Save Game Structure

[RCIX]

Is it possible to get a "guide" for savegames and some details of how AI war zips all the data together so we can maybe try and piece together a tool of some sort which can engineer savegames? It's the next best thing to getting an in-game tool of similar caliber...

[carlosjuero]

Why would you want to 'engineer' a saved game? The only reasons that come to my mind involve cheating in some method or another...

[deMangler]

Why would you want to 'engineer' a saved game? The only reasons that come to my mind involve cheating in some method or another...

In one of my AI War Games I edited the savegame to get the planets named how I want, but at the time I didn't know you could do it in the galaxy map.
It seems you can do a lot from the lobby....
Hmmmm are we talking about changing the rules of a game halfway through? A bit like savescumming only possibly worse?

The problem with allowing people to change games halfway through, and savescumming, is that it encourages people to build time-machines in real life and go back and change things. Before you know it you are accidentally becoming your own great-grandfather, or worse. We all know from the news how dangerous and influential video games can be.
I advise caution.
 

<edit> Sorry, the above should read 'great-grandparent' <edit>

[keith.lamothe]

Savegame analysis has legitimate uses, there's a lot of info that's interesting (from some perspectives) that just can't be shown via ingame interface in a suitably usable format.  But there's a lot of other priorities as far as programming work; whether Chris wants to publish a sort of format key (or have me do so) is up to him.

[x4000]

One goal for the future is a full-out scenario designer, but I don't think that savegame editing is going to be particularly a great stopgap.  For one, it's infinitely abusable, and for another the format is fairly nontrivial in terms of including a lot of variables and functionality that would have to also be explained in terms of allowable ranges, purposes, and varied usages.  And there are several blocks that are compressed, to make it even worse, so you have to have just the right decompression algorithm as well as the knowledge of all the (ever-changing) parts of the game itself.  To me, at the moment it seems a can of worms, and it would be far easier to eventually just create a scenario editor instead.

[RCIX]

Ok, sounds good. The only reason i wanted it is to basically poke and prod at the game and just tinker to see what i could come up with, but a scenario editor sounds great too!

Edit: ugh, really bad mistypes there...

[HellishFiend]

A scenario editor sounds really cool as something to have way down the line. I'd hate to have it too soon though, as it would be too tempting to use and deprive yourself of the experience of playing with a properly random seeded map.

[x4000]

Right now, the plan is to add that around the time of the second expansion, but that might change if other features are more popular at that time.