Many, many years ago, there was a game called Starflight. It was pretty awesome. A space exploration RPG with procedurally generated planet surfaces...the whole universe on two 5 1/4" disks.
It didn't really have the same concept of a 'saved game' that we have today. You see, after you installed Starflight, it modified its data files as you played. It only kept one copy of those data files, so if you wanted to start a new game, you got to reinstall.
When you finally called it a night, Starflight gave you two options. "Save and Quit", and "Quit Without Saving". But, because Starflight had been modifying its data files the whole time you were playing, you had to save or it would wind up in an inconsistant state and you couldn't reload. "Quit Without Saving" basically meant "Yes, I want to reinstall".
It goes without saying that a power outage was the same as "Quit Without Saving".
Does any of this sound familiar? Yeah...Dwarf Fortress is the only other game I know of that works like this. It's a very ballsy way of managing data, but it lets you do things faster and easier and using less memory. Plus it lends itself very well to the standard roguelike method of playing, the whole "losing is fun" thing.
Problem. Sometimes the power goes out, and sometimes the game crashes. (I think Starflight only crashed on me once in my life, but DF is constantly under development so that's understandable.) And unless you wanted to do a happy little DOS dance of shuffling directories and files around *every* time you started playing Starflight, you were absolutely hosed when that happens. So someone, somewhere, came up with a solution. Let's make a batch file that backs up Starflight every time you start it up, so if it crashes, you'll be safe!
Uh, this is going on pretty long-winded. But here's the upshot. DF really oughtta do this. It would be nice if DF could save without quitting, too, just because that makes you feel safer playing eight hours at a stretch (you won't be afraid of losing everything if you lose power). And furthermore, it would be nice if DF did a sanity check when you started up a region. That way if you end up with a bag of infinite stones that'll crash the map when you leave, it'll tell you -before- you start playing, and let you restore from a backup right there on the spot (instead of blindly rewriting the backup with a corrupt version).
ADOM (or was it some other roguelike?) only deletes your saved game when you die, or when you overwrite it, which means that a crash won't kill your adventurer. Of course it also creates a file that tells it "Whoops, there's a game in process right now, and I'd better not run two copies at the same time or they'll step on each other". Which is also a minor irritant to people who are trying to save-scum, just enough that you feel kind of guilty.
Maybe this is already on the list and I didn't notice...But, eh, it would help a lot. And if this isn't a feature that's coming in the new version, maybe someone wants to make a wrapper for Dwarf Fortress that automates the process! Boy that sure would be nice.
PS: This may have just been an excuse to reminisce about Starflight.
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Topic: Automatic backups (Read 944 times)