ImpSave is a helpful companion for the Imperialism PC game.
It has two primary functions:
- Automatically backing up saved games, allowing to restore to an earlier turn.
- Patching the Imperialism.exe binary (GOG version) to fix a few crash bugs.
To use it, simply place the ImpSave-0.24.jar inside your Imperialism folder and run it. You'll need to have Java installed.
The program will bring up a window that lets you start Imperialism and apply patches to it (if it's a known version of the binary, such as the GOG release).
While the program is running, it will automatically monitor the Save folder for
new and updated saved games and make back ups. A restore tab lets you restore any
saved game and annotate saves with additional comments.
This program addresses a major limitation with Imperialism - only a single autosave slot.
By backing up autosaves (and other save slots) continuously, the program allows you to restore the game to an arbitrary past turn. This way, you can reconsider your decisions from many turns ago, or recover from a deterministic crash bug in your most recent save file.
The functionality is also supported and very useful in multiplayer, since all players require an autosave at the same turn in order to restore a saved game. Without ImpSave, this is very hard to manage, especially when one or more players crash or lose connection.
In addition to save game backups, ImpSave includes the functionality to patch the Imperialism.exe binary with some bug fixes. This is an optional feature and is not required for the backup functionality, but the patches address a number of crash bugs that exist in the program. The patching functionality assumes a base version of the GOG Imperialism binary.
This program was conceived when the author would play Imperialism with a group of friends in a LAN setting in the basement of a video store, circa 2013. Since stability issues plagued Imperialism, he decided to write a handy utility to automatically back up saved games, so that games could be restored reliably in a multiplayer setting.
In addition, since the group encountered a few common crash bugs, the author also reverse-engineered the binary and fixed a few of them, and built the functionality to patch the Imperialism binary into the program.
It is now many years later when ImpSave is being shared publicly via GitHub, with a bit of recent rework and improvements. ImpSave is being released in memory of Aaron Kaufman, who was a regular in our play group and who tragically passed away in 2021. RIP and may you live on in our memories.