SaveUtils.lua -- Itemized Data Storage Across Mods

I am easily annoyed and prone to speak in frustration. It's unproductive, and I apologize for that. You have become the unfortunate focus of my growing sense that this community's stagnation has become a spectator's sport. We were given poor tools to work with and everyday it seems fewer of us have the time or energy to get dirty building something for everyone, while it is far easier to fire off a few comments in the forums. I realize I can be a difficult personality, so let my code speak for me when I say I support this community and wish to work together. Let me speak for myself when I say I am not meant to be this community's public voice. I am merely an advocate for a better future and a grunt with a shovel.

Shovel with me and I shall not mind. :)
 
Whys said:
I am easily annoyed and prone to speak in frustration. It's unproductive, and I apologize for that. You have become the unfortunate focus of my growing sense that this community's stagnation has become a spectator's sport. We were given poor tools to work with and everyday it seems fewer of us have the time or energy to get dirty building something for everyone, while it is far easier to fire off a few comments in the forums. I realize I can be a difficult personality, so let my code speak for me when I say I support this community and wish to work together. Let me speak for myself when I say I am not meant to be this community's public voice. I am merely an advocate for a better future and a grunt with a shovel.

Shovel with me and I shall not mind. :)
Click to expand...
I'd be the first to say that you've contributed better than myself! I've been frustrated by both little time and by frustration (so to speak), but that's no excuse, in a sense because there's nothing to excuse. I don't think there's enough evidence to say you're a better designer or coder than me, but you're certainly good, and you appear to have a good handle on Lua.

I'd like to think the tools will get better. I certainly get the feeling that there are people at Firaxis who would like to give us better tools, Sseckman certainly seems to want to from his comments at the 2K forums and wiki, but I can only imagine what life must have been like at Firaxis, particularly the Civ team, in recent months - and I don't particularly want to try, it seems scary.

In any case, I think I've begun to shovel now - and no hard feelings here.
 
at 167
i use save() save a value and load() it any time ,it will get right value.
but then i savegame and loadgame, the load() will return the first value instand of last value.
why?
 
Whys said:
167? That's in your code. You'll need to post it so I know what it means. I also don't know what you mean by "first value instead of last value". Can you give an example?
Click to expand...
the 167 means game ver 1.167

ex
at turn0, i save 1 to Players[0] by a string
and load it print it, it is 1
at turn1, i save 6 to Players[0] by the same string to override it
and load it print it, it is 6

but now i savegame and exit to mainmenu
load savefile and load the Players[0] by the string
it is 1,but i want it is 6
and it is 6 before i update the game to 1.167
 
yes it broken again after enable cache.
Tuner has no output statements from SaveUtils
(i set WARN_NOT_SHARED = false, if i do not set this
it will output "Warning: cache not shared.")
 
i store a lot of table at different Players
so the Players[0] just for a ex
what is your mail? i do not know it ?

or you can find the v11 of realnameerath at mod hub
 
I've sent you my email address, but I have not received anything yet. In the mean time, I was unable to reproduce your error with the following example. In this example, test.lua is an InGameUIAddin. This test has been performed both with and without ShareData.lua (also an InGameUIAddin). As expected, without ShareData, there is a 'not shared' warning, but the test results are otherwise identical and both without error.

test.lua (InGameUIAddin)
Code: 
include( "SaveUtils" ); MY_MOD_NAME = "WhysMod";

function test()
  local pPlayer = Players[Game.GetActivePlayer()];
  local data = load( pPlayer, "data" ) or 0;
  data = data +1;
  print( "data: "..tostring( data ) );
  save( pPlayer, "data", data );
end
Events.ActivePlayerTurnStart.Add( test );

This code simply outputs an increasing integer to the lua console. When saved and reloaded, I always get the expected result.
_
 
that is because i forgot my ac adapter at office...
so i can not open the notebook which has civ5....
so if you want you can get release ver at mod hub
its change only that set no cache.
or you can wait for some days ,i will send you a Detailed report as soon as i back home
i am very sorry for that
 
I don't see a better place to ask this, so I'll try here. In my attempt to understand what this mod is doing, it seems like you're sharing chunks of raw data -- which makes me think that it *might* be possible to manipulate that data.

What I mean, for example: Somewhere, I haven't discovered where (in terms of Lua or the Table browser), state information for a particular player is stored. Their current attitude towards player X, or if they're a minor civ, their current Quest in relation to player X.

With a binary memory editor (like AddMoney), I can find and change something like the current Quest value. My assumption is that it's part of the Player Class (as defined in C++), but the field itself is declared as private, and only the Get accessor exists (GetActiveQuestForPlayer()). It's also likely that if indeed this value is stored within a class object, that it will live at the same offset (differing by PlayerID, etc... but the Quest data for Player[0] can always be expected to be at offset X, Player[1] at offset Y, etc.)

I am not familliar enough with Lua to know if this is possible or not. Bing and Google haven't revealed much to me, as the only place I see any sort of direct addressing is with emulator mods. If it is indeed possible, then it certainly opens up a number of things that we can do, albeit in a very hack-y way. But I can't make enough sense out of what I see in this thread here to fill in those gaps.

Basically: Is it possible to manipulate bits somewhere in a chunk of memory with the implementation of Lua that we can work with here?
 
SaveUtils is mostly for accessing the ScriptData slot attached to all players, plots, and units. It's just a string, but unlike anything else in lua, it persists between saved games. So in order to save and reload complex data structures, you need to serialize and deserialize the data. In essence, that is what SaveUtils does, but more specifically, it handles the string so as to allow all mods to share the same ScriptData slot without overwriting each others data. Additionally, when data is deserialized, by default, it is saved to a cache, so if requested later, it doesn't have to deserialize the string again. However, in order for the same cache reference to be available to all mods so they can all share the same cache data, it's necessary to use the built in LuaEvents to get the data where it needs to go. ShareData is a separate file that, when loaded, provides those lua events. Thus when ShareData is loaded, SaveUtils can share the cache of deserialized ScriptData with all mods that use SaveUtils. It's just a reference passed between lua states via a lua event, and for convienence, SaveUtils also offers easier to use wrapper functions for ShareData's lua events, since these have to be placed in a file separate from ShareData itself.

How any of that is performed with regards to binary memory, I do not know, but from what I've seen, I'd say it's likely possible in lua and NOT likely possible in Civ. Happy hunting anyway. :)
 
Damn. It's already been figured out we can't call outside of that Lua environment as well (to load a different library), correct? Thanks for the rundown, though.

Man... make with the SDK DLL already! I want to be rewarded when I connect a damned road to a CS! :)
 
Hi, just coming by to say Thanks for the great work. I'll publish a mod soon and i will use Saveutils, Sharedata and a modified version of Customnotification (that doesnt modify vanilla notificationpanel) in it.

Props! :)
 
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