So I've graduated from college, I now have a steady paycheck, I bought a new computer (on which Verge 3 and the utilities seem to work), I had a flash of inspiration last night of how a story idea I was thinking of would translate into some interesting gameplay mechanisms, I was inspired by Ustor's Cuddles game, and I'm ready to start serious work on a Verge 3 RPG. Woohoo!

Anyway, my question has to do with saving and loading games. I remember with Verge 2, this was a breeze: just use WriteVars to copy all the Global variables to a file and then use ReadVars to load them in. However, I was unable to find those two functions in Verge 3. Is there a similarly easy way to copy and load every global variable to a file or am I going to have to do this manually one variable at a time (the mere thought of all the work that would entail makes me ill).

Each variable at a time really isn't hard. Besides, Read/WriteVars() although useful, would screw up all the game resources stored in memory, and have access to some unnecessary data or data you wish to protect.

Here, read this: http://www.verge-rpg.com/docs/view.php?libid=1&section=25

Additionally, here's an example of how you could do your save functionality.

void SaveGame(string filename)

{

	int i;

	int f = FileOpen(filename, FILE_WRITE);	

	if (!f)

	{

		Exit("SaveGame :: Could not save game to file '" + filename + "'! What.");

	}



	for (i = 0; i < CHARACTER_TOTAL; i++)

	{

		// FileWriteString saves strings!

		FileWriteString(f, character[i].name);

		

		// FileWriteQuad saves ints as binary!

		FileWriteQuad(f, character[i].hp);

		

		// FileWriteWord saves smaller integers as binary!

		// (word/short) (must be 0 - 65536, anything else will not be stored right)

		FileWriteWord(f, character[i].mp);

		

		// FileWriteByte saves tiny integers as binary!

		// (byte) (0 - 256, anything else will not be stored right)

		FileWriteByte (f, character[i].attack);

		FileWriteByte (f, character[i].defense);

		FileWriteByte (f, character[i].magic);

		FileWriteByte (f, character[i].agility);		

	}



	// Don't forget to close your file! I almost did.

	FileClose(f);

}

And... you have to remember, most engines/languages require you to actually write each variable entry to disk anyway. Sure, it was in verge2, but things have changed since then, I'm guessing particularly how resource memory is handled. I think I used to use it, sure. But, I also distinctly remember tossing ReadVars()/WriteVars() away, because adding any changes to the variables in your verge2 VC files would destroy the save format for the game, and as a result there was no backwards compatibility whatsoever possible.

EDIT: Whoops. I meant to use FileWriteByte for attack and defense and such :D

4 bits would be FileWriteNybble()!

...

...No! :D

However, if you want to pack small numbers into a single int/word/byte (like, perhaps boolean-style vars), bitfields are good.

I made my demo-recording in Snowball fast and small by compacting all 8 button states (b1, b2, b3, b4, up, down, left, right) into a single byte.

Writing:

FileWriteByte(demo_file, b1 + (b2 << 1) + (b3 << 2) + (b4 << 3) + (up << 4) + (down << 5) + (left << 6) + (right << 7));

Reading:
(note this would only work on my custom verge3 build, as the button variables are currently not writable in the official build)

j = FileReadByte(demo_file);

b1 = j & 1 == 1;

b2 = j & 2 == 2;

b3 = j & 4 == 4;

b4 = j & 8 == 8;

up = j & 16 == 16;

down = j & 32 == 32;

left = j & 64 == 64;

right = j & 128 == 128;