Confirmation dialog for quickload to previous flight scene

[The Great Potato]

I'm playing stock again for the prerelease. Without utilities like KER, precise node, trajectories, etc I've found myself using quicksave trial and error a lot more. The trial and error is fine with me; I'm more worried about what happens after that flight.

Occasionally something goes wrong a mission or two later and I reflexively hammer down on the F9 key without thinking about when I last saved.

...Aaaand boom. I'm in my orbiter from 30 minutes ago instead of in my plane.

 

 

I think it might be a good idea to add a confirmation dialog to the quickload button if the last save was on a different flight scene. Thoughts?

[Blaarkies]

"Occasionally something goes wrong a mission or two later and I reflexively click through the confirmation dialogue without thinking about when I last saved."

I am sorry to be "that guy", but if you if you quickload out of habit before realizing it is a mistake...i bet it won't be long before you skip the dialogue out of habit.
Quickload already has some safety features:
 -F9 is at the far top the keyboard, out of range of the commonly used buttons(the closest are: 8,9,0 action groups, backspace...maybe -+ map zoom?)
 -F9 already needs a "push and hold" for more than a second before it actually starts loading

I had a hard time unlearning that back in qauke2, where quicksave/quickload was like F5/F6 IIRC? With no hold push, it is easy to trigger the wrong action.

Anyway, a better solution i believe is,
Leave it as is, but do an auto-save at the moment that F9 is pressed. Give it a different name than the regular auto-save which is quite useful as well. So when the unfortunate event happens, we can just scroll through the various saves and find the one we are interested in, since this thing really does not happen every 30 minutes.

Off topic: Maybe the "Launch" button in the VAB should be moved away from the "Exit" button? I have had the occasional mis-click, leads to start praying that "Auto-saved Ship" actually contains my new super rocket, etc. What about a "Go to SPH" button there as well"?(it carries the current craft over to the SPH)

[The Great Potato]

7 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

"Occasionally something goes wrong a mission or two later and I reflexively click through the confirmation dialogue without thinking about when I last saved."

Sure, that'd become a habit if the dialogue popped up every time. Not even close to what I'm suggesting. 

To be clear, I'd want F9 to bring up a confirmation dialog only if it would cause a flight scene change. You know, as a 'stop and think for a second' warning.

If anything, the reflex would be to cancel it. I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually needed to load to a different craft.

Saving a backup when you quickload might work in some cases. In most others...it would dangle your old data in front of you with no hope of return. Quickloading generally happens when something goes wrong, so returning to that point is often useless. And remember, loading disables the 'revert' button.

Better, imo, to figure out a way to prevent the accident in the first place.

Back off topic: don't we already have a 'you haven't saved!' dialog for exiting the VAB? I really like the 'go to SPH' idea, though.

 

[Foxster]

Auto-saves and user-saves rotating around a number of saves re-loadable via ALT-F9 would also be a pretty good solution. 

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, The Great Potato said:

To be clear, I'd want F9 to bring up a confirmation dialog only if it would cause a flight scene change. You know, as a 'stop and think for a second' warning.

What would define a flight scene? Vessel ID + location? What if you switched vessels multiple times and now your quicksave was from two hours ago but in the same "flight scene?"

A simpler solution would be, given the nature of quicksave, to warn if your quicksave is older than, say, ten minutes. Are you sure you want to go back to this quicksave? It is 2 hours and 13 minutes old!

And then there's the $1,000,000 question... what if your quicksave is not the one you want? Then what? There's a reason you pressed F9 after all...

[The Great Potato]

21 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

What would define a flight scene? Vessel ID + location? What if you switched vessels multiple times and now your quicksave was from two hours ago but in the same "flight scene?"

A simpler solution would be, given the nature of quicksave, to warn if your quicksave is older than, say, ten minutes. Are you sure you want to go back to this quicksave? It is 2 hours and 13 minutes old!

And then there's the $1,000,000 question... what if your quicksave is not the one you want? Then what? There's a reason you pressed F9 after all...

I'd say some combination of Vessel ID, part focus, and mission time (adjusted for timewarp, potentially). For vessel switching...perhaps it should bring up the dialog even if you're back in the original vessel. Or maybe switching should reduce the timer on triggering the dialog (from 20 mins MET to 10 mins MET, for instance).

There's no way to stop accidental quickloading entirely, but I'd like to error-proof it so losing >30 mins of game time is less likely. At least if you hit F9 and no dialog pops up, you know it's not that far back. You might have to redo a single launch or reentry or landing, but not a whole set of maneuvers or rebuild a craft.

[Blaarkies]

11 hours ago, The Great Potato said:

...
In most others...it would dangle your old data in front of you with no hope of return. Quickloading generally happens when something goes wrong, so returning to that point is often useless. And remember, loading disables the 'revert' button.
...

No, i mean it still completes the quickload, but then when you realize that is is like 2 hours ago, you can just load back to the newest save(the one with the spaceplane-crash-into-the-VAB-for-fun save) and continue from there.

The scene change is a good idea. Maybe if the current ship's "parent body" || "flight situation" differs from that of the quicksaved ship, then give dialogue? Such scene change should be obvious in game code

Whats worse is when it's not even your fault: I have been playing career on hard for a while (and plan on using super-hard for 1.1 ). Anyway there is no quicksave, so accept my fate for bad staging, misplaced boosters, etc(that's what escape towers are for), but there is no way i will keep sending ships to Pol for landing when they splinter up 100m away from the surface.
Or send a new ISRU base to Minmus because the old one "overheated" the moment I entered its physics bubble(but I can safely switch to it, and watch it refine ore for years one end)
Or lose out on a gravimetric scan contract because ONE location is actually inside the atmosphere(they don't work in flight...only landed and in space)