Getting info from save game

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zalasur
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Getting info from save game

#1 Post by zalasur »

I have a save file containing a galaxy that I would like to recreate from scratch with a more aggressive AI setting, but I can't for the life of me remember what my new game parameters were (specifically, the number of systems). Of course, in the time since I created that game, I've generated other more different galaxies so the original information on disk was overwritten. :oops: I looked at logs, did a "strings" and various greps on the binary save file, and looked around on the forums, but couldn't find an easy answer for this. Is there a way to pull this information from the save file?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Getting info from save game

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Number of systems isn't stored in the save as a separate number, but you could count them manually, or attach a debugger and have a look at the size of a container with just systems in it.

zalasur
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Re: Getting info from save game

#3 Post by zalasur »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Number of systems isn't stored in the save as a separate number, but you could count them manually, or attach a debugger and have a look at the size of a container with just systems in it.
I thought about that (I was attempting to do that when I would run "strings S0001.sav" on it), but counting them proved difficult since there was a lot of noise in the signal. Is there a specific pattern I should look for?

As far as using a debugger goes, is there one that runs on the MacOS X platform I could use?

zalasur
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Re: Getting info from save game

#4 Post by zalasur »

Ah ha, I found it. It was an Irregular Galaxy, with the number of systems set to 71 :mrgreen:

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em3
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Re: Getting info from save game

#5 Post by em3 »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Number of systems isn't stored in the save as a separate number, but you could count them manually, or attach a debugger and have a look at the size of a container with just systems in it.
Are the number of system always equal to the number specified during generation or is it a top limit of some probabilistic distribution?
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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eleazar
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Re: Getting info from save game

#6 Post by eleazar »

em3 wrote:Are the number of system always equal to the number specified during generation or is it a top limit of some probabilistic distribution?
The numbers are not always exactly the same, IIRC due to arcane galaxy gen stuff.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Getting info from save game

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:
em3 wrote:Are the number of system always equal to the number specified during generation or is it a top limit of some probabilistic distribution?
The numbers are not always exactly the same, IIRC due to arcane galaxy gen stuff.
I suspect but cannot guarantee that it would mostly be an issue for smaller galaxies with more AIs. At the least, there's an enforced minimum number of stars per AI, and there is also a chance for an imprecise number of stars if it can't find suitable places for them, which I think would mainly affect small numbers of stars.

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em3
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Re: Getting info from save game

#8 Post by em3 »

What I mean is that if the actual number of stars is different from the value entered in the form, then possibly if you try to re-create the universe by counting the stars you might get a different universe... or not?
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

zalasur
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Re: Getting info from save game

#9 Post by zalasur »

What might be helpful is have the meta-game information saved in each save file (I can't imagine the data being more than a couple hundred bytes so it shouldn't waste much space even if the same exact data was stored in each individual file). If that could happen, then a "recreate galaxy" option could be added when creating a new world.

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