Re: Save dialogs

[Aidan Gauland]

 > From a personal point of view, I disagree. I prefer being able to
 > save as many games as I want, under whatever name I want, anywhere I
 > want to the limited in-game save facilities some games have.

I'm with Christian on this one.  I liked that the Myst games let you do this.

 >> I think it nice if players will save/load game with special functions
 >> without Windows dialog.
 >> for example pipmak.savegame2("name") -- and game will saved as
 >> name.pipsave
 >> in game folder without windows dialogs.

I can think of another use for a function like this: a developer might want
his game to automatically save its state at set points in the game.  "Clock
Tower" (the original SNES "Clock Tower" that was renamed "Clock Tower: The
First Fear" when its sequel was released) would autosave every time you enter
a room, which made things much easier, because its easy to forget to save when
you're being chased.

 > I disagree with the suggestion to save in the game folder though
 > (assuming you mean the folder that contains the project), because this
 > location might not be writable by the user (e.g. located on a CD). The
 > standard location should be somewhere in the user's home directory (~/
 > Library/Application Support/ on Mac OS, don't know where on Windows).

This could frustrate users (of games, not developers using Pipmak) who want to
  take their saved games to another system.  Maybe the path should not be
hard-coded into Pipmak, but put in "defaults.lua"

  -Aidan


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[Evgen]

 > I can think of another use for a function like this: a developer might want
 > his game to automatically save its state at set points in the game.  "Clock
 > Tower" (the original SNES "Clock Tower" that was renamed "Clock Tower: The
 > First Fear" when its sequel was released) would autosave every time you enter
 > a room, which made things much easier, because its easy to forget to save when
 > you're being chased.

I like this idea, its very useful, but for it we need functions

 > This could frustrate users (of games, not developers using Pipmak) who want to
 > take their saved games to another system.  Maybe the path should not be
 > hard-coded into Pipmak, but put in "defaults.lua"

How we can write this path in defaults.lua?
may be use installing program? (as I know some installing wizards may write options files, after installing)

[Christian Walther]

Aidan Gauland wrote:

> I can think of another use for a function like this: a developer  
> might want
> his game to automatically save its state at set points in the game.  
> "Clock
> Tower" (the original SNES "Clock Tower" that was renamed "Clock  
> Tower: The
> First Fear" when its sequel was released) would autosave every time  
> you enter
> a room, which made things much easier, because its easy to forget to  
> save when
> you're being chased.

Good idea.

>> I disagree with the suggestion to save in the game folder though
>> (assuming you mean the folder that contains the project), because  
>> this
>> location might not be writable by the user (e.g. located on a CD).  
>> The
>> standard location should be somewhere in the user's home directory  
>> (~/
>> Library/Application Support/ on Mac OS, don't know where on Windows).
>
> This could frustrate users (of games, not developers using Pipmak)  
> who want to
>  take their saved games to another system.

How so? In what way would it impede that? You just take a saved game  
file out of that standard folder and put it into the standard folder  
on the other system?

>  Maybe the path should not be hard-coded into Pipmak, but put in  
> "defaults.lua"

In how far is putting it into defaults.lua not hardcoding it into  
Pipmak? Defaults.lua is part of Pipmak. Did you mean main.lua (of a  
project)?

In any case, what exactly would a project author put there? It seems  
you're just shifting the responsibility of solving the problem from  
Pipmak to the project author - when Pipmak would actually be in a  
better position to solve it (e.g. can adapt to different platforms).

Evgen wrote:
> may be use installing program? (as I know some installing wizards  
> may write
> options files, after installing)

For my opinion on installers, see <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.games.devel.pipmak.user/247/focus=250 
 >.

   -Christian

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[Aidan Gauland]

Christian Walther wrote:
>> This could frustrate users (of games, not developers using Pipmak)  
>> who want to take their saved games to another system.
>
> How so? In what way would it impede that? You just take a saved game  
> file out of that standard folder and put it into the standard folder  
> on the other system?

I wasn't objecting to using that convention, just pointing out that if a game
uses that exclusively, it could be an annoyance.

By the way, is the standard directory on Mac OS X ~/Library/Application
Support/ or ~/Library/Preferences/ ?

>>  Maybe the path should not be hard-coded into Pipmak, but put in  
>> "defaults.lua"
>
> In how far is putting it into defaults.lua not hardcoding it into  
> Pipmak? Defaults.lua is part of Pipmak. Did you mean main.lua (of a  
> project)?

Oh, yes, sorry.  Either "defaults.lua" or "main.lua".

> In any case, what exactly would a project author put there? It seems  
> you're just shifting the responsibility of solving the problem from  
> Pipmak to the project author - when Pipmak would actually be in a  
> better position to solve it (e.g. can adapt to different platforms).


Now that I think about it that way, perhaps it would be better to NOT project
authors control over this, for the reason you just stated.

  -Aidan

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[Christian Walther]

> By the way, is the standard directory on Mac OS X ~/Library/
> Application
> Support/ or ~/Library/Preferences/ ?

I've seen games use either. Upon rereading Apple's guidelines <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFileSystem/Articles/LibraryDirectory.html 
 >, it seems that Preferences would be more appropriate - although I  
see plenty of applications store such things in Application Support.  
To make things more complicated, the "Important" note at the top of  
that document makes a case for using ~/Documents/, but the last  
section of <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFileSystem/Articles/WhereToPutFiles.html 
 > contradicts that, and I tend to agree with the latter.

  -Christian

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