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Author Topic: reason not to use auto-save  (Read 8643 times)

hops

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #15 on: April 14, 2013, 05:17:21 am »

dwarf fortress is like game of thrones.

A Song of Glacier and Magma: Game of Socks.
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freeformschooler

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #16 on: April 14, 2013, 06:36:29 am »

Booo!

* freeformschooler dives behind a curtain to dodge tomatoes

:P
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Loud Whispers

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #17 on: April 14, 2013, 04:21:56 pm »

Dwarf fortress is like game of thrones.
If a Song of Fire and Ice was like Dwarf Fortress:

Rangers cancel range: Interrupted by human corpse.
The Direwolves would have been butchered and turned into goblets.
Bran would have become a legendary duel-crutch walker.
Robb Stark would have gone Stark raving mad when Nedd lost his head.
Danaerys Targaryan has given birth to triplets... They're dragons?
Catelyn Stark is throwing a party wherever she shouldn't be!
Littlefinger never shows up anywhere because he's always on break.
Arya Stark would be called Arya Stark the stabstabbing stabstabs of stabstabbing stabs.
Theon Greyjoy, Ward prisoner.
Tyrion has started a party at the EVERYWHERE! EVERYONE IS INVITED! (No war, because everyone is held in mutually assured tantrum spiral).
Davos Seaworth is a devout worshiper of Stannis Baratheon. Stannis Baratheon is associated with law, war and Fortresses.
Brienne of Tarth cancels look for infant: PATH NOT FUCKING FOUND.
Cersei has mandated the construction of wildfire. [No one makes any and they all get hammered. With a giant maul].
Jaime Lannister has become the Captain of the Kingsguard.
Jaime Lannister cancels noble bsns: Needs a helping hand.

PDF urist master

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #18 on: April 14, 2013, 05:56:14 pm »

no. cersei would !!spoilers!! send them to Qyburn
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PDF urist master

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #19 on: April 14, 2013, 05:57:01 pm »

shit. that spoiler was supposed to invisible
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Loud Whispers

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #20 on: April 14, 2013, 06:49:36 pm »

no. cersei would !!spoilers!!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
shit. that spoiler was supposed to invisible
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
No offense intended, but that was a tremendous mistake.
Also is that really spoiler material? Pretty cryptic if you don't know what's going on.

Then again, Qyburn's just appeared on show...

Putnam

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #21 on: April 14, 2013, 11:02:40 pm »

You could also use transparent color.

Starver

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #22 on: April 15, 2013, 12:52:14 am »

Aside from all this latest spoilerish stuff, I thought I was going to learn a good reason not to use auto-save.  Which I do (seasonally, with "-aut-1055"-style copy suffix applied).

But I didn't.  Even if save-scumming (something I rarely do[1]), auto-saves don't cause problems.  Except (which is not necessarily a disadvantage if this is accidental) that a seasonal auto-save with copy still (I think) saves the master-file, so if you're going to the trouble of hoping to reshape a mood that started just before the season, the season save means that the "kill -9" or Three Fingered Salute method of abort-without-save.  Then you'd have to go and take the "-sum-1055" save and reply almost an entire season, and now not even get the same dwarf.

So make a save when you think things are about to be... interesting...  make your own copy and then if/when you want a reply shuffle your own copy back into play one way or another.

And if your machine performance (and game-load is anything like mine), you can tell when something big happens.  Immediately before a child is born, immigrants or siege arrive or (I surmise) a hidden raiding party arrive on the scene I get a definitely noticeable game-pause.  When I get something like this and there's no child/immigration/siege announcement, it's a possible ambush precursor.  Too late to change what arrives, as far as I can tell, but I might quickly rearrange anyone working on an external feature back onto jobs within the defences, and activate an additional (not already patrolling/stationed) military unit.

If you make your explicit save/copy at this point, then if you find you've made a bad choice (patrols/stationed troops in the wrong quadrant of the fortress walls, for example), you can redo from this point with a mysterious knowledge of where the ambush troops are most likely to be first encountered/intercepted.  (Also, in reverse, you can ensure that your overlooking archers don't decimate (in the traditional sense) and scare off your goblinite-suppliers too early, and actually bring your military response back behind the first lock-gate that you want to seal the invaders off with, before annihilating them completely and claiming their goods.)

Or you can go back to the saved season and get a possible new (but, again, reactable-against) version of the attack.

That's what you can accomplish if you want to accomplish it.  (That and more, but I won't go into every little trick I've stumbled across.)  But this is in no way prevented from happening with auto-saves on if you are also prepared to make your own backup "trousers of time" points.


