[dividuum]

I don’t know how larger the game state/save game is, but if it’s small enough for a url parameter, they might even use their CDN for caching, as I would assume the same state always results in the same game output. If you don’t deviate from paths of previous players, you could sail along a cached path, no computation required :)

[MaxBarraclough]

> if it’s small enough for a url parameter

Somewhat related: the PlayStation port of DOOM only allowed saving at the end of a level. It used alphanumeric sequences for its saves. You'd write down the sequence and manually re-enter it on your next session, avoiding the need for a memory card.

Presumably it only needed to store <level ID, difficulty, weapons, ammo levels, health, armour, checksum>.

[HappyTypist]

Clever idea but as things like your position and camera angle are floats, there are virtually infinite gamestates.

[mysterydip]

DOOM still used fixed point arithmetic at the time for speed, so it could be a large set but not as big as floats. You could also drop a few bits of precision off the LSB and make your search space that much smaller.

[TheSoftwareGuy]

Floats are still represented in 32 bits, or 64 for doubles

[dividuum]

That would approximate infinity quite fast once you move around a few steps :-)

I guess limiting rotation to 64 steps would be enough, but even then the state space grows exponentially. So it's not really useful in the end, but that fits the project, I guess.

[kevincox]

But you have to multiply that by the possible locations on the map and the enemy states. I imagine it would be possible to get a few hits at the starts of levels but I suspect that the vast majority of the frames for any play-through have never been seen before.