Title: Old Saved games from PC Post by: Alexandre on June 02, 2004, 08:43:36 pm I tried to load games saved in the original PC SC2 and UQM crashed. And now I have 2 questions:
1) If UQM is a strait port from SC2 is it planned to make possible using somehow saved games from the original version (directly or via some converter)? 2) Why UQM tries to load that original saved files if they are in different format. UQM should have some signature in it's own saved files... Title: Re: Old Saved games from PC Post by: meep-eep on June 02, 2004, 11:45:36 pm It is a straight port in that we have used the original source to make the game playable on our new platforms. After that, we have been (and still are) making changes to the source (but not the gameplay).
In fact, one of the goals is to make it more easy for people to create their own mods. A lot of the file formats have changed, and even more will change in the future. String data and most metadata will be stored in XML, and so will the savegame data. We are using the source of the 3DO version of the game, not the PC version, which is why loading save game files from the PC version doesn't work. There is no signature because we haven't really touched the savegame format. It is just a memory dump of a structure with game data. This is far from ideal (for instance you'll have incompatibility issues if you want to exchange saved games between computers with a different endianness), but as it will all be changed with the XML system anyhow, we're not spending any time on this now. Title: Re: Old Saved games from PC Post by: Alexandre on June 03, 2004, 01:07:37 pm Thank you for the reply.
The current situation is clear for me now. But do you (I mean somebody) know the format of the old PC SC2 save file. Is it possible to make some converter that will allow importing it to the new UQM? (I am playing PC SC2 now the second time, the first one was in the past century :), and I'd like to jump to UQM to the same place where I'm in the SC2 now) Title: Re: Old Saved games from PC Post by: meep-eep on June 03, 2004, 08:15:45 pm We haven't got a description of the PC SC2 savegame format. But I suspect it's not very much different from the 3DO version, and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out the differences. But we don't consider making a convertor very important. Maybe someday someone will make something (maybe someone not directly involved with the UQM project), but don't hold your breath.
Besides, if it's been very long since you played the PC original, you may want to replay it anyhow, to get back in the Star Control world. And if it's all still fresh in memory, it shouldn't take very much time to replay to where you are now. |