Request to CA to publish savegame structure

[RedKnight]

Here's a humble request to Creative Assembly to release the details of the savegame structure. Or a utility that lets one read, or read/write the savegame.

This would be after your well-deserved vacation, and any critical bug fixes.

The savegame for RTW (and MTW) uses some sort of native/compressed format that can't be figured out from afar.

Making the savegame available to your community will let us make many add-ons and utilities that will enhance the pleasure for the players. You would be leveraging the strength of us all, with only a quite modest investment on your part. As an example, I'd like to write a util that shows city incomes as a sorted list, and attempts to figure which leaders would best match which cities, to achieve various imperial goals. But it would require accessing many minor details of the savegame.

Please consider this request, as soon as convenient. If anyone else would like to show their support for this idea, please append your sig.

Thanks once again for this great game - and your other ones too, CA!!!

[Beelzebub]

Yeah I'd like to delete or move my large fleet that got stuck on a buggy map tile in my scipii campaign.

[Trousermonkey]

I agree completely. I sketched out a rudimentary campaign MP mod for MTW that depended on understanding the format for savegame files.

MP battles could be setup based on activities done on a communal campaign map. After the results of the MP battle was known we could then tweak a savegame from the campaign to reflect these results. The whole thing could be done through email at it's simplest or could be organized with a website and some clever scripting. I started reverse engineering the savegame format but got distracted before I made much headway.

Clarifying some of the file structures used would go a long way towards helping modders extend the life of the game. Perhaps an even more unreasonable a request would be to provide a SDK we could use to modify how aspects of the game flow, interface, HUD, or map work.

[Colovion]

Yeah that would be cool - and tack on a "allow campaign battles be replayed"

[hoof]

The problem might be if they're using an algorithmically generated data stream to the savegame. What I'm talking about is that they mihgt have a whole bunch of class instances (to use C++ terminology) that each know how to save and restore themselves. The game then takes all the items (armies, city information, faction data), outputs them in some order, and each item knows how to save/restore itself in the data stream.

The reason this is a problem is that in order to describe the savegame structure, they'd almost literally have to give you the source code to the game. The reason is because each item knows how to save itself, but does not require anything outside of itself to do the save. The advantage of this approach is that you can change how that item saves/restores itself without it affecting the save process. You can even use version information to allow newer incarnations of the item read in older savegame data. The disadvantage is that only code written with the game engine can read this file in.

It's kind of like having a group of 100 people, who each write their own notes in a book. Each would wait in line for their turn, and each would use their own handwriting and language. Each knows how to decipher their own section of the book, but not the other sections of the book. To generate an overall "format" for this book would require 100 subsections, describing how each person writes, what language they use, what information they wanted to write about, etc.

Hopefully this will give you an idea of why CA might not give us a savegame structure document anytime soon. I could be wrong in the case of RTW however, but in the projects I've worked on, this is one of the most common ways to save a whole bunch of complex data to one file.

[RedKnight]

Right Beezlebub, it could let us fix a few things ourself, either cuz they're broke or we just want to do it different. Either way, it adds to the game.

And that's right Trouser - it could let people set up entire MP (or solo) campaigns for "what if" or very particular scenarios. If Modders could mod not only the front side (game setup) but also the back (savegames), they could probably do even more powerful things!

The possibilities are many, and *IF* CA could release the structure somehow, they could leverage a whole lot of player power. It could really enhance the game, perhaps with minimal expense on their part.

You could be right, Hoof, it might be a lot to ask. But by the same token, it might not be - and it can't hurt to ask.

Most strategy savegames I've hacked (which is only a half dozen in the past couple of years) were fairly straightforward. Many use XML or some other text form these days. (I'm only talking about strategy games, not FPS.) In the early PC days, everything was practically bitpacked. I was surprised to see CA using 'native' forms - I can only imagine we're seeing a lot of long words and what have you, which would be tons and tons of work to try to figure out. It's not impossible, but I don't want to make a life's mission out of one savegame.

If you're right, then providing a utility might be easier than trying to explain (or of course, give code).

Anyway, anyone who'd like to know the savegame (if possible, of course), please say a word here.

[ShellShock]

From what I've seen of the save game structure, it contains a mixture of fixed and variable length records. I don't think it matters too much how these are generated (e.g., serialization of classes, structures etc), we would need documentation from CA to understand the layout.

I've managed to identify the bytes for the following (which always seem to appear at the same offset):

Campaign difficulty
Battle difficulty
Battle time limit
Short/long campaign - not sure about this one.

I've used this info in my RomeSAGE utility (shameless plug).

