Mega Crashes and saving

[huhrlass]

When playing SPWAW version 7.1 and using the Mega Campaign Lost Victory's at certain times in a scenario my game in progress will crash. When I restart the game I have to start the scenario at the beginning of the scenario. I was under the impression that SPWAW will save each turn automatically as you progress? Is there something I need to do so I don't have to go to the beginning of each scenario b/c I don't mind going back to the turn I just finished.

Thanks
Howard

[Jim1954]

Sometimes this game will do that. It seems like some machines are more stable than others. What you can do is after each turn, or however often you think is necessary, close out the MC and let it auto save. Go to windows explorer, browse down till you find matrixgames and open it. Open up SPWAW and scroll down to Megacampaigns. Open that. Look for the folder called save and open it. You will see 3 files (4 if you are using password protection) that will say XXX.cam, XXX.rec and XXX.sav. where XXX is whatever you named the save. Copy these to another folder that you create outside of SPWAW, like a temp directory. You can rename if you like. The game will not access these copies since they are not in the SPWAW directory any more. Should you crash to desktop, simply open up the temp folder and copy these files back into megacam saves.( If you name them differently you would be able to restart that scenario at each and every point you made a save. i.e LV-1.1, LV-1.2 etc.)

This is a common enough problem that many people follow this backup approach.

Hope this helps.

[rbrunsman]

For some reason, the designers of the Megas felt they should disable the autosave feature. (To keep people from cheating against themselves in a solitaire game? I fail to see the utility of such reasoning. ) Anyway, the only thing you can do is exit the game at the end of your turn and then backup the save files, then proceed to your next turn. It is tedious, but at least you don't have to spend a week replaying a scenario when it crashes on you at the end.

This is one of the worst ideas in an otherwise brilliant addition to SPWAW. IMHO.

[Jim1954]

I thought the MC's had you auto saving when you exited by hitting the little up arrow above the turn advance? Mine always prompts me do I want to auto save and quit or return to the game. If I click on the Save(diskette) icon I get a message that MC's are already auto-saved. This is in 7.1. Has it changed or was if different pre 7.1?

[Supervisor]

Mega's since there introduction auto save, this was introduced as kind of a Commanders decission is final, that way if things don't work out you can't go back and try to replay and correct your mistakes. Mistakes you make are permament and you as the CO have to live with your decission. Unfortunately this has always caused the saves to be buggy in Mega's

[huhrlass]

Thanks for the replies, I just remember that when playing one of the versions of steel panthers games, I forget which one after each time you moved and you clicked on the button it would save the game at that moment. I thought this was a fine feature since computers do crash. Actually, now when the program crashes and I have to go back to the same scenario I am forewarned about where the enemy is. It would be great to bring that feature back of autosaves and even in the Mega campaign you can't manually save the game whiile your playing, you have to autoexit the program. I mean if people want to cheat in the program against the computer that's up to them.

thanks for the help and i wish we had the ability to save a mega campaign game after each turn

h

[rbrunsman]

Jim1954, I recall that slots 1 & 2 are called "autosave" slots, your game would automatically save when you ended your turn, so that if you crashed, you wouldn't lose more than the turn you were on. This is different from the "exit game" save and the "in game" save button.

Sorry for the confusion. Then again I could be wrong since it has been so long since I've used that feature.

[huhrlass]

in the mega campaign lost victory's it no longer has the autosave feature that automatically saves a game after each turn, my game just crashed after turn 3 so I will have to go back to the beginning of this particular scenario, oh well maybe they will make a patch for this

thanks
howard

[simulacrum]

Mega's since there introduction auto save, this was introduced as kind of a Commanders decission is final, that way if things don't work out you can't go back and try to replay and correct your mistakes. Mistakes you make are permament and you as the CO have to live with your decission. Unfortunately this has always caused the saves to be buggy in Mega's

Eliminating the SPWAW manual-save function in the MCs has proven to be a poor decision considering the substantial bugs that resulted. It is particularly questionable considering that it does not prevent going back. One just exits the game at the potential go-back point, letting autosave do its thing. Resume the game at the same point and play until you don't like the result. Ctrl-Alt-Del out of the game, avoiding autosave. Restart the game from the now preserved previous save. More cumbersome than the manual-save technique, but just as effective. Except, of course, for cumulative points being lost. But, then, that's true whether one is exiting the game for go-backs, or exiting the game to go to dinner. Poetic justice, I suppose. Anyway, the decision to go back is an issue of how one enjoys playing the game.

Considering what we paid for the MCs, the buggy autosave function deserves to be fixed.

[OKW-73]

One thing i've learned is not to use RAMidle program while playing MC's, i was playing my LAST turn of 20 turns battle when RAMidle decided to free up some ram and voila! game crashed to desktop...i could say i was a little pi*sed off..., but i've learned my lesson now...