Savegame naming conventions

[Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS]

Any opinions?

jkm
firaxis games

[Joe Bourque]

I'd like "Tribe Name, Date": "Babylonians, 1429 A.D." A nifty feature might be to include the map name as well, or let you name the `world'. "Han Dynasty, Earth, 2044 A.D.", or "The Aegyptians, Riverworld, 110 B.C." You could even throw the goverment name in... "The Kingdom of Russia, Barsoom, 12 A.D." or "The American Theocracy, Trantor, 1848 A.D."

Nifty information, as well as `atmosphere', even in the save game files would be cool.

Joe

[Thunderfall]

Heroes of Might and Magic III has a very good interface for saving and loading files... You get to see a lot more info about the selected save game, not just the file name. Here is a screenshot

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Thunderfall
Webmaster of Civilization Fanatics Center @ Strategy Gaming Online
[This message has been edited by Thunderfall (edited April 06, 2000).]

[pris]

SMAC had a pretty much the perfect system i.e. [some text from user] + date. When you did a new save it automatically appended the new date to the user specific text.

It would be nice to specify a folder for all the saves in a game.

What we really need is someway to get more info about a file without opening it. For example if you select a file name it shows you details like;
player civs
real world date started
map size
etc, etc

[Paul]

Have a special file extension for Civ3 saved games so that you can double-click on them in Windows Explorer and have it automatically load the game, like with the PBEM games in CTP.

[Ubergeek]

I really liked the SMAC expansion of auto-saves, allowing you to back up by up to thirty turns.

One nit to pick relates to my own style of saving games. If I want to keep more than one save from a given year I usually just modify the year in the second save, i.e. "1602" and "1602a". The minor irritation I have is that the next save defaults to the modified year, for example "1604a", "1606a," etc., so that unless I manually change it back it keeps going like that. I would prefer it if it defaulted back to the regular year. I'm not sure if that made sense in the English language, but there it is.

A general preference would be to keep the saved game names relatively short, the way SMAC does. It tells you what you need to know but doesn't take up too much space. Joe Bourque's suggestion is well taken, but if you go that route maybe you could have a toggle: "Verbose savegame names" vs. "Terse savegame names" or something like that.

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Better living through tyranny

[Ubergeek]

I just wanted to add that it is EXTREMELY COOL that Firaxis is consulting us even on such small issues as this. It gives me confidence that the finished product will be well worth the wait.

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Better living through tyranny

[Gord McLeod]

I'd like to see subfolders for different games, and maybe a breakdown of information about the game. Leader - Civilization - Era - Year, so you might have: Imhotep - Egyptians - Stone Age - 3020 B.C.E or some such.

[The Mad Viking]

1. Absolutely get .sav files out of the game file directory. Ideally, a folder for each game.
2. User text for the start of the file name, followed by the year in the game. Default automatically repeats user text and appends the year.
3. File properties you can access via right-click button that tell you additional information - map name, which civ, etc.

Paul - you can tell Windows to use the Civ exe file to open all files with the .sav extension. (I haven't tried it, but it should work)

[Glak]

At the start of the game you name the game. There would be a checkbox, if you click it each save is a new file, otherwise it saves over the old. Additionally it would be nice if it turned the old save (before saving over it) into a backup file. So that would be another checkbox.

Saves should be compressed and uncompress when you load. That way people wouldn't zip files up when doing PBEM. No reason to add an extra step. You should be able to delete saves from within the game, no question about that. You should be able to doubleclick the file to start up the game using that save. Then from within the game you should be able to mail it out if it is a PBEM game

[Sir Shiva]

Having an associated extension for saved games would be cool... Games could be saved as *.SAV or even *.CIV or something, and you should be able to open them in explorer. They would also show up in the My Documents menu, giving us easy access to them...
This should extend to scenarios as well.
And you should be able to right click on a file and be presented with options like info etc.

Games could be saved with either text, date or text, civ, map date or whatever..

Saved games should be placed in a subdirectory in the main savedgame directory.



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-Shiva
Email: shiva@mailops.com
Web: http://www.crosswinds.net/india/~shiva
ICQ: 17719980

[Seeker]

I don't understand...

[Steve Clark]

I think Jeff is asking what the default name should be in the game save dialog box. I can't say anything about the non-Civ2 civ games, but in Civ2 it includes the year (for non-scenario games) and some letters in front. Personally, since I only have one game going at a time, I just type in the year for my occassional saves (e.g., 4000, 1150). I still like the idea of auto saves with its unique names (auto_save1?). My only preference is to have a Saved Games folder so I can find the saved game file easily (there are alot of files under the default directory in which the .sav file can get buried).

[Atahualpa]

I am with Glak!

Also, why bother about selecting a name for the savegame. Simply press ctrl+s and everything is done automatically.

ATa

[Paul]

Mad Viking: that only works if the game is programmed to to that. And if this is implemented the extension should definately not be .sav. That extension is used be many other games; if you want to automatically start Civ3 when you double-click a saved game it should have a unique extension. I also like Glak's and Sir Shiva's ideas.

The right-click info is definately a good idea; I like that in MS Office when you right-click an Office document in Windows Explorer and select properties you can get all sorts of info about that document. For Civ3 you should get things like leader name, civ name, game year and perhaps some other things.