I would find it very useful if AGS would save the game you're working on every fifteen minutes or so. Working on a low-end system I occasionally experience windows crashes due to lack of memory, and while my room files are generally up-to-date this can undo lots of work on the global script in particular.
I agree; while I rarely experience any crashes, I still think that this is a feature, that every program should have.
But you have to use this feature careful: If you open a project and for example delete everything accidently and then -BAM- the autosave kicks in... ;)
I like the idea, but it would be tricky if we were working on a script at the time. And if we were finishing up a function that, as unfinished, wouldn't compile...
Quote from: Rui "Shodan" Pires (a divine AI) on Sat 07/01/2006 12:51:27
I like the idea, but it would be tricky if we were working on a script at the time. And if we were finishing up a function that, as unfinished, wouldn't compile...
Ah yes, another issue is that AGS sometimes uses the term "save the game" when referring to storing everything on the hard disk (which is what I meant) and sometimes uses it when referring to "compiling all data into a playable executable" (which I think is what Rui meant). Storing doesn't require a compilable script.
The problem is that in larger games, saving the data can take a few seconds -- this could be very annoying if the editor hung every 15 minutes while it saved the game.
Also, there's the issue of saving changes that you didn't want saved.
So it'd have to work like MS Word and save in a background thread, but save to a seperate location and delete the autosave when you successfully closed the program.
It's a reasonable request, but it's more involved than it first appears.
True, but both objections you mention could be solved by having a menu toggle that switches the autosave on or off depending on whether people want it or not. Personally I don't mind if AGS "stutters" for a few seconds every fifteen minutes.
I think "Save early, save often, and frequently make backups." is expected behaviour for all game creators, it'd be more effective than autosaves.
I do this also to M$ Word documents as I never trust its autosave feature.
I've always wished that we could save the game while a script was being edited. I imagine there is some behind-the-scenes reason why it is not possible, or it probably would have been done from the beginning...
I just added an auto-save routine to our AGS game in production. It's quite easy if you use the SaveGameSlot()-command. If you fear a short "hung" on complex games, you might add a choice button in the options menu of your game or s.th. like that, if auto-save is on or off.
In our game it's on my old Athlon A-1000 with 512MB RAM no problem (the game consists right now of 1,961 lines of code in the global script and contains 1,007 sprites, 77 views, 32 items, 17 characters and 41 rooms -- just to help you giving you at least very small idea of what time it might take).
Thanks, but we're talking about autosaves in the editor. ;)
I think it's too potentially problematic and wouldn't be used widely enough to impliment officially. I'm just in the habit of ctrl+S-ing after just about every thing I do. There are times when I open the game and do a lot of damaging stuff to the game just to test something... I like not having the danger that auto-save is turned on and having that result in disaster.