Account memories

[SEraider]

Hi all,

My computer crashed yesterday and I am now using my laptop.   So I plugged in my stick and throttle and spent the better of 1 hour redoing my settings.  So my question for HTC is, instead of memorizing settings for each computer, can settings be saved for the account?  I understand skins and sounds are not going to be able to be saved but views and other things should be able to transfer.  Can you guys look into this please?

[The Fugitive]

burn them on to a disk, or a thumb drive and store in a save place. Also might be a good idea to have your game login info saved there too.

[ozrocker]

If you use your internet home page. (Mine is comcast) There is a section that allows you to save folders.
It will stay there, as long as you keep your internet account.
You could store settings there.

                                                                         <S> Oz

[Ghosth]

Backup, backup, backup.

Burn settings folder to DVD (along with things like email passwords)
Copy to a flash drive or SD card
Slip a copy onto your wifes or kids system, just in case. (That way if you ever have to load AH on her sytem, it will be there.)

Heck you can even compress it into a zip file and password protect it!
Just better make the password easy to remember after 3 years.
 

[SEraider]

Here is the thing, I am not knowledgable on servers, ect.

But, our account information I assume is kept at HTC servers right?  So wherever we log in around the world, it goes to their servers.  If perk information is on our account, saving the settings should not require a lot of kb's of memory (my assumption).  So as a service that can be provided, why not keep this in their servers and not have us worry about it?

Of course there are sound packs, skins, and films that could stay in our personal folder right?  But views should be small enough that their servers can handle it I think. 

Anybody an expert in this stuff?

[SectorNine50]

This would be nice, if you ask me.  That way when you update one computer's view on something, it updates all of 'em.

Looking at the settings folder, it says it's size is 21KB, but the "size on disk" is 244KB.  Not sure why that is, considering it's a folder, but either way, that's not much space.

[LLogann]

I am no professional "explainer" of how this stuff works but I'd say it would be impossible.  Simply because the application AH, write this data to files locally for speed reasons.... And if it were server based, it would probably take about 30 minutes to login to an arena as all of the data for every single plane's view, and all other settings need to be downloaded every time you enter. 

[SEraider]

I am no professional "explainer" of how this stuff works but I'd say it would be impossible.  Simply because the application AH, write this data to files locally for speed reasons.... And if it were server based, it would probably take about 30 minutes to login to an arena as all of the data for every single plane's view, and all other settings need to be downloaded every time you enter. 

Pretty interesting.  That makes sense.

[guncrasher]

get an account with one of them free storage places like mediafire.  I got my settings folder burned to a cd, plus a copy on each of the two hardrives I have.  plus for some reason one on my desktop.  you can never have too many copies.

semp

[Ghosth]

Carbonite would be one way, I think there are several others.

Easiest of all is simply to stash it on a thumb drive or SD card.
You can get a pretty good sized SD card for 6 -10 $ now days.

[CptTrips]

It is entirely “possible” and a really good idea IMHO.

It would not be hugely difficult to implement. 

It would probably work in a cache mode where files only go upstream when they are changed and are only pulled down to the client if they detect the local files do not match the golden copy on the server (tested by a quick checksum). 

So its not like those files would have to come down every login.  Only if the local settings have been blown away or corrupted.  Most of the time, file transfer won't even be needed.  When it is, it could easily be done on a background thread while the user is selecting arena and field and plane.   

Summary: it would very rarely need to be brought down, and when needed could be downloaded in a manner the user would probably never notice.

Valve's SteamWorks platform provides a similar capability for their developers with 100mb per user on their ”Cloud” storage:

Steam Cloud
Valve provides a service called Steam Cloud. For supported games, Steam Cloud stores various amounts of game data, such as keyboard shortcut settings and single-player game saves, on a central server. Any changes to relevant game files are uploaded to the main server, and newer files are automatically downloaded and used when a game is started.[17] Valve launched the service simultaneously with the release of Left 4 Dead, and the service now supports most newer Valve games.[18] It is one of the services offered to game developers through Steamworks. Users can individually disable Steam Cloud on a per-game and per-account basis.[19]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)

Regards,
Wab

[kvuo75]

I am no professional "explainer" of how this stuff works but I'd say it would be impossible.  Simply because the application AH, write this data to files locally for speed reasons.... And if it were server based, it would probably take about 30 minutes to login to an arena as all of the data for every single plane's view, and all other settings need to be downloaded every time you enter. 

my settings folder is 232kb (1.40mb on disk)