Whether you want to or not...  that's for your conscience.  The rules of the game are what you make them.  Hence I'm comfortable to try a sub-megaproject aspect of a fort then revert to when it never happened, but I would never reshape a moodcraft product.  (Also, I would accept when a useful moodcraft product changed into a less useful moodcraft one, where I've rerun a short time for the prior 'legitimate' reason.)  A military situation that provokes a rewind might happen if it's 'just unfair' and I've lost my main megaproject architect/manufacturer in a fort that is not (yet, at least) supposed to be dealing with hostiles on the level I've just encountered.  (Because I consider turning off invasions in the Inits against my own personal rules, and try to deal with enemies when they arrive, in such circumstances.)  I rarely use the seasonal save-copies, but their being there gives peace of mind.  Hence that's what I activate, immediately, in any brand-new unpacked game's Inits.  (That and screen width and height, and "water as values".)

So, that's what I think/do/imagine/etc.  But YMMV, and on some details ICBW.


Now back to your other discussion. ;)


[1] Sometimes after intentionally diverting to test some new construction method.  Which might be as easily done by saving, making copy, running experiment on the copy.  But saving and copying (or relying on auto-save) experimenting on the original and then deleting that and copying/renaming the copy/autosave back to the original is the less efficient way I'd do it.  But it's when doing things like this that I've derived the above rules of "timeline mutability".
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The Hadad

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #23 on: April 15, 2013, 08:59:45 am »

I'm kind of a control freak, so despite my best efforts, I find it difficult to not savescum.

That said, on a fort I had a few months ago, I was in the middle of a siege, had to look up from the computer for several minutes, and then looked back at the screen to discover I didn't pause. That was pretty interesting.
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Nyan Thousand

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #24 on: April 15, 2013, 06:57:55 pm »

Dwarf fortress is like game of thrones.
If a Song of Fire and Ice was like Dwarf Fortress:

Catelyn Stark is throwing a party wherever she shouldn't be!
Tyrion has started a party at the EVERYWHERE! EVERYONE IS INVITED! (No war, because everyone is held in mutually assured tantrum spiral).

No, we're talking about ASoIaF, not Mount & Blade.
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Lasander

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #25 on: April 17, 2013, 12:59:46 am »

freeformschooler that was amazing and creepy.
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mnjiman

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #26 on: April 17, 2013, 05:05:07 am »

Dwarf fortress would be a much better game if it saved all the time, and there was no possible way to save sum.
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I was thinking more along the lines of this legendary champion, all clad in dented and dinged up steel plate, his blood-drenched axe slung over his back, a notch in the handle for every enemy that saw the swing of that blade as the last sight they ever saw, a battered shield strapped over his arm... and a fluffy, pink stuffed hippo hidden discretely in his breastplate.

Starver

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #27 on: April 17, 2013, 01:39:05 pm »

Dwarf fortress would be a much better game if it saved all the time, and there was no possible way to save sum.

I rank this phrase along such a fictitious one as "Dwarf fortress would be a much better game if it was all hard-coded, and there was no possible way to mod creatures/reactions/etc."

Or turn off temperatures/sieges, change the popcap/child numbers, alter the tilesets, etc, etc, etc...


We all play the game in our own ways.  Because it's an individual game (sequentially cooperative ones aside).  Some people will happily savescum 'perfection', whilst others will not touch it.  Some people will mod in a 'cheaty' reaction to help with a megaproject (or get past an insurmountable supply problem), whilst for others there is no excuse.  This only affects yourself, and much as with other 'rules' that can be implemented (or broken) by the player without even any tinkering ("I will not use Danger Rooms", or "I will build my aboveground walls only of limestone blocks") it does not matter to anyone else.

Of course if you said "my fortress will be protected only by dwarves holding spoons!", and forgot to say that you modded in the "spoon" as the most mega-weapon there is, then you're mis-selling yourself.  But it doesn't affect anyone else any more than claiming you had a fortress protected only by dwarves, where you'd totally made up everything from scratch and hadn't even run the program.  (Well, except insofar as you cause someone else to try the same (in vanilla) and made them waste time.  But that applies to any bit of misinformation, and the involvement of DF is not at fault.)
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Squill

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #28 on: April 18, 2013, 08:19:55 pm »

I only savescum when I don't know what I'm doing. For example, before I knew much about the various cave creatures, I saw a Jabberer. Wisely, I made a backup save before testing its mettle.
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Telgin

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Re: reason not to use auto-save
« Reply #29 on: April 19, 2013, 12:29:52 am »

That's sort of my philosophy too.  If I'm working with something inherently dangerous, like water or magma, I don't feel so bad savescumming when something stupid happens.  Things like a miner stepping into water instead of dry land when channeling and drowning.  It's kind of getting around bugs like I mentioned before.

But megaprojects are kind of the same.  I made a backup before my first attempt at a magma pump stack, which I didn't have to use, but it seemed reasonable to me.
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