Re: [Adonthell-devel] Game saving

[Alexandre Courbot]

> Hm. I'm not sure I see the advantage of using "any" as an intermediate
> data storage. What we need for both saving and streaming our data is that
> data converted to strings.
> 
> But "any" does not make string conversion any easier. I guess in the end
> it had to rely on a toString() method of each type we want to save or
> stream.

I quite agree with Kai here. We would like a string format for our
objects. This string format must be well controlled to be the shortest
possible, as it needs to be transferable via a low-bandwith network.

...and to keep my reputation of pain in the neck ;) I'll speak against
the key/value format too!

If we use this format, saved games from prior versions may be
incomplete. Of course you could fill with default values, but that's not
safe at all. And what if a key has changed it's signification? We
couldn't have a totally safe system if we do so, I fear. I mean,
computing is 0 or 1, true or false, black or white. Leaving place for
doubt isn't safe, in my opinion. I'd rather suggest we rely on version &
integrity checking and make converters (that knows what they have to do)
available. Also, you talked about a checksum to ensure the file is well
written - provided the OS gives a mechanism that will rise an error if
an IO issue occured, is this necessary?

Alex.

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