Subset Games Forum

Nu11u5 wrote:As it is, if I ever want to attempt at finishing the scenario, I will have to start doing "Save and Quit" > Backup 'continue.sav' > Restart > "Continue" after every encounter. I think everyone would see that as a pain in the ass.

Considering that a dedicated player such as yourself can already do that, I see no reason the game should not implement your suggestion and update a continue.sav between each battle, at least until all the crash bugs are fixed.

I think the problem is the save file is not kept in a way that survives client crashes, which should be considered a bug not some silly hearkening back to a time when games had bugs that lost your progress. As a 40 year-old gamer I can say I have no interest in returning to those times...

I use dropbox to share a save file between two computers so I can pick up progress when I have a break at work. While my friend was playing I got dropbox notifications that lead me to believe the management of the save file is to blame.

Basically it looks like the game deletes the file when you arrive at a jump point. It re-writes the file when you jump out (maybe when you defeat the threat if there is one?) or when you click the save+exit button. Since the file is gone, any crash will cause your progress to be lost. I lost mine when windows decided to reboot for a "important update". I couldn't see the notifications while I was in full screen mode.

A crash resistant solution would never delete the save file. When it was time to update the file it would write the new save to a new file in the directory and do an atomic move from the new file to the old. Since the move is atomic it cannot screw up if the client crashes. You either have your old file and an unmoved one (the latter cannot be trusted and should be deleted on restart) or you have a successfully moved and updated file. We use this model all the time in the database world where data must survive a crash at any point in the IO.

It may be that the developer saw this as a "feature" but it punishes people for bugs/system issues that may cause a crash in a failed effort to stop save scumming.

My .02,
scott.

It saves when you tell it to and deletes on continue. That's how it works. It really would be nice to have some kind of autosave, but I'm also fine w/o it. (shrug)

Autosave wouldn't make anything easier, as long as you could only load the most recent one, and dying deleted it. It would work exactly the same as it currently does, aside from not losing your progress when the game unexpectedly closes.

Of course you could cheat it by intentionally crashing the game when something goes poorly, but people who are going to cheat are going to cheat anyway.

zarakon wrote:Autosave wouldn't make anything easier, as long as you could only load the most recent one, and dying deleted it. It would work exactly the same as it currently does, aside from not losing your progress when the game unexpectedly closes.

Of course you could cheat it by intentionally crashing the game when something goes poorly, but people who are going to cheat are going to cheat anyway.

Yeah we are really starting to say the same things over and over now, haha. We'll just have to wait and see what happens methinks.

zarakon wrote: Of course you could cheat it by intentionally crashing the game when something goes poorly, but people who are going to cheat are going to cheat anyway.

Exactly. A crash bug in FTL combined with the wonky save system punishes honest players while making it only slightly harder for cheaters to cheat. The former is not worth the latter, especially in a single player game with no economy to protect or direct player competition.

Scott.

An autosave would be good in case you crash. It would still be deleted the moment you press alt+f4 or exit game or die, but in case of crash it would be there so you can continue. Losing a good run in roguelike is VERY frustrating.

/bump

This game REALLY needs to have a crash-resistant save system.

I have lost 5 games to this now. I am completely in love with FTL, but to be perfectly honest, I don't know if I'm going to play it anymore. SPECIFICALLY because of this issue.

I just can't play a game that deletes my progress constantly via crashing, not syncing to the Steam cloud, whatever.

I love roguelikes. I love permadeath. Again, I -love- this game. But, I just can't do this anymore. Please, PLEASE implement something different here. Until then, I think this game is shelved, and that is a major bummer.

ScottG wrote:I think the problem is the save file is not kept in a way that survives client crashes

It's the solution, not the problem.
Save file is deleted when game is launched ("consumed" is a right word). It's rather "hibernation" than saving.

Bump! Has it been fixed yet? I don't know if I can get back to the game, or if I'm going to waste couple more hours due to some random crash...