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[Widmo]

When show map intro is On the Data Saved appears right after the graphical effect. Same when you interrupt it by hitting escape or space bar. When show map intro is Off you actually need to make a game time consuming action to trigger the Data Saved message but in that case the saving lag can be felt. It takes about 600-800 msec under Wine which I find slightly unpleasant. Also, it is gameplay inconsistency introduced by something appearing to be purely GUI option.

[Kyzrati]

Oh interesting. I wasn't aware of the difference there. Maybe that's what's still slowing down the Factory map start for some people. A few versions back the first turn on a new map used to be more noticeable, even on fast machines, but then I optimized the AI initialization, which mostly resolved that stutter, but oddly enough I've heard it's still happening for some people. Perhaps it has something to do with this!

In any case, thanks and I'll do something about it for the next release.

[Kyzrati]

Hm, just now digging deeper into this as I clear out all the bugs for Alpha 13, and that feature used to work as you desire there, actually saving before you even see the map or UI period, but I had to change it to save later due to another feature--saving has to also save the UI state of your parts, and that can't be done until all of your parts are loaded into the UI list...

So it's actually unrelated to whether you've taken a turn or not (and unrelated to that option setting), but is instead triggered once the UI has finished animating on startup. Nothing I can do about this one except force the player to wait until the UI completely finishes animating before taking any action, which is probably worse!

[Widmo]

saving has to also save the UI state of your parts, and that can't be done until all of your parts are loaded into the UI list...

So it's actually unrelated to whether you've taken a turn or not (and unrelated to that option setting), but is instead triggered once the UI has finished animating on startup. Nothing I can do about this one except force the player to wait until the UI completely finishes animating before taking any action, which is probably worse!

When the option is off and after next level loads you can wait however long you please (last test was 30 minutes) and "Data saved" does not appear until you take a time consuming action. UI actions like sorting your parts and inventory do nothing for that. Forcing wait until UI loads would be much shorter delay in this case.

[Kyzrati]

Okay apparently wrong info--I was basing it on some autosave comments in the code, rather than actual testing, which somehow is not doing what the code looks like it's doing

You are absolutely correct.

The original intended behavior was to wait until the player's first actual turn, so the saving that's occurring immediately after the animation was an accident that apparently happens because the logic blocking for the intro animation puts the logic in a state that allows it to autosave just before it switches over to player control.

The only reason that works at all is because the intro takes longer than it does for the regular UI animation to complete. You can confirm this effect by turning on the map intro and hitting spacebar to cancel it as soon as you enter a new floor--it won't autosave until you take the first turn, as expected.

So the alternative here would be to just make sure it saves as soon as it can, even if the player hasn't taken a turn.

I've rewritten the autosaving to be controlled directly from the parts list animation, since that's what's holding it up--now it will save as soon as the map appears, before your first turn.