Thread: Blank savegames

The goal is to remove savegames from vaultmp; that is, vaultmp will invisibly provide "blank" savegames, which should contain as little as possible (no?) change records.

Story need to be skipped, so a "new game" savegame is not an option.

Can it not become server sided what the original idea is.

It is completely server-sided. I just need empty savegames, because the game needs to load one.

Ok, in theory I could strip it down maybe 2 more bytes, but it's pretty darn minimal now. I've only tested it in New Vegas, but it's based on a Fallout 3 save file, so I'm hoping it will work for Fallout 3 as well. There was a small section of the file that I couldn't figure out what it did, and just trial-and-errored a 32-bit value in until the game successfully loaded; since this was done in New Vegas, there's the chance the value that worked won't work for Fallout 3. If this save doesn't work for Fallout 3, let me know and I'll see about installing Fallout 3 again to test (I own Fallout 3, I just don't have it installed and didn't intend to ever play it again).

https://lh.rs/wXgCU0eum8kv

Also, since the save is brutally stripped down (it's only 196 bytes), I can't promise no side effects, but the testing I did in New Vegas had it working without problems.

Edit - Might also be a good idea to set the file's modified date to back in time to like 1 AM Jan 1 2008 so it sorts to the bottom of a player's load order. Or alternatively, if you can give the file an extension besides .fos so that it won't be in the load menu in-game but where VaultMP could still force the game to use it. Having a dummy save file in our load menu looks kinda tacky.

Edit 2 - I updated the wikia at https://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/FOS_file_format with some of the format specs I worked out, at least up through the stats structure (which the minimal save I linked above doesn't even have). The data after the stats structure I didn't describe at that wikia because I'm not clear on the specifics well enough for it to be worthwhile, but it's related to the player's orientation (get/setangle x y z) and maybe position as well.

Queue

196 bytes...great (tested with New Vegas, works)! The engine function I use takes the filename without extension, so I won't be able to hide the savegame from the list. A practical solution would be to pack that bunch of bytes with the main executable, and unpack / delete it on demand

Thanks a lot!

EDIT:

I tried without Fallout 3, loads without problems; but some stats are messed up. They are set pseudo-randomly, like here:
Unbenannt.jpg
Do you know how to fix? The stats are listed on the wiki page, I'll try a couple of things myself.

(in New Vegas, all stats are properly set to 0)

Thanks. I tried both savegames, but Fallout 3 still reads garbage from somewhere

I'll try to track down the problem. Is there any offset which might cause the problem?

Try this:
https://lh.rs/SntM2psq0H5m

I booted up one of my old computers that still had Fallout 3 installed (whew, saved me having to reinstall and patch) and toyed around a little. A small change to the stats structure got it working with all 0 stats. There's a small anomaly if you load the save via the game's load menu where it shows your current level progress incorrectly during the loading screen, but this seems to have no impact once the save is loaded and since we don't see a loading screen using VaultMP, I don't think it's actually a problem.

For me at least, this save works for both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, all stats are 0, player is level 1 with 0 of 200 experience, all SPECIAL are at 5, all skills are at 15.

Edit - It's worth noting that I only tried loading it via the two games' load menus, not via VaultMP. Since the first stripped save file I uploaded I did test via VaultMP for New Vegas did work, I expect this one will as well since nothing substantial changed.

Queue

Awesome - works!