Aurora 4x

New Players => FAQ => Topic started by: sloanjh on February 01, 2010, 12:10:23 AM

Title: Questions about Saving Games
Post by: sloanjh on February 01, 2010, 12:10:23 AM

"I don't see a 'save game' button anywhere - how do I save my game so I can recover from catastrophes?"
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Aurora is a very database-centric program, which means that by the end of every increment the entire state of the game is saved in stevefire.mdb ("the DB").  This is a good thing, since saving the DB saves the state of the game at that time.  There is not an explicit save button, however.

To save the state of the game, simply copy the DB from the Aurora directory into another directory.  A useful directory structure is the following (notice that the filename is always "stevefire.mdb":

AuroraSaves:
--Campaign1_v47
----save000
------stevefire.mdb
----save001
------stevefire.mdb
----save002
------stevefire.mdb
--Campaign2_v49
----save000
------stevefire.mdb
----save001
------stevefire.mdb
etc.

"AuroraSaves" is a collector directory for all of your save games; it contains a subdirectory ("Campaign1_v47", "Campaign2_v49" (although you'll probably use better names) ) for each campaign.  The version numbers are included in the campaign names in order to be able to remember which version of the executable the databases are matched with.  Within each campaign subdirectory, the "saveNNN" directories correspond to a sequence of save games.  The reason for adding directories here is so you don't have to change the name of the "stevefire.mdb" file.  To save a game, simply copy stevefire.mdb into a save directory (either a new one, or you can overwrite an existing one).  To restore a game, copy a stevefire.mdb back into the Aurora directory.

IMPORTANT:  Note that you do NOT seem to have to stop aurora in order to copy the DB into a save directory.  This means that you can make very frequent saves, simply by keeping the same save directory open and overwriting the stevefire.mdb in it by pasting in a copy of the current stevefire.mdb in the Aurora directory.

One more note:  there will be a lot of duplication of the data within the stevefire.mdb.  You can save a lot of disk space by compressing multiple (old) save directories together (or just deleting them, of course).

Title: Re: Questions about Saving Games
Post by: sloanjh on February 01, 2010, 12:14:44 AM

"How often should I save?"
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That's up to you.  It's usually a good idea to save just before entering an unexplored JP (in case something goes wrong) and just after (so that you don't "lose" the system you just generated if you need to do a restore).  If you're exploring a new system, you'll probably want to save very frequently (overwriting the save file) in case you run into an NPR at a time when Aurora has chosen the timestep to be too big (you can tell this has happened if the NPR suddenly appears well within your sensor envelope).  A sensible time to save (again, overwriting the save file) once the game has a lot going on might be every time Aurora interrupts for a 5-day economic cycle.

Title: Re: Questions about Saving Games
Post by: Count Sessine on April 15, 2010, 04:56:01 AM

Thanks, I was wondering about this. At some point I thought it might be intentional considering how deep the rest of the game is: no save, ultimate hardcore experience. Just like Eve-Online  

Title: Re: Questions about Saving Games
Post by: stamasd on April 29, 2011, 10:49:18 AM

There seems to be database caching going on, at least in version 5.  42 on Win7.   This will interfere with saving/restoring games.   I found that out the hard way while trying to move stevefire. mdb between my laptop and desktop so I could continue the same game on a different computer, and it seemed to always come up with old versions of the database.   I did a bit of experimenting, and it turns out that the old versions of the game were still showing up even if I deleted stevefire. mdb altogether from the game directory.   This seemed paradoxical and assured me that the database was cached somewhere else.   By searching the whole disk I found that, in Aurora 5.  42 on Win7 64 bit, stevefire.  mdb is cached at:

C:\Users\"username"\appdata\local\virtualstore\Program Files (x86)\Aurora\stevefire. mdb
(where "username" is your username)

I don't know if this is by design or not, but if your savegames act weird think of replacing the cached database. 

Title: Re: Questions about Saving Games
Post by: Beersatron on April 29, 2011, 11:16:45 AM

Fairly certain that is Win7 doing the caching when you install the game in the Program Files folder.

To get around this I install the game on a separate partition.

Title: Re: Questions about Saving Games
Post by: stamasd on April 29, 2011, 10:14:03 PM

Actually in my case since I wanted a portable installation of the game that I can play anywhere I go, I just copied the whole game folder including current database to a flash drive, and run the game directly from there.  Problem solved.