched, flew into the station and guess? I was still at that neighbouring system.

So yes, it is working perfect again. And I am happy again.