[.05] (possible) Bug - Game status not saved properly by autosave

Just an abservation.

Burned down a house for nails, picked them up, loaded up my flat bed truck, went back to my base. Read ‘Under the Hood’ until skill 3 Mechanics. Did some modifications/repairs on the car, finished so far -> GAME CRASH.

OK, no problem, there’s autosave. -> Vehicle gone (back at old position right north of the Public Works), no more items in the trunks. The burned down house is no longer burned down, all the zombies I mowed down with my Nailgun are back alive.

Player position was correct, my skills are still OK, inventory too. But anything else I put aside in lockers/display racks is gone.

Options: Static NPCs are ON.

Can someone confirm this behaviour?

Aye, I definitely can. I put a couple of turrets around my base and practically every time I load, they’re in a new spot.

Yeah It’s happened to me on auto saves.

NPCs are off.

Not sure if this is a bug or a design tradeoff, but autosave only saves [character name].sav. The world map isn’t saved unless you do a full save, and it would probably be annoying if it did to use autosave at all once your world starts taking 3+ seconds to save.

Better that than losing a lot more of your time and progress to a crash thou no?

I’m probably experiencing something different from that. My turrets are in an old spot, they’re in completely different areas, sometimes in place I’ve never even been to.

Since I’m posting again, I’ll go ahead and relate that I was going to put my save in this thread, but when I loaded my turrets were hostile and killed me… eliminating the save.

I would highly suggest that you deactivate your turrets when you save so that this doesn’t happen to you.

[quote=“Austupaio, post:6, topic:1292”]I’m probably experiencing something different from that. My turrets are in an old spot, they’re in completely different areas, sometimes in place I’ve never even been to.

Since I’m posting again, I’ll go ahead and relate that I was going to put my save in this thread, but when I loaded my turrets were hostile and killed me… eliminating the save.

I would highly suggest that you deactivate your turrets when you save so that this doesn’t happen to you.[/quote]

There is a bug, at least I think it is, where turrets get duplicated upon the first load after saving. You can test this by going to a bunker and saving before killing the turrets. Load the game, and there will be 12 turrets (careful, some if not all of the new turrets will be outside the bunker). Close the game and load again and only the normal 6 are left. Maybe it’s some sort of anti-save-scumming feature.

What are 3+ seconds compared to a few hours of gameplay?

With the current state of instability and crashrelated bugs, it’s more useful to keep autosave as ‘saving everything, even if it takes a few seconds’ than ‘let’s save only this and screw it’.

Well if it’s so important, you could, you know, manually save. You could also modify the autosave code yourself. It’s only one line, but you have to be able to compile it yourself. Open up game.cpp, search for “void game::autosave()” and add the line “save_maps();” where shown. This won’t save artifacts, but when I tried adding save_artifacts() I had some problems, so just save manually when you get one you like. Btw when I say 3+ seconds, I really mean 3 PLUS. That could easily be like 10 or 15 (or more, I believe there’s no limit) if your maps are large enough since it’s all saved as one big file.

void game::autosave() { time_t now = time(NULL); // Don't autosave while driving, if the player's done nothing, or if it's been less than 5 real minutes. if (u.in_vehicle || (!moves_since_last_save && !item_exchanges_since_save) || now < last_save_timestamp + 300) { return; } add_msg("Saving game, this may take a while"); save(); save_maps(); // ADD THIS LINE TO SAVE MAPS ON AUTOSAVE
moves_since_last_save = 0;
item_exchanges_since_save = 0;
last_save_timestamp = now;

}

Well of course an auto save saving everything is important. It’s kinda redundant only saving part of a game. Besides if some people aren’t willing to wait the X seconds on a big save they could always turn auto save off. The problem with manual saving is you never know when a crash is gonna happen so you just don’t think of it if you’re having fun. So saving and quitting usually only happens when you’re actually done or save scumming a bit before doing something you know will kill you.

for the record there is no anti-save scumming feature.

and yes, turret duplication/movement is a bug that’s being tracked down (pun intended xD)

however it’s weird that the game saves only your position but not the position of the game world around you. I myself crashed and on a reload was next to a platoon of soldiers (dead) when I was not previously. the Bunker I was investigating was missing as well (I had just opened the door with a card, you can imagine my surprise at it being gone. It was at the end of a road so I could definitely confirm it was gone as the road still ended in a field)

What are 3+ seconds compared to a few hours of gameplay?

With the current state of instability and crashrelated bugs, it’s more useful to keep autosave as ‘saving everything, even if it takes a few seconds’ than ‘let’s save only this and screw it’.[/quote]

Agreed, it’s the most annoying thing in the game currently, I can’t even set up a camp base with traps and deep holes cause it keeps disappearing every time. I wouldn’t mind the long autosave

Same thing happened to me, my current LP had a crash and luckily it had auto-saved 1 minute before then, however everything had re-spawned, even the windows in the evac shelter that I used to make a bow right at the start. Also loot and enemies had been re-rolled to by the look of it.

Using official release version 0.5, on windows 64-bit with Roaming NPC’s True (might have had something to do with the NPC as I had one near me just before the crash).

[quote=“Fengferth, post:13, topic:1292”]Same thing happened to me, my current LP had a crash and luckily it had auto-saved 1 minute before then, however everything had re-spawned, even the windows in the evac shelter that I used to make a bow right at the start. Also loot and enemies had been re-rolled to by the look of it.

Using official release version 0.5, on windows 64-bit with Roaming NPC’s True (might have had something to do with the NPC as I had one near me just before the crash).[/quote]

Yeah i also think it has to do with npcs, i had 3 crashes right after talking to roaming npcs. I convince them that i wont hurt them then they start fleeing, 1-3 turns later the game crash.
Sometimes its when im trying to approach distant npcs (like 5-10 dots away on the map).
I just want the game to stop forgetting parts of the map and resetting my constructions (spent 5 ingame days to set up holes and traps just to loose it 5 minutes after cause a npc decided to approach my base and talk to me)

Autosaving not saving maps doesn’t have anything to do with NPCs. The code simply is NOT THERE. Whether that’s a design tradeoff (conscious compromise), design flaw (conscious poor decision), or bug (unforeseen consequence) is not clear, and not relevant. Autosave will NEVER save maps until it’s changed/fixed. And it’s a simple fix. I’d suggest you compile the game yourself and make the very minor modification. And if you cba to do that, save manually when you’ve made progress you can’t bear to lose.

I know… but npcs causes the game to crash wich most often the last save is a Autosave.
As for compiling the game myself, i really dont have any idea on how to do this. Im on windows and using the pre-compiled executable for windows. I tried the game with cygwin but it is laggy for me (like inputs gets stuck causing my character to run foward for 10 seconds when i only held the key for 2 seconds, same thing if i examine something with “x” but worse (it can do it for 20 seconds and no way to stop it)). IMO it should be a default feature that Autosave saves everything instead of just the character. I just want to enjoy the game right off the bat and not have to worry about editing stuff in the coding or whatsoever.

How do you save without save and quit “S”? cause when i exit a map then reload it, everything i explored on the map is forgotten and everything respawns. Something like a quicksave would be nice (even if its not quick, as long it saves everything!)

Grab the latest version posted from the main download link to fix that map disappearing bug.

On the main webpage? I think thats the one i downloaded, 0.5 dda.
Tried the nightly build link (main screen says 0.4 git)

I grabbed it from the windows download link a couple days after 0.5 first dropped, the version was changed to say 0.5, not 0.4-git, and the map bug was fixed.

yep thats the one ive been using and it still has the bug.
trying the nightly build to see how it goes