Request to CA to publish savegame structure

**Obex** · 10-23-2004, 05:59

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** · 10-23-2004, 09:23

Originally Posted by 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.

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** · 10-23-2004, 16:09

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** · 10-24-2004, 19:31

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** · 10-30-2004, 05:56

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).