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I never use seasonal saves

6 (13.3%)

No, I am happy the way they are

3 (6.7%)

Does it really matter

8 (17.8%)

Good idea

11 (24.4%)

By the Blood God, YES

17 (37.8%)

Total Members Voted: 45

Voting closed: June 03, 2010, 02:34:30 am

[Farmerbob]

It's generally frowned upon to bump Suggestions threads without adding new content, especially if they're your own.  If you want this idea to stick around and remain visible, you can create an entry in Eternal Suggestion Voting.

Hrm, never run into a forum where it is not acceptable to occasionally bump a poll, since by their very nature, some polls don't get many comments.

[Hugna]

There is a way to rename files to anything you want. You can make a world name, and date. Maybe make the date the last time you saved.

In a sense, you can reorganize saves anyway you can with rename. And yes, i tried it, and it works with 0.31.04, 0.31.03, and possibly, the 28d version.

Not trying to derail this, i'm just saying. Though yes, it needs a way to have some way to recognize your games, renaming them to things you'll remember is easier. Or making a notepad somewhere to tell you what each one is... if it doesn't mess anything up.

Edit: Also, copying files about, renaming them, and such makes it sorta like a backup.

[darkflagrance]

Perhaps if the game segregated backup saves in their own folder the clutter would be reduced. This would, however, require some digging and copy-pasting to access them, given the current system.

[zwei]

Basically, game saves should be organized much better:

1) Fodlers named in season-year are pain especially if you sort through them in os.

Names need to be Region-Year-SeasonNumber-SeasonName

2) Seccond column that contain real time

And ability to sort through eithet filename or date.

3) "save as" fuctionality allowing to save to different folder after loading

Also, games restored from backup should by default use "save as" to solve "i restore from backup and saving it later did not save game" confusion.

4) While we talk about it, "quit without saving".

[Mir]

I suspect "Quit without saving" and "Save as..." were omitted intentionally.

It seems the general feeling here is that you aren't supposed to save, try something, and load if it doesn't work... or quit and load if you get a moody dwarf that goes insane, or basically dodge Fun by screwing around with saves.

Of course you can do it all manually (although there are ways to break that, too) if you really want... but the game itself is trying to set a mood where you just go with whatever happens and deal with it.

The only 'legit' reason for using the autosaves is if your current save somehow corrupts. Crash during save, or whatever.

I'm not saying I don't savescum sometimes, or intentionally copy a save out to experiment with something....
I'm just saying I think it was left out on purpose, and why.

[zwei]

I'm not saying I don't savescum sometimes, or intentionally copy a save out to experiment with something....
I'm just saying I think it was left out on purpose, and why.

I know, it is in vein of typical Roguelike. Save is there only to let you continue later and if you hapen to mess up, you have to deal with mess.

Pretty much every player savescummed at one moment (either to experiment or simply because he raged over five milita that all dodged to water in span of secconds), game might as well adjust to reality and let saving/loading speed and lost progress be deterent enough.

[Ephemeriis]

Very timely poll.

Just last night ran into an issue with one of my saves - absolutely refused to load.  Kept kicking out an error.  Had to go digging for an older save file.  Which is fine, because I've got seasonal saves and all that...  But I had to open just about every save before I found the right one.  Could not tell which was actually the next most recent.  Very confusing.

[Tarran]

Very timely poll.

Just last night ran into an issue with one of my saves - absolutely refused to load.  Kept kicking out an error.  Had to go digging for an older save file.  Which is fine, because I've got seasonal saves and all that...  But I had to open just about every save before I found the right one.  Could not tell which was actually the next most recent.  Very confusing.

What? It's that confusing to you? It's easy to find the most recent save.

Year: Find the highest number.
Season: In order of earliest to latest: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

[Farmerbob]

Very timely poll.

Just last night ran into an issue with one of my saves - absolutely refused to load.  Kept kicking out an error.  Had to go digging for an older save file.  Which is fine, because I've got seasonal saves and all that...  But I had to open just about every save before I found the right one.  Could not tell which was actually the next most recent.  Very confusing.

What? It's that confusing to you? It's easy to find the most recent save.

Year: Find the highest number.
Season: In order of earliest to latest: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

No, actually it's not that easy, especially if you are intentionally trying to generate bugged saves.

I have had several very nice little fortresses that I've started from a single first save with and gone different directions with them, because it's a really nice map for lava industries and large quickly dug caverns, and I tend to get large immigrant waves there - it just makes things a bit faster.

Basically things get so horrible sphagettified that I have to use the file finder feature, find all the world saves, and compare the actual last modified times on each of them.

I'm actually not playing at the moment, most of the obvious bugs have been reported, and the military / crossbow / melting bugs make the game nearly unplayable for me.

I have a 17x17 region world 3x3 start area save with volcano and aquifier that's waiting for the next version though 

[Tarran]

Very timely poll.

Just last night ran into an issue with one of my saves - absolutely refused to load.  Kept kicking out an error.  Had to go digging for an older save file.  Which is fine, because I've got seasonal saves and all that...  But I had to open just about every save before I found the right one.  Could not tell which was actually the next most recent.  Very confusing.

What? It's that confusing to you? It's easy to find the most recent save.

Year: Find the highest number.
Season: In order of earliest to latest: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

No, actually it's not that easy

Uh, yes it is, unless you don't rename your folders when save scumming. But then that's your fault. I almost never had a problem the way saves are now.

