ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'd like to see a feature to allow us to save games online and play from anywhere with my profile. I know that with the current size of the save files this isn't feasible, so I have some thoughts about what should/can be left out of them to make this possible.

Firstly, what should be saved:
Stats, build, inventory, eq. Easy.
What artifacts you found, and whether they're eligible to show back up. (like if it was a ring in a shop--those can reappear elsewhere)
The level location of any artifacts you didn't pick up
What levels you've completed and what bosses you've killed
What quests you've completed
The location of any randomly placed dungeons you've found
The map layout, if any, of the level your character is currently on
Possibly, any lua error messages received. The game could check for these on startup and upload them when you log in.
Other stuff I didn't think about

What doesn't need to be saved:
The map layout of every level you visit.
What items you dropped on these levels.

If upon exiting a dungeon to the world map, the map of the dungeon is lost, save files shrink to reasonable levels. Maps really don't need to be saved. Store the dungeon you're currently in in system memory, and that's good enough. Also, make it so that if a certain artifact drops on a level, it will always reappear there somewhere. That way you don't really lose it if you're willing to go back and hunt for things you missed. (Option two would be to allow it to reappear anywhere later on, and that doesn't happen right now. If you miss something it's gone forever, afaik.) Furthermore, on levels you're re-exploring, no new artifacts may appear. Also, no bosses may reappear. Everything else is fine, except in cases like the ruined dungeon treasure. No repeats on that.

If people want to keep all the level information then they can save locally. Once they upload their save files and play from there, the save converts to an online only save, and they play from then on with the limitations I mention.

That was a possible plan since the early days, but it did not seems to have enough need http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... lit=online

41% of people who responded said they'd use it. That's a pretty good chunk of people. I'd actually expect it to be lower. Besides, it'll be more useful as the playerbase grows. It's just another option to make the game accessible to a wider group of people--people like me who want to play in 3 places.

I would not save the game online, because whilst I always have access to my hard drive, the same cannot be said for all web pages........

Loosing a character to a hard drive failure = acceptable
My HD is backed up.

Loosing a character to any internet problem = unacceptable.

Very few web sites are permanent, and may be lost due to name changes, licences expiring, policy change, Server crashes, Denial of Service attacks, and a few more as well.

All the above have happened to me in the past.
Therefore I cannot place my trust in the web.

Predawn

Just because YOU personally won't use it doens't mean it shouldn't be an option.

Also in my original idea it wasnt a hard disk OR online save, more of a "both", syncronizing stuff automatically

and also - keep in mind - if save games are going to be saved on a server - a server DG is paying for - and with the SIZE of these - it could start to cost a LOT of money...

I know about the server space issue, which is why I recommended gutting what an online save includes. You'd have to find all the stairs again in any dungeon you leave, which would be annoying, but it's worth it to be able to play from anywhere. I honestly can't think of a reason why the saves would need to be more than 20k bytes.