How do you save a multiplayer game in SOW

Hello. I’m new to SOW Waterloo and I’m given to understand that I can save multiplayer games and start back where I left off with other players. This is extremely useful in the event of a crash. How can I save a multiplayer game and have everyone playing pick up where we left off at either a quit or a crash?

Thanks,
Brian

The procedure is explained on page 5 of the Mod Manual.

Thanks!

just one question though.. how do you create a restart.ini file?

In notepad, create a new txt file called restart.txt and then change its file type from "txt" to "ini". Put this in the folder specified in the Mod Manual.

Awesome. Thank you!

Hello
I'm still having trouble with this.. I'm going to write here exactly what I'm doing and share the result I'm getting so maybe someone can help point out what's going wrong.

The first thing I do is save the game and I save it as the defsave.sav ( I have also tried doing this without saving so I'm not sure about this step ) after saving select I quit the field and shut down the game. ( should I be doing End battle instead? ) Next I open the mod folder and go to the scenarios folder. I go into the scenario we were just playing and this is where I create a restart.txt file. I delete .txt and type .ini and this makes the restart.txt a restart.ini file.

Now, I open the restart.ini file and type name=defsave ( I've also left this blank so I'm not sure about this step).

Once I've done this I load the game back up create the same scenario again and have the other player join. I launch the game and when the battle starts it loads at the beginning of the battle and not from the save or quit point. I tried going to menu "load game" and loading from the saved defsave.sav file and this brings up the saved game, but the screen freezes and the other player is not on the same screen and stays at the start of the battle with a frozen screen. I've also tried these same steps after sending my defsave and bin file to the other player as suggested in the manual when there are sinc problems..

I'm doing something wrong. Can someone please help me find my mistake?

Thanks,
Bryan

I think what you need to do is use the in-game options screen to set your game to auto-save. I have mine set every 2 mins. The file created is called defsave and your scenario will automatically pick it up, so no need to move any files anywhere at all, its all automatic. I may be wrong so I hope Kevin will drop by and correct me if I've given the wrong info. You do not need to manually save the game. In addition if you go into the sowwl.ini file in your Documents/SoWWL folder, add this section at the end:

[debug]
autogamedb=1
dbglvl=2
mplog=1

Then save and close.

You'll now get debug messages in the top left of the screen, which can be cycled off using the "u" key. Most usefully, when your game autosaves, you'll now see a notification of that up there top left.

Okay.. I'll give this a try and see how it goes.. The manual describes the host creating a restart.ini file in the scenario folder.. Instructions for saving a multiplayer game in the base game describe something similar.. So i guess this is done automatically? I'll try again..

Thanks

You still need to create the restart.ini

Okay so what I'd do then is everything I've been doing except manual saving of the game? Also Switch the autosave interval to 2 minutes. Do I write anything in the restart.ini file?name=defave for example?

Yes, restart.ini must contain save=defsave

Kevin - can you step in here to confirm/deny/do a Pontius Pilate hand wash thing?

Fwends, Womans, countwymen...
in restart.ini add these two lines:
[files]
name=defsave

You can download a copy of it from the Discord channel. It's at the top of the list.
You don't need to worry about setting the autosave time as the KS mod saves the files ~3 minutes automatically.

-Pontius

Awesome guys.. Thank you all so much.. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Best,
B.E.White

Fwow him wuffly to the fwoor!

Hail Kevin!
He wanks highly in wome

you keep going and we'll face 2:1 ratio when battling AI next time

I have to agwee with Gwog that Kevin does wank highly.

Pewhaps we will pway on the Wussian side. Oh how I wuv Kevins scenario designs.

Now that's settled.. Can anyone comment on some of the scenarios not saving automatically? Also are some of the scenarios broken? I get a bad frame packet when I use Austrian Scenario 2?

If the game is not saving automatically can I save the battle to the defsave.sav file or is this bad for the folder?

Kevin might correct me here but i don't think these scenarios have been maintained (adjusted as the KS mod progressed).
About saves - basically you can save under whatever name and then put this name instead of defsave into restart.ini file.

We probably should think of some kind of scenario repository...

Fair enough.. What about a sandbox game? Can a sandbox game be saved and restarted? If so, how would you do that?

Kevin might correct me here but i don't think these scenarios have been maintained (adjusted as the KS mod progressed).

I do try to update them as changes to the mod are made. Sometimes things slip through the cracks. If I recall, that scenario has a French hussar class that had a name change. There was a forum thread about that problem a few months ago. I wrote in there the way to fix it. Unfortunately I don't remember what the thread was called or even if it was part of a longer one.

What about a sandbox game? Can a sandbox game be saved and restarted? If so, how would you do that?

For SP games, you use the Load Save Game feature of the game. Select the defsave save.