Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

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Iori Branford
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Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Iori Branford »

A convenience option to pistol start the map from a savegame made with a different version.

I assume that at least the mapname in the savegame has been stable for a while. Of course, the minimum version for this would be the first version when the mapname had its current location. Also it wouldn't help with wads designed or balanced for continuous play, especially Strife/Hexen/etc with key items that have to be carried across maps, although the player could still try anyway.
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Matt
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Matt »

So basically it recovers the name of the map and the skill level and tries to warp you to it?
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Iori Branford
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Iori Branford »

I forgot about the skill level. Yeah, that too.
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Enjay »

Matt wrote:So basically it recovers the name of the map and the skill level and tries to warp you to it?
Which, to be fair, isn't usually that hard to do manually via the console anyway. i.e. as long as you know what map you were on and what skill you were playing on: start a game and warp to the map. Voila, pistol start.

While I understand the request, and do not wish to belittle it, it strikes me as something that isn't needed too often (i.e. if a new version of GZDoom comes out while you are playing an important game, with important saves - hold off upgrading). If your save is really that important, much of your progress will be lost via this feature anyway. The only thing remembered is what map you were on. Kills, equipment, weapons, time played will all be gone.

If continuing an old game across incompatible GZDoom versions is needed, most people should be able to easily achieve the same outcome as the request manually without having to add (or keep?) anything in the engine to allow it to interrogate old games (for the foreseeable future, and across all save versions). i.e. the request will just put you at the start of the level with a default inventory and that's already very easy to do with the console or the command line (even using the original 1993 command line options).
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Graf Zahl »

What's so hard about keeping two GZDoom versions in parallel and just using the old one for finishing the mods that were started on them?
Or is it just that Linux thing again that there *MUST* be only one version of an application and there *MUST* only be one global configuration file that automatically applies to all other copies in some user-local directory as well?

And even in that case it may be better to make an explicit portable configuration by renaming the config to gzdoom_portable.ini and put it in the same folder as the executable and its data.
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Rachael »

Graf Zahl wrote:What's so hard about keeping two GZDoom versions in parallel and just using the old one for finishing the mods that were started on them?
This is far from an ideal solution. All the OP is asking for here is for GZDoom to reject the save but to start you on the map where the save was originally rejected. I don't see anything unreasonable about this. The only instance where this wouldn't work is hub clusters, like Strife or Hexen.

People like you or me would never use this feature because we're very comfortable with the console and the command line. But that puts us in a position of extreme bias - not everyone is, and we cannot see or understand their perspective.
Graf Zahl wrote:Or is it just that Linux thing again that there *MUST* be only one version of an application and there *MUST* only be one global configuration file that automatically applies to all other copies in some user-local directory as well?
If you're not compiling your own copy, as many people who are picking up Linux are using pre-built packages, this is indeed the case. If you have your own compile, however, you can do whatever the heck you want with them.
Graf Zahl wrote:And even in that case it may be better to make an explicit portable configuration by renaming the config to gzdoom_portable.ini and put it in the same folder as the executable and its data.
With how Linux builds are distributed, this is not currently possible, unless you specifically know how to manipulate the packages to get what you want out of them. (Does GZDoom even read config files from its folder in Linux?)
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Matt
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Matt »

I don't know about installing from packages, but whenever I need to mess around with the ini I just go into ~/.config/gzdoom and copy/rename from there.

Still far from an ideal solution though.


If something like this got in it should be an opt-in warning, like "Warning: this savegame is from a different version of GZDoom. Continuing will warp you to the map number and skill level, but you will have starting inventory and stats. Continue? [Cancel (default)] [Continue]"
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by axredneck »

Savegame incompatibility between GZDoom versions is why i rarely play megawads.
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Guest »

It is a rather major issue with ZDoom... Plus, remember that even if you can just warp there to simulate it, the gaming gods all know you cheated and will send you to gaming hell if you do it. The game just knoooooows. Or whatever is telling my brain it's wrong and I need to start all over again.

I wonder if it's time to establish some basic standard for how the saves should work that works across future version. I mean, most modern games have managed to figure this out after all.
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Rachael
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Rachael »

Alice Mullerbock wrote: I mean, most modern games have managed to figure this out after all.
I'm sure Graf will be absolutely thrilled and joyful to help bring GZDoom up to what you call "modern standards" if you have a few thousand Euros lying around to pay him. :)
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Matt
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Matt »

Alice Mullerbock wrote:Or whatever is telling my brain it's wrong and I need to start all over again.
Source of reported software problem search narrowed to chair-to-keyboard interface channel.

If GZDoom is failing abysmally at enabling gamer culture gatekeeping then that's a happy accidental feature not a bug.
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Dark Jaguar »

Alice's rudeness notwithstanding, I'm in favor of some sort of system that lets save files be used on subsequent versions. I have no idea how hard that would be though.
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by StroggVorbis »

Maybe some sort of password or seed that starts you back at the beginning of the map with your inventory preserved how it was at that point.
In Quake 1 & 2, if you died while in a cooperative session, you would respawn at the beginning of the map with everything you had at that point. So if you entered the map with say, 8 HP and 99 shells, you would respawn with said amounts.
And in Doom 3 I remember, if you changed any .script and loaded an earlier save game, it too would put you back at the beginning of the level with everything you had at that point, but not without setting g_skill to the default of 1 for some reason. (0 being easy, 2 being hard and 3 being nightmare)
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Rachael
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by Rachael »

No, password is a completely wonky solution, not to mention it would be untenable given how GZDoom's moddable inventory system works. (It's not a static list, and is not guaranteed to load the same way, especially when we're talking about different versions)

I propose that GZDoom simply keeps a list of item names and their quantities that you had when starting a level, like an ini file, and it saves that with the game in an additional file in the savegame. If an incompatible savegame is found, it will simply load the level from scratch and then load in the inventory list, instead.

This will not work for hub levels, but at least for Doom and Heretic without hubs, the basic request is satisfied to some degree.
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Re: Pistol start to resume from incompatible savegame

Post by axredneck »

Rachael wrote:I propose that GZDoom simply keeps a list of item names and their quantities that you had when starting a level, like an ini file, and it saves that with the game in an additional file in the savegame.
I second this.
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