Best way to do multiple Save Slots?

[Outcast]

I am doing a game that I think will benefit from having the player choose 1 of 3 save slots instead of just having everything in one save.

My question is what would be the most convinient way to do this? I am using ini and it must be compatible with Flash. My initial thought was to just use 3 ini:s for each save slot, but I don't know if that is supported in Flash? Can Flash apps store multiple ini:s? (I think they are stored in the cookies).

I don't know how to program this in a smooth way though if I used 3 of them because now I just have events that store the group item and value in one ini. I would need some way to easy make the event pick the right ini first so I don't have to have 3 times as many events for each ini..

[method72]

hmm, never did it in flash, but for a windows .exe with a multi save for 3 profiles i have done this int he past.

start of frame> set directory path to save location (all_documents, etc)

every .01 seconds> check 'if file exists' "profile1" if it does make PLAYbutton1 visible (and player presses it to start profile1) and CREATEbutton2 invis

if file does not exist, then make CREATEbutton2 visible, if this gets clicked, it will create the file "profile1"
this will then make PLAYbutton1 visible and turn CREATEbutton2 invis

if that makes sense to you, you should be able to adapt it...

[Konidias]

You can save it all in one ini file... Just save groups/items like this:

Group1,Group2,Group3
Item1,Item2,Item3

When the player picks a slot to save or load from, just set a global variable for that slot number (1, 2, or 3) and then when you access the ini file to read/write data, just include that global variable in the group/item names:

"ini item name" + Str$(global variable)

So say you have a "health" value that you store for each player. It would store in the ini as "health1" for player 1, "health2" for player 2, etc.

An even cleaner method would be to just store all ini items into separate groups for each save slot... so like:

Group_1, Group_2, Group_3 would be your 3 save slots and then you'd just change to whatever group your save slot is on and save/load items from that group.

[Skyhunter]

You can save multiple inis in flash.

Best to do is name inis like this: "SaveSlot"+Str$(slotnumber), so you can easily access the ini depending on the slot you are currently in and do a simple check whetever the slots exists.

Have first item in ini when you create a slot to exists=yes

(to check create slots)
Make a loop but not fastloop(you need i think atleast 1 refresh to load another ini)
load ini "SaveSlots"+Str$(LoopIndex)

compare to item "exists"= yes... load some stats from it etc..
otherwise if that condition does not trigger you just percieve that slot as empty

[Outcast]

I don't seem to be able to do a number to string conversion when trying to retrieve from the ini? I just get an error :s Maybe I am writing it wrong?



GroupItemValue( "Group"+Str$(SaveSlot), "Item", "Value")

[Skyhunter]

I meant that you use that in the ini filename, you should be able to so by doing set current file to "SaveSlot"+Str$(slotnumber)

Your "GroupItemValue( "Group"+Str$(SaveSlot), "Item", "Value")" does not work because there is no value in that expression, it goes like this:

GroupItemValue( "Ini", >Group name<, >Item name<)