saving your game WITHOUT exiting ZC?

[Nicholas Steel]

ok, so does the savegame get stored in memory when opening ZC and is it changed in memory when you save a game? then does it get dumped to your hard disk when you quit ZC?

how hard would it be to say, check the savegame in the memory for any changes and dump it to the hard disk if it has changed, you could also do a crc32 of the savegame and store the crc32 value in memory and if the crc32 of the savegame changes then dump it to the hard disk... kinda like a fairly recent change to zsnes.

just make it check the crc32 of it every 5 minutes by default and make the time adjustable in the configuration file? oh and I am aware of this bordering on a suggestion. I am also aware of how annoying it is to quit ZC EVERY time you want to save your game.

EDIT: CRAP, i meant to post this in Beta Discussion.

[pkmnfrk]

Actually, there is no need for a complicated setup like you suggest. Unlike the timed saves in ZQuest, the save file only changes when you choose Save on the Continue/Save/Retry screen, no other time. So, it should just dump it to disk then. I would have programmed it that way, were it me.

If not, then it has to when you choose retry, since you might then go and pick some other save slot on some other quest, invalidating the save slot in memory.

[Nicholas Steel]

there are no save slots in the memory. it is just one big file. when you save it saves to the one big save file which would change its CRC32 value (i assume).

[pkmnfrk]

The save file contains multiple save slots. Although I have no means of confirming it, I highly suspect that ZC doesn't keep the whole file in memory, when it doesn't care about any slot except the one currently being played. My zc.sac is 2 megs, and it only contains 2 or 3 save games.

That said, thinking about it, I don't think it keeps any save slot in memory. It "creates a new slot" from the Game environment, and writes it to disk in the appropriate slot in zc.sav.

Given all that, I'm not sure what you're concerned about, franpa. Yes, changing the save file will change its hash. What do you do if it changed? Panic? You can't write it to disk - it's already on the disk.

[Nicholas Steel]

if its already on the disk then it wouldnt matter if it crashed AFTER you saved it but during the same session. you wouldnt have lost anything.

[pkmnfrk]

But, it is already on disk, is what I'm saying. Try this:

1. Make a new save game for the default quest (or, any quest you want. doesn't matter)
2. Hit F6 to quit, and choose Save.
3. Wait until you get back to the save game menu
4. Tab out of Zelda Classic, and open Task Manager (right click on the task bar, choose Task Manager)
5. Find zelda-w.exe, and choose End Process.
6. Open ZC again, and press A on the save slot you created

The game will still be saved.

Edit: If it crashes while saving, that's different. But, saving every 5 minutes only increases the odds of a crash happening during a save.

[Nicholas Steel]

ah, but i got the flippers in the quest went around a fair bit lost with that 1 damn key and it crashed on me and i had to go get the flippers again... i wasnt saving at the time of the crash but i did save after getting the flippers.