Savegames and loaded files

Would it be possible for a savegame to reference the loaded game files? so I could load a scythe savegame, then later a plutonia savegame without exiting the port and restarting with new command line parameters.

That would require the port to reload the new wads from start.

This is possible to a limited extent with Eternity when using run-time wad loading, for stuff like NR4TL and native Master Levels support, but not with IWADs unfortunately. Still some caching of stuff being done (textures mainly) which prevents it from working to that degree.

ReMooD supports run-time WAD switching, however I am not sure if my last release that was 6 years ago does). Might be a feature of 1.0a, in either case you would use the console to switch the IWAD and PWADs to be used. So if you were playing one WAD and wanted to switch to another you could if you wanted to.

What about embedding a copy of all loaded wads into the aavegame, so it doesn't break when the wads are moved away? And what about restarting the program if necessary?

printz said:

What about embedding a copy of all loaded wads into the aavegame, so it doesn't break when the wads are moved away?

It'd make the saves huge. Suppose you're playing DVII-1u.wad; that's an extra 173 megabytes to every save you make of this playthrough. Now let's suppose you're also playing it with Aeons of Death... Then we can add autoloading high res texture packs, sound packs, etc. You can get save files that are above half a gigabyte this way.

Another consequence is that it would make it impossible to play Operation: Arctic Wolf correctly.

printz said:

What about embedding a copy of all loaded wads into the aavegame, so it doesn't break when the wads are moved away? And what about restarting the program if necessary?

I had a similar thought, but it is not practical. I believe it could work good only with the map data (VERTEXES, LINEDEFS, SIDEDEFS, NODES etc) what about missing textures or sprites, or even more custom actors etc? It could work only if the savegame contains chunks with copies of all wads.

Depends on what you mean by "reference".

DoomLegacy saves the game name, the name of the wad, and the command line, just so the user can recreate the proper environment to load the savegame.
It verifies these on savegame load, and will refuse to continue.
Do you mean something like that?

The engine could load the proper wad and change games based on savegame info,
but that could also be a roadblock if the wad has moved since the game was saved.
It is an interesting idea that depends on how well the wad reference that the
user provided works from a different start condition and possibly a different
directory assumption.