So I was playing HoMM3 in the past couple days...

[Arqane]

And what does that have to do with HoMM5? Well, a few things, but I'm only bringing up 1 .

I go to save my game right at the beginning of the first campaign by habit. After naming it, I hit the save button, and grab my drink by my side. It actually took me a few seconds to realize that the message that came up in the box was 'Game Saved Successfully'.

Being so used to playing newer games recently (not just H5), I kind of expected that box to say 'Saving...', and why not add a few more ...s after it?

Seriously. I haven't done my programming in a little while, so opening/saving files is a bit rusty. Still, there's really no more information per H5 map than there is in a H3 map. Even if there's a bit more, the same save function would go from faster than I can click on the box to faster than I can click on the box.

I'm mostly writing this for a little fun... although there is the small possibility that it's just something wrong with my computer, so you can tell me if there is. Or maybe they intentionally made it longer so you wouldn't save every 2 seconds. My bet is, though, that it's just bloatware gone bad again.

[Paradox]

its not just you, loading generally takes a while. im hoping when i get my new uber-pc (2 x 1Gb XFX 7950GX2, 2Gb Corsair TwinX XMS2) that loading is instantly like H3 =) maybe then i could put auto save on without waiting 5 mins each turn

[Arqane]

Yeah, I don't really know why it's quite so slow. Maybe if it was trying to save a graphical state, but you really don't need that, especially since there isn't a mini-picture that I can remember (but then again it's late, maybe there is ).

Still you never know... I was one of the root causes for the current skill timers in role-playing games. After backstabbing the toughest mob in a MUD years ago and typing/running away too fast for it to do anything, the Implementor changed it so it took time before you could do it. That got popular and caught on in many online and personal games. So you never know... any action that you do might become a conspiracy that pervades the gaming community as we know it!

Err... yeah... I'm gonna hit the sack now, getting nuts .

[DaemianLucifer]

The problem with heroes,imo,is the random seed preserver.Since most of it has been decided very early,those information take up lots of space.

[Gaidal Cain]

Random seed preservation is actually a good way to preserve some info, without storing it. It doesn't work for everything, but for for example mage guild spells it's a good way. For heroes, it doesn't make too much of a difference.

[Kristo]

The problem with heroes,imo,is the random seed preserver.Since most of it has been decided very early,those information take up lots of space.

I doubt it. You can preserve the state of a pseudorandom number generator in the space of two 32-bit integers. One is for the seed itself and one holds the number of times it has been called. Upon loading a game, you'd simply need to seed it with the saved seed and call it the saved number of times. Computers are extremely good at such a menial task.

One of the design decisions I've noticed in all the Heroes games is that you don't need to have a particular map installed in order to play a savegame from it. That means each save file has to contain all the information a map file has, thus making it larger than the map itself. Also, it's reasonable to assume that loading and saving games doesn't happen very often. The programmers probably wrote the code as simply as possible to save time. Inefficient algorithms and data structures are an acceptable tradeoff for an action that the user performs maybe once per hour.

[mr.dna]

its not just you, loading generally takes a while. im hoping when i get my new uber-pc (2 x 1Gb XFX 7950GX2, 2Gb Corsair TwinX XMS2) that loading is instantly like H3 =) maybe then i could put auto save on without waiting 5 mins each turn

Unfortunately that is not the case.

X2-3800+@2600Mhz, 7800GTX@510/1250 2Gb TwinX C2. The turns in H3 are ultra fast though

[Gaidal Cain]

Also, it's reasonable to assume that loading and saving games doesn't happen very often.

It would be, if not for a small feature called "autosave"...

[soupnazii]

wasnt one of their main purposes in H5 to make gameplay as fast as possible?

[LordErtz]

wasnt one of their main purposes in H5 to make gameplay as fast as possible?

Shame that's not what happened. Autosaving is a huge drag on our computers, and each game save is like 3 megs!!! WTF MATE? Turns are slow as well. I don't know much about coding, but I can assume it's due to shoddy coding.

[Caradoc]

Oblivion seemingly has at least as much to save as Heroes V, yet its Quicksave is virtually instantaneous.

[Kristo]

Also, it's reasonable to assume that loading and saving games doesn't happen very often.

It would be, if not for a small feature called "autosave"...

Oh yeah, good point. Well then maybe the programmers just suck.

[Arqane]

One of the design decisions I've noticed in all the Heroes games is that you don't need to have a particular map installed in order to play a savegame from it. That means each save file has to contain all the information a map file has, thus making it larger than the map itself.

Which is exactly what pointers are for. Just like having the random seed, it shortens the process quite a bit. I could practically write in this text file everything you really need to save in a H5, and text files are KBs at most.

@Save MapID (1 int)
/Done

For (x;1;# of players)
@Save Player_Stats
@Save Global_Vars (Resources) (7 ints)
@Save Hero 1-x:
Position (3 ints)
Experience (1 int)
4 Stats (4 ints)
Creature List (14 ints)
Skill List (30 ints)
Artifact List (20 ints)
@Save Town 1-x:
Buildings_Bought (36 ints)
Garrison_Creatures (14 ints)
@Save Object_Flagged_List (1-200 ints)
x++;
/Done

The rest is really done through the normal game loop anyway. Let's not even count bit compression, that people don't use much these days. A large map with 8 players, 200 flagged objects, 8 towns, and 4 heroes per player (which is about the biggest you get in H5) should max out at ~100KB without extraneous information.

[Toejam]

I used to always use autosave in a heroes game but this time it's just not possible... i would be watching "saving" screens more than actually playing the game...

[asandir]

yep, not much fun .... my computer can handle new FPS's without a hitch on high res and all settings at max, but still bogs down on HV, and not just on saving .... not a great thing really (yes i know it's 3d .... but so are the fps's and the frame rates are much more stable in those)

[ramparter]

It's being a long time since I played HV but I think that the game takes a screenshot when saving.