Anything more than these simple bytes definitely requires input from CA.

[RedKnight]

Bump.

Would anyone from CA please care to make a statement as to whether it might be under consideration (or not), to unlock the savegame (one way or another)?

Thanks for the GREAT game!!

[Obex]

Id love to see this released too. the power that we would have to mod would be greatly increased. trousermonkey and i have talked about the dream of a coop campaign for some time now, and this would be a huge step in that direction. so pretty please.

[ShellShock]

Id love to see this released too. the power that we would have to mod would be greatly increased. trousermonkey and i have talked about the dream of a coop campaign for some time now, and this would be a huge step in that direction. so pretty please.

I've investigated the possibility of changing the player's faction in the save game file, but could not get it to work. If we could change the player's faction then we could create a multiplayer campaign, e.g., I play a turn as Julii, send the save file to you and you change the faction to Brutii and play a turn etc.

I can identify where your current faction is held in the save file, and it is a simple thing to change this to another faction. When you load the file in RTW, it either hangs, or loads OK but is broken: faction is reported OK on the menu but not on the campaign map; you're put in the right map location for the faction but have no mouse cursor; trying to access settlement details results in a CTD etc.

However, this assumes that the player's faction is not treated as a special case in the save game, and all the AI factions have the same type of info stored as the player's; if this is not true then a multiplayer campaign will never work - we would need CA to add support for it.

[Lord Gnome]

I would be very happy to see the savegame format too!

For those who think it's impossible for CA to document the format and protect their source I would point out that CIV3's file format(s) (mapfiles and save games) have been known for a very long time without any damage to Activision's intellectual property - and with considerable benefit to the CIV3 community in terms of utility's to modify savegames/maps and utilitys which provide extra monitoring of in-game diplomacy etc.

Having said all that I'm pretty sure at least some of the CIV3 formats were reverse-engineered by the CIV community... but if CA did give us the format I am convinced it would do them no harm and the TW community (and therefore the TW franchise) a huge power of good. Even just some general pointers/hints as to the layout would be a huge boon to those of us who are interested...

[R3dD0g]

I would like to see the save format.

I'm very displeased with the way that the faction members are displayed in the tree format. It's a neat idea and very pretty eye candy. But, it's not really useful for deciding which family members in far flung settlements would be put to better use back in the capital where they could gain retinue and be sent to other more desperate provinces.

If I could see a list of family members with sortable columns for age, command, influence, retinue, etc it would be much more useful than the side scrolling (uggh) family tree.

If I had the savegame structure, I could build this spreadsheet.

[RedKnight]

Weekly bump.

At the moment, I would really like to know the savegame structure, so I could make an applet that tells which family members are best for what. So many of them have bad (or good) trade modifiers etc. hidden away in their traits that the management and influence bars are near meaningless - for so many governors, the only useful way to tell who is really good, is to move them out of a city and see what happens. (And even then, it only tells you how well they work for that city - different populations, farms, trade, etc. make a difference.) If I knew the savegame structure, I could write an applet that rates the family members according to their overall skills.

And so I entreat CA to kindly reply as to whether they think they might ever release the savegame structure and/or an applet to read/write it. If it's simply beyond what's possible, you could let us know.

Otherwise, as seen in this thread, many of your most loyal fans would like to make your own product even better, in multifarious ways - if only you showed us the key. Please consider this request and let us know. We all greatly appreciate that you're working on the 1.2 patch right now, and more power to that. If someone could say a word on whether the savegame architecture is a possibility or simply not possible, it would save me, at least, from wondering about it more. And possibly many more players.

And as always - thanks for your great game! One company can only do so much - they can't make the best game and meet every player's request. Still, methinks that this specific issue is worthy of a reply.

Anyone else interested in using or abusing the savegame, please tack on why you'd like to get your hands on it, in a show of support for how the user community would add to CA's product at little expense on its part (perhaps - we don't know if it's realistic for them to be able to tell us its specifics).

[tombom]

I'd like to get my hands on it so I can make utilities for it. Probably would be far beyond my knowledge though.

[Zild]

Mods can be a great bonus to any good game. I can't really see how they'd be all that bad...

It has my support, if anyone cares.

[Tamur]

This thread has been buried for nearly two years: I'm assuming that no such answer(s) surfaced, besides ShellShock's RomeSAGE. However, I thought I'd at least bring it up and ask if anyone knows of progress on this front.

[Caius]

Yeah that would be cool - and tack on a "allow campaign battles be replayed"

Not allow battles to be replayed, but if we have an allow to save the campaign battles, that would be better for the PBeM's, those files are lower than 200 KB