Re: [Alephmodular-devel] General status overview

[Aaron D. <ag...@co...>]

On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 08:56  AM, Br'fin wrote:

>
> On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 04:29  AM, Aaron Davies wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, January 2, 2003, at 10:16  PM, Br'fin wrote:
>>
>>> Where does unifying saving/restoring game information lay?
>>
>> Speaking of that, one feature I've been interested in for a long time 
>> is PID-style persistent level data--a save file containing the maps 
>> for *all* levels completed so far, so that you can re-enter a level 
>> and have your previous work there remain. This would allow for much 
>> easier design of non-linear scenarios, as well as reducing the 
>> redundancy in certain overly linear ones 
>> (*cough*cough*TI*cough*cough*). It's also a pre-requisite for porting 
>> PID to A1/AM, a project I expect to materialize any day now, now that 
>> the PID shapes file has been cracked.
>>
>> So anyway, if this sort of progressive save file is going to be a 
>> possibility later, that should be kept in mind now.
>>
>
> Well, given that the map file for M2 is 19.5 megabytes, I don't think 
> a PID-style of save all the maps is approachable. Unless your map, 
> externally, is actually handled like the original PID map. (a 2D grid 
> of values+extra lists of information is so much smaller than a full 
> map of lines, points, and polygons)

I don't really see a problem here. 20 MB is almost irrelevant these 
days--hell, I just saw a 500 GB drive going for $1000 the other day. In 
a year's time, it'll be $400. Anyway, it would only be that large once 
the player's visited all levels (i.e. at the end of a linear scenario). 
Intelligently writing the save-file code will avoid having to slurp up 
and kick out the entire file every save/load. I don't know  if that's 
possible with wad files, but we don't really have to stay with wad. 
Maybe the save file could actually be an archive (tar/zip) of separate 
maps plus a file of current user data? Whether a "diff" on the 
canonical map is any use would depend on how long it would take to 
"apply" it when reloading the level.
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