PLEASE GOD make an undo last feature

[Gebbe]

Undo would be useful, especially for those of us who play ottd on a laptop, when you end up blowing half the map up because you knocked the pad without realising. Happened to me a few times.

Can't you switch off "tap to click" somewhere on your laptop? That's what I do when I'm playing OTTD travelling by train It works well for me.

(Sorry for being off-topic)

EDIT: and btw: why has God to make an undo last feature? I'm not sure if He is interested in OTTD....

[Gremnon]

I tried that, and for a time it works, but I'm used to tap-clicking so it only really helped while playing OTTD. And my laptop isn't exactly fast, so it's a pain to have to turn it on and off all the time.

[dihedral]

so in essense you are asking the devs to code something special just so you can play on your laptop, without having to change any of your laptop settings or your habbits in handling your laptop....
you are way off!

[Gremnon]

I never said that. I just said it would be useful. I don't play OTTD on my laptop unless I can't access it on my usual computer, so it's not a pressing issue for me, just something to be wary of, and a reason to save often.
An undo that just undoes whatever construction or destruction, and nothing else would be useful, but in no case a necessity.

[DeletedUser21]

EDIT: and btw: why has God to make an undo last feature? I'm not sure if He is interested in OTTD....

A CTRL-Z function in real life would seriously rock.

[athanasios]

After life too!

[VoxDissident]

Sad that it really will never be implemented.

I guess we're all too used to word processors and adobe photoshop and sony vegas and the like.

[audigex]

How can you be afraid of a couple of megs of hdd that the autosave feature uses if you have a computer with 2+ gigs of ram?

Anyways, I do think that this is something that should be added. I think it has been discussed before but anyways, a UNDO button would certainly improve gameplay.

Laptop, plenty of RAM, small HDD. And it's also that the CPU is slow - especially since it is never ONLY running OTTD. The time it takes to autosave is long.

Part of the problem is that I was using daylength modifier patch, so I turned autosaves off on both my PCs. But hte point remains, it would be useful

A quick question - how do you manage to have a small glitch that deletes half the map?
I also cannot see a reason for deleting trees. They are deleted automatically when you build rail or road. Also if you want to see past them you can make them completely invisible using a toolbar (found under the spanner).

I've no idea, I assume I knocked the mousepad - the whole map moved up to the other point and deleted.

It will be very hard to do, not to mention very memory intensive.
The reason is that you need to go back to a point in time in the game.
And since there are a lot of stuff going on (way more than it may looks) under the hood, having a list of all those modifications will be simply... too much.
It's not just the last human action that needs to be done. It's the whole state of the game that needs to be saved. Otherwise, it would not make much sens. You need to revert it all. The trains that have dropped a shipment, the industry that changed its production etc etc.

It's not that many changes.
My suggestions

1) The game is held in RAM, if I'm correct? I'd assume so, since it's a pretty small game anyway. If not, the map surely is? While it takes a while to format the map to save, export it and write it to the HDD... it can't be that hard to just double up the map space in the ram and copy it. Then just replace the one held in RAM after each undo-able user action (deletion of track/trains/stations, mainly). This is essentially an autosave which doesn't require to be saved to the HDD (MUCH faster) and isn't kept after the game is closed. Only the last state is kept.) I'd say this would be the best solution, if it can be implemented.

2) Just store a change log. Yes, slightly CPU intensive, but not as right-hand-forefinger intensive as me re-laying all that track! It's one way to do it (as many database systems do) but less reasonable than the above, although it would allow multiple-undoes, it would rapidly snowball the memory useage.

so in essense you are asking the devs to code something special just so you can play on your laptop, without having to change any of your laptop settings or your habbits in handling your laptop....
you are way off!

Of course we are... that's why it's a feature suggestion board. I'm suggesting a feature I'd like. And please don't think I haven't tried turning tap-to-click off. Regardless, it's a suggestion a few people would like.

How is it "way off"? I haven't demanded it, threatened to eat a Dev's keyboard. I just asked for it (albeit slightly exasperatedly).

Dihedral, I'd consider you to be "way off" with your attitude against this. If you don't want it, don't use it or ask for it... but let the devs say whether it's something they'll do right now, might do if they feel like it sometime, or just can't do due to the limitations of the game. It's a feature request!!!

[belugas]

but let the devs say whether it's something they'll do right now, might do if they feel like it sometime, or just can't do due to the limitations of the game. It's a feature request!!!

