New savegame format in nightly builds

If any of you are feeling adventurous, I would appreciate testers for the current nightly builds. I just enabled the new savegame format.

Your old saves are converted automatically, so you will not lose any progress in anygames you are playing.

It also still saves the old SAV format too, so if you want to test playing your game with a nightly build and then go back to ypsiliform later, your saves will still be okay (although this will not be true in a future version where I remove support for the old SAV format entirely)

As you probably know, the old SAV format stores your savegames in a file called gamename.sav which can be pretty gigantic if you use the F2/F3 debugging keys for quicksave/quickload.

The new RSAV format is a bunch of files inside a gamename.saves folder. You will notice they take up a lot less space (although that doesn't mean much right now because the nightly build is still saving BOTH the old and new formats)

This format is also vastly easier to extend and update than the old format was, so expect cool things in the future.

Right now, if it works exactly the same as it worked before, then it is working correctly :)

Is it just a new format so far, or does it store additional information?

right now it just saves all the old stuff better.

I am working on saving NPC locations

If I may make a request. A small one. Ha.

When you update the nightly, can you update it on the website like you do with the stable versions of OHR?

The link on the "Latest Nightly Version" section of the downloads page already always points to the latest nightly build. Which is build automatically every night...

or should be. Now that I check, I see that it last built on the 11th. I'll check it out and see what is wrong.

The new saving system has been causing me some trouble. When I attempt to save my game over top an already-used slot, it does not overwrite the old file. I have to save it on a fresh slot.

Tell me more. Are you using the standard saving system? or are you plotscripting the saving?

EDIT: oh, also, I was wondering if you have a g_debug.txt or g_debug_archive.txt file. They might contain saving-related error messages.

I am also curious what happens when you hold shift when you load. That falls back to the old loading mechanism.

I've noticed when I leave a particular scene on for a long time, the framerate drops and the game starts stuttering pretty badly.

I noticed this on battles when I playtested the new Yo Ghost,
And i noticed it on NOES; when I left for a drink and came back, it lagged.

I think it only occurs when nothing new is happening. ( the battles were slow, and I completely left NOES alone. )

Should I test more games?

Here is a problem I have encountered.

I am playing an older game, Walthros, which is passworded so I am unable to permanently update it to the latest nightly. Thus, game.exe updates the file whenever I load it up. Naturally, it uses the new save format instead of the old one. However, I had an old SAV file from before upgrading to the new nightly, and it seems that game.exe is prioritizing loading the OLD save file instead of the new format one when possible.

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com

Quick update on my post there. I have gathered this information:

Walthros is continuing to save in the old format despite updating to the new nightly.

The old save format has the most up to date data, and the new one seems to just have the SAV data that was originally loaded when starting the game.

I don't know why this is happening, but I would guess it has something to do with auto-updating the file?

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com

@eggie: still curious about that g_debug.txt file. BlastedEarth has also mentioned this problem.

@Sh4d0ws: what you describe could be a bug, but I seriously doubt it is related to the new saving system. More testing would be greatly appreciated.

@JSH357: the nightly still always saves both the old and the new format. However, if it insists on loading the old one, then that sounds like a bug. Auto-updating shouldn't make a difference for the saving system (although maybe it matters in a way that I have not thought of yet)

The only problem I've noticed lately is that over-writing a save slot does not work, but I checked CP a bit ago and TMC said that it was fixed.

Just out of curiosity, is saving maptile state a near-future goal of this format as well?

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Email contributions to the OHR Collab project to:

ohrcollab@gmail.com

All contributions will be recorded in the credits.

It seems this problem is extending to other games too. I have to delete the Motrya saves folder every time i play in order to ever reload my save files properly.

EDIT: Just downloaded the 6/30 nightly... I will report back on whether it works or not.

EDIT 2: Looks fixed now!

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com