The save game feature seems simple but it’s mind-blowing how it can return the exact state of a game with all elements/events organised in the correct order. Can anyone explain how it works?
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In addition to all the other answer, I’d like to add that “all element/events in correct order” (in think you meant in correct state) is really not that much information and easily handles by computers.
Let’s take a game like the witcher 3: the game has 70,000 lines of dialogue. If you store a boolean for each line (meaning already seen / not seen yet), that 70,000 bit or 8.75 kilobyte : really not a big file… Of course, the game has much more than just read flag for dialogue, but you get the idea : storing state of quest (not started, started, done) or inventory (~100 items, designated by an ID in the save) is not a lot of infos.
In a game like crusader king 2, the save file is actually plain text, so you can look a it and modify it if you want to cheat (or debug…). Late in game, the save file contains the description of hundreds of characters, titles, relations… That makes up to less than 200MB, and ~700,000 lines in my case. That big, but really nothing a computer can’t handle (and it could be greatly reduced if not stored in plain text but computer friendly format instead. The dev probably preferred plain text for simplicity). You can get an idea of how the save file stores data in ck2 by looking at this wiki [https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Save-game_editing](https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Save-game_editing)
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