And I think i've already said how I felt about it.

The game has not been constructed with an undo in mind. Therefor, adding it is not really a posibility.

Looks to me like a big just can't do due to the limitations of the game
As Far as I know, I am still a dev. So at least one dev stated an answer.
True, you brought some theories as how it could be done. I just fear you have no real idea of the mechanisms that are under the hood of OpenTTD.
To be honest, I would be very curious to see how you could do that. If ever you can construct it, i'll be very interested. But until then, sorry, I have other projects that are far more exciting to do. Not to mention taking care of my family.

Belugas has spoken.

[Qu@rks]

undoing an action just involves a lot more that you currently are not seeing!

e.g. planting trees would be the best example i can think of right now. it has an affect on the town rating. undoing the planting would require to memorize the town rating that existed before planting.
same thing with destroying trees, the town authority reacts to that (obviously this time in a negative way), undoing such an action requires more than just removing tress and paying back the money for that action.

That's why I suggested that sims-style undo. In the trees example this would mean that town rating does not change until you have completed your construction. And after that point you won't be able to reverse anything. The game wouldn't have to save millions of different pieces of information, it would just "wait" for the final construction to be accepted by the user (by closing the construction window) and THEN calculate the changes.

Like I said, this would be problematic in multiplayer since players might interfere with each other but it would certainly do for single...

[hertogjan]

I thought that the main developers were against realism. An undo-feature would be against realism, so I wonder why they do not add this ultimate nonrealism to the game...


But seriously: Why can't you just be careful when playing OpenTTD? You should always remain careful in order to keep the number of mistakes small. But even then of course you can make mistakes, but that's life: Everyone makes mistakes, and you will have to deal with it. If you really messed up, then there is still the last autosave. That's already quite a thing, since in real life you can't even load your last autosave, let alone undo your last action.

And if you don't like clicking too much in order to load an autosave, then create a patch that will load your last autosave upon pressing Ctrl-Z, or persuade someone else to create it.

[michael blunck]

I thought that the main developers were against realism. An undo-feature would be against realism, so I wonder why they do not add this ultimate nonrealism to the game..

Hehe, good joke. Well, indeed they´re not against realism, although some of them seem to believe it. In fact they´re pro realism, otherwise one couldn´t understand why the whole development of TTDPatch and OTTD went in the known direction, with all those enhancements I´ve summarized elsewhere on this forums.

regards
Michael

[DeletedUser21]

...

Sounds like a solid statement to me. Sorry guys but I think this topic is covered.

Next time: Plan ahead and watch out.

[Qu@rks]

That was the smartest post ever, Mr. X ...

I dont think anybody just builds stuff and then notices "oh, gotta delete it all and then rebuild it"... we were talking about involuntary destruction or accidental building (for example when you release the mouse button and a newspaper article pops up in that moment).

So there goes your "planning ahead"...

[dihedral]

build a rail on tile 1, game asks "Are you sure? Yes, Undo"
you choose YES
build a rail on tile 2, game asks "Are you sure? Yes, Undo"
you choose YES
build a rail on tile 3, game asks "Are you sure? Yes, Undo"
you choose.... oh this f***ing feature... where do i switch it off!

[Gremnon]

Firstly, if it was like that all you'd need is a switch to disable it.
Secondly, it would be more useful - and less irritating - to have it on a button that just undoes at command rather than asking all the time.
But belugas has spoken, and unless someone decides to code it I doubt we'll get it.

[hertogjan]

build a rail on tile 1, game asks "Are you sure? Yes, Undo"
you choose YES
build a rail on tile 2, game asks "Are you sure? Yes, Undo"
you choose YES
build a rail on tile 3, game asks "Are you sure? Yes, Undo"
you choose.... oh this f***ing feature... where do i switch it off!

But then we should rename the game to "OpenTTD Vista".

[dihedral]

it would be more useful - and less irritating - to have it on a button that just undoes at command rather than asking all the time.

you would only request such a button if you knew nothing about the games guts! but we have found that out quite a few posts back

But then we should rename the game to "OpenTTD Vista".

or MSOTTD

[Gremnon]

One of the problems of that is that at the moment I don't have a compatible C++ compiler, or much in the way of understanding it.
So I work from what I do know, which I admit isn't much. But I try.

[Mchl]

Getting a compiler is a matter of minutes. Getting understanding is the worse part