Backup awards and captains

[slayernz]

Hmmm ... I was pondering on this over the past days/weeks/months and have come up with more than just a happy variable name ("schplot" is sooo good tho).

Okay so when we last tuned into the broadcast, we had something to chew on, it was kind of like this:
=== STAR TRADER RPG AWARDS ==
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eJzt2bkKwkAURuGJS6Fl3sjHUCu10rjhjoVa+ODewiIMlyGYRDI354dDqgE/0kjGOcYYY4yxepfmeiulDatKbwzhxYv3f96eNMjVL3BmnDg38ZomcXjlZ 7qh1Pk+uwXOzOTQ3Gth2LuUQyuvzLD3LodGXge8eCP1hqrSW8f/5SZ72/Z+8eLFixcvXrx48eLFixcvXrzt8G6lndLeqPciXZVuRr0P6an0MurNpLXSxqj3KJ 2Uzka92rf+/Pd+a96y4W2+N3TfbtEbum+36A3dt1v0hu5j8eKNzVsmvHjx4sX72z5wXbjG
== STAR TRADER RPG AWARDS ===

This file ONLY contained award unlocks and no living captains. I believe that living captains should indeed be transferable between devices and if there is no single file in the SD memory, then here is my musings below ...


... so there are a couple of risks that may or may not be of concern for Cory
Risk 1:
The data file could be shared around on the ebony market so non-diehard's can get unlocks for free.

Requirement 1:
The data file should include the name of the account that was used to purchase the game.

Requirement 1b:
The account name should, of course, be encrypted like the rest of the data file.

Requirement 1c:
If the game account and the data file account do not match, then the import of the data file should fail.


Risk 2:
Customers may use this export/import option to avoid the nasty death risks of the harder levels, thereby removing a significant component of the level difficulty. For example, if a user is currently playing on Demanding or Crazy, then they know their captain can be killed if they do something stoopid. By having an export/import option, they can export their game save, do their stoopid action, and restore their game save when their captain gets munted.

Requirement 2:
The data file shall have two sections - unlocked awards and living captains.

Requirement 3:
There should be a flag (eg "glurp")in the game settings that gets changed from (0) to (1) on any export operation.

Requirement 3b:
glurp should not be able to be reset by the end-user.

Requirement 3c:
During any import operation, if glurp = 1, then only the unlocked awards portion of the data file shall be imported.

This would mean that you cannot re-import a player save file into the game to bypass the permanent death component of level difficulty.


I had a risk 3 but can't remember what it is.

[noesis]

slayernz - risk 3 would probably be something along the lines of letting you name variables as has already been stated I mean glurp, WTF ?? LOL

Seriously though, what would happen to a deleted captain's "glurp" upon deletion, wouldn't it be reset to 0 as the captain & flag no longer exists in the game file (for that captain) and so it could then be imported again ? - I do like you're Ideas for the first bit to avoid file sharing with awards though.

[slayernz]

You know, I was going to give the "data file" a name as well, but thought better of it. The name that sprang to mind was the "Wibble" file, but I think Wibble is probably a commonly used component name ... it's in a number of my personal object code thingies. That and Weeble. yeah, Wibble and Weeble are both very important.

Back on discussion, the glurp flag is game-based rather than captain based. So once you create one export for device A, you can no longer import captains to that device. you can only import award unlocks.

I think that there is a new risk ...

Risk 3:
Users could be afraid of losing any existing captains on import. This is a use case where the user has started playing STRPG on their new device before they did the re-import of their wibble file data file.

Requirement 4:
All existing captain files should be affected by any import function.

Requirement 4b:
The current functionality that allows multiple captains to have the same name shall continue to exist.

Requirement 4c:
If you import the same data file multiple times, the game should recognize where a captain on the device matches a captain in the data file (look for name, difficulty, starting nation, starting class). In this case, the captain from the data file should replace the captain file on the device.