PlayMaker custom Save (with path) action

[Abelius]

Hello there,

For reasons a bit long to explain, I'd like to have a custom PlayMaker Save with path action that is the same as the default "Save" action, but has the ES3Settings "Path" variable visible by default, as an FSMString variable to fill in, without the need of clicking the "Override Default Settings" checkbox.

I've tried to modify the action in the script, to no avail.

Could you help me to create it, please?

Thanks!

[Joel]

Hi there,

If you PM me your invoice number I can send over an action which does this. However, as it wouldn't be part of official functionality I wouldn't be able to provide further support for it.

All the best,
Joel

[Abelius]

Hi Joel,

The thing is, I have implemented a system to use multiple save slots which I take for granted is a common thing. That means I need to specify a non-default path setting every time I want to save or load something.

Therefore, to my knowledge, I have two options to specify the file path...:

1.- Changing the default setting, ES3-wide, every time an FSM asks to save/load anything.
2.- Overriding the default settings within each action I add.

The first one is not ideal, because I expect many FSMs writing and loading data concurrently, and taking for granted all of them will always use the same slot, at the same time... well, I don't think that will end up well.

The second one eliminates the above uncertainty, but introduces two inconveniences in my workflow:

a) The size of the action almost triples. This might be cosmetic, but when you're working with lots of them, it's very cumbersome.
b) The rest of the fields take their values from the default settings in the Editor window, not the ones I set manually at the game start through the 'ES3 Default Settings' script.

To mitigate this problem I've created three Global Variables in PlayMaker and I change the field values to point to them, like this:



However, I need to do this with every action, and that summed to the huge size of the action when overriding the default settings, is making my workflow very frustrating.

I totally understand the convenience of having a set of default settings to focus on the all-important 'key' and 'value' fields, ofc. But IMO, the path should be as equally important as them, because I don't think any developer is going to work on the assumption of having a single save slot game-wide, right?

Moreover, that field could still be populated with the contents of the default setting, so it's not such a big change.

Anyway, if you could just explain how to safely take out the filePath variable from the actions in ES3Playmaker script, I'd even prefer that than asking you to create those custom actions for me. I tried, but failed, because I think they inherit something and I'm no programmer.

I'll send you my invoice number in a bit. Thank you.

[Abelius]

Update: Now I'm seeing that even Option 1 is not even workable for me.

If I do this...:



...the save file is not created and it uses SaveData.es3 instead.

It's like if it doesn't have time to set the setting in the scrip, before running the Save action immediately after. So I'd need to introduce a wait state.

If Option 2 is the only reliable and timely way to write/read from a given file, then I'll definitely need to do it like that.