[Footkerchief]

Uh, yes it is, unless you don't rename your folders when save scumming. But then that's your fault. I almost never had a problem the way saves are now.

It's his/her fault for not renaming folders?  S/he shouldn't have to.  "Save scumming" to recover from crashes etc. is the entire point of autobackup.  If the default folder names make "save scumming" difficult, then the default folder names should be changed.

[Tarran]

Uh, yes it is, unless you don't rename your folders when save scumming. But then that's your fault. I almost never had a problem the way saves are now.

It's his/her fault for not renaming folders?  S/he shouldn't have to.  "Save scumming" to recover from crashes etc. is the entire point of autobackup.

What I meant is, each time your game gets bugged/unplayable s/he should rename it from "Region 1 Fall 1063" To just "Region 1". What I mean is it's his/her fault for ending up with a folder name like "Region 1 Fall 1063 Summer 1064 Winter 1071". Though looking over it again I think I misunderstood Farmer, Sorry.

If the default folder names make "save scumming" difficult, then the default folder names should be changed.

To me, they are perfectly fine. Though the names could be a little more organized by seasons. The way to do it is to add a number or a letter for the seasons, so instead of having a folder like this:
"Region 1 Fall 1063"
"Region 1 Spring 1063"
"Region 1 Summer 1063"
"Region 1 Winter 1063"

You would instead end up with this:
"Region 1 A Spring 1063"
"Region 1 B Summer 1063"
"Region 1 C Fall 1063"
"Region 1 D Winter 1063"

[Farmerbob]

  NP Tarran - I'm almost as thick skinned as a dwarf, no harm done 

  My whole point here is that this should be a moderately easy implementation, and it's not just one that will benefit people that like to "save scum".  The bug team will be much more likely to have players provide meaningful saves to document bugs if said players don't have to actually open up multiple different applications and play Sherlock Holmes, trying to find the appropriate saves.

  Gameplay is intentionally a bit opaque, but saved games should not be.

[Ephemeriis]

Very timely poll.

Just last night ran into an issue with one of my saves - absolutely refused to load.  Kept kicking out an error.  Had to go digging for an older save file.  Which is fine, because I've got seasonal saves and all that...  But I had to open just about every save before I found the right one.  Could not tell which was actually the next most recent.  Very confusing.

What? It's that confusing to you? It's easy to find the most recent save.

Year: Find the highest number.
Season: In order of earliest to latest: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

Forgive my ignorance, but I've only been playing for about a month now.  Maybe a little longer.

Normally I just save my game when I exit.  Normally I just open the topmost "Region 1" save to continue playing.  I've got seasonal saves and backups and whatnot enabled just to cover my ass.  I'm honestly not sure what "save scumming" is.

I had an earlier problem with my fort and had to restore a save.  That time I opened one labeled "sum-1053" or something similar.  But now my saves are labeled something like "sum-1053-aut-1054".  The topmost "Region 1" save just doesn't work.  And I've got a "reclaim 1055" in there that doesn't open to anything even vaguely familiar.

So now I've got an assortment of saves with different years and seasons on them.  Some of them have more than one year or season listed.

I never really thought to re-name any of the folders.  I guess I kind of assumed that there was a reason why they were named the way they were, and I assumed that it would break things if I started changing the name.  I assume, from your response, that I'm wrong.

I'm sure it will all make perfect sense to me eventually...  But, right now, these saves with multiple years and multiple seasons listed are confusing.  And the notion that I would have to go in and manually re-name things just to keep my saves straight seems odd, to say the least.

[wuphonsreach]

Basically, game saves should be organized much better:

1) Folders named in season-year are pain especially if you sort through them in os.

Names need to be Region-Year-SeasonNumber-SeasonName

2) Second column that contain real time

And ability to sort through either filename or date.

Both are good suggestions.

For the new player, with seasonal auto-saves turned on, the current naming system makes it rather difficult to figure out "which was the save that I was playing last night or last weekend"?  Especially if you decide to reload a previous embark location to try something different from the very outset.  You end up with very strange folder names and you have to resort to using the operating system's search tools to figure out which save folder has the "world.sav" file that you want.  To give you an idea of how nasty this can get, here's what I have after only a week of mucking about:

region1
region1-spr-551
region1-spr-551-spr-552
region1-spr-551-sum-552
region1-spr-551-aut-552
region1-spr-551-aut--win-552
region1-spr-551-aut--spr-553
current

Now, which of those is the best save to use?  Which one was I playing last night?  The answer is that "region1-spr-551-aut-552" has the latest timestamp on a "world.sav" file.  And no, I don't remember how I managed to get things jumbled like that, probably save scumming or killing off DF in task manager after trying something.

If we don't care about total # of saves, and want it to just create a new one all the time (assuming that seasonal auto-saves are turned on), then a folder naming system like "Region Name plus wall clock date/time" would be enough.  That would produce save folder names like:

Rigothborik-20110225-2133

Optionally, tack on the in-game year and season:

Rigothborik-20110225-2133-550-Spring

Advantages:

- The operating system will always sort that correctly
- Region (world) names now get a bit more visibility
- Makes it easy to figure out which is the latest save for a particular world/region
- Easy to move older saves off to auxiliary storage
- No need to remember which "timeline" a save belongs to

Or as a shorter term solution, just swap the location of the year and season in the folder names when creating the seasonal auto-saves.  Optionally with some random number tacked onto the end if we don't want it to overwrite existing saves (or if it can't overwrite existing save folders).

region1-555-spr

Which still accomplishes the goal of making it easier to find the save.