KOTOR: Implement game saving/loading

[seedhartha]

Should the original file format be used though? Loading it is no big deal while saving in it might prove problematic.

• [x] Basic save load menu
• [x] Saved games list loading (name, number and time played)
• [x] Saved game loading (module, PC gender and position)
• [ ] Display planet and area names, screenshot and party members
• [ ] Loading of everything else
• [ ] Saving game

[DrMcCoy]

Yes, I'd like xoreos to read and write the original save file format. So far, I haven't seen why it might be problematic.

Since a lot of the stuff inside the save files is GFFs, we can even be a bit more flexible there. We could add our own optional fields, for example.

And if we support some optional feature in the future that the original can't do and the user enabled this, we can probably even increase a version field somewhere so that the original game rejects the save. For NWN, there's fields in the IFO for minimal game version and expansions needed, and I guess something similar would work for KotOR as well.

What we do need, however, is a GFF3 writer. xoreos can't do that yet.

I have a local WIP branch that adds methods to GFF3File and GFF3Struct to modify values there. But I'm not sure whether we want GFF3File to be able to write GFFs itself, or a separate GFF3Writer class that can take a GFF3File and write it to disk (and also maybe write one completely dynamically from code without a GFF3File).

(Likewise, for the Dragon Ages, we will need a GFF4 writer.)

[Nostritius]

I think we also need an erf packer, because the save formats at least in kotor are packed inside an erf archive.

[DrMcCoy]

True, yes.

ERF writer necessary for:

• NWN: The SAV files are ERF
• NWN2: The .Z files are ZIP files containing an ERF named "-"
• KotOR/KotOR2: The SAV files are ERF

No ERF writer necssary for:

• Jade Empire: The save file SAC seems to be just a GFF with a few bytes extra header
• The Witcher: Has its own save format: http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/TheWitcherSave_format
• DAO/DA2: Loose GFFs in a directory

No idea:

• Sonic Chronicles

[DrMcCoy]

(Narf, sorry, butter fingers McCoy hit the wrong button :P)

[Nostritius]

For Reference: After I finally managed to extract a valid sonic rom, I took a look into the save format. An nds cartridge has basically a big rom, where the data resides, and a much smaller eeprom for writing save data (64 Kb in the case of sonic). The bad news is, that what is written there, seems to be some custom format, starting after the "VB" magic id.