Saving Problem

[Death Owl]

Hey everyone, nice to see I'm not the only one who still loves this game.    Well anywho, to the problem.

I recently downloaded the latest version of Outpost 2 from your site as from what I've read, it fixes alot of various things. I installed it fine but I can't seem to load any of my saved games that I had from my previous installation. It comes up with...

C:\SIERRA\Outpost 2\SGAME5.OP2
Error reading file.
Game set was not loaded.

Is there any way to fix this or will I have to do all the missions again?

Any help will be much appreciated.

 

[Larrythepoet]

I'm pretty sure your save files have to be in the new Outpost 2 folder, not the old one.

[Death Owl]

Yes I have installed the new version of Outpost 2 and copied the saved games in to the new folder. Hmm...

[Hidiot]

They are incompatible. Making updates to the game reverse-compatible is probably too hard if not impossible.

[Death Owl]

Hmm.. Ok, fair enough. I guess I'll just have to start again.    

[CK9]

Don't look at it as starting again, but rather as enjoying the missions all over again

[Hooman]

Heh, good answer CK9.  :lol:

Yeah, the save games broke when the unit limit was increased. I'd thought about adding in some sort of campatability hack for the saved games, or perhaps an external converter, but that probably would have delayed the patch indefinately.

It's mostly just an array sizing issue actually. If you were to read in the first x number of bytes, insert some number y of 0's, and then paste the rest of the original save game file, it should work, I think. The problem being I'm not too sure how to find x, nor do I remember what y should be.
 

[CK9]

What about doing a side-by-side comparison of identical games to find it out?  Even if it's as simple as starting and instantly saving, the result will be the same, right?

[Hooman]

There would probably be slight differences due to the keeping track of the current game tick, and different initial random number generator state. But, that would probably give you enough info to reasonably guess. A hex editor like HxD should allow someone to insert the correct number of 0 bytes in the right place.


I suppose you can use the DOS File Compare utility in binary mode to find where things are suddenly frequently off, and use that approximate place as a starting point. You could compare the file sizes to guess how many 0 bytes to write. To compare the file contents for the difference point use:

Code: [Select]

FC /b fileName1 fileName2

Or better yet, since that produces a lot of output, redirect it to the text file, so you can open the file and examine the output more closely.

Code: [Select]

FC /b fileName1 fileName2 > diff.txt

[Kayedon]

I'll just throw this out there:

Death Owl, all the missions are pretty easy to re-achieve, regardless of difficulty. You might just have to brush up your skills if you had some old Hard missions that were a b**** to get. So while yes, it sucks that all saved games are dead now, think of it as an opportunity to, as CK9 said, replay.

[Death Owl]

Hmmm true. Ok, thanks for the help guys.    

[lordpalandus]

or if all else fails.. cheat and make your units uber but thats lame and takes the point out of the game.

[Kayedon]

or if all else fails.. cheat and make your units uber but thats lame and takes the point out of the game.

There's a point to this game?!

[Death Owl]

Keeping people alive perhaps? hehe