dMZX Forums: Universal counter-only save format -> Archived Requests -> Tracker

Essentially, a save file with a world file name and a list of counters and strings in it that is universal, standardized, doesn't change every MZX release, and doesn't become useless when a new version of the world is released. Every time someone rolls their own save format, this is pretty much what they do anyway. Let's make it easy!

It wouldn't be a "save" file in the sense that world data would be saved; essentially you'd be loading a separate world file from scratch and then plugging the counter and string lists in. Obviously, the world file would have to be written specifically to handle loads from these files, since a few counters would be the only indication that it's not just starting over.

To save/load these files, the MZX world would need an option to specify which type of save it can use. It could replace SAVE_GAME/LOAD_GAME or have its own functions (I am sure there are cases where either would be useful in a world that uses the other).

To distinguish them from normal saves they'd probably have a different extension. MZS? Maybe not, I'm sure it could just become a variation of the EBML save format in 2.85 -- since 2.85 save files will be diffs, all you'd have to do is provide an empty save file with a counter and string list.

On that note, how would the diff save files handle changes in the MZX world between different releases of a game? Would we put some kind of checksum in the save file and have a warning if they didn't match?

Updating status to: Approved

some people expressed interest in something like this and it would be easy to do after we switch to EBML

Updating status to: Awaiting Feedback

The thing is, I think a lot of people who would use this load a ton of data into strings and counters, possibly enough that the supposed benefits of this are negligible. I like the idea of having easier to read/write save data without the huge filesize and the ability to be world version independent, but I think this needs more thought, i.e. some way to tailor it to individual world files.

Updating status to: Implemented
Updating severity to: 2 - Fair
Updating version to: 2.90
Issue fixed in: GIT

Implemented in GIT 2d3690e.

Moving to: Archived Requests