I have an idea:

You can save at any time. You have only 1 slot per character (user). If you load, your save is deleted, so you can''t reload if you don''t like what happens. Then you can resave. Please note that you can save whenever you want and continue playing, though, which works out in this case.

If you die, all is not lost. You are returned to the last town you visited, but you should have a slight punishment (25% of gold lost?).

I think this will work well.

quote: You can save at any time. You have only 1 slot per character (user). If you load, your save is deleted, so you can''t reload if you don''t like what happens. Then you can resave. Please note that you can save whenever you want and continue playing, though, which works out in this case.

Thats no solution, the player would just load, then save immediately, giving them back the same save they had before.

OK, maybe auto saving or something. BTW, how much time would it take to save a game. If it''s fast enough, I will make it so that whenever you perform an action, the game autosaves, or something.

Ther was a topic on here a while ago about saves and the what prety much everyone decided would be the best is if ther is savepoints in main locations along the way so if you screw up you would go back ther to avoid overly agressive speedy gameplay, But they would also be a save and exit thing wher youd save and exit then when you came back youd be wher you saved but that save point would be gone so if u died youd go back to the last main save area. This woud make it so people wouldnt have to play for hours just so they could save and so they didnt just get to save constently and avoid all consequences.

I think I will give my opinions on this...

First off... dying and losing gold seems foolish.... it is mind numbing, and might as well be like making your players invincible. What happens when they have 1 or 0 gold? Death is death...treat it as so. Everytime you die, being sent to a prison camp would get to stale throughout the game. If you die, youre dead, simple as that. Reload.

Transportation: Look at many RPGs... you go by foot, or everyonce in a while a vehicle for most of the game. Towards the back 3/4ths of the game, you get a permanent vehicle that you can go anywhere with. Look at FF7..you get the highwind, you can go anywhere, get things, etc... Do not make transportation a common thing...as someone said earlier, your world will lose its size quickly.

Saving: Saving depends alot of your type of game.. faster games with smaller missions usually have saves at the end of the missions. That is more suited for pure action/FPS''s. RPG''s commonly (the FF series) allows you to save on the world while you travel, and when you are in key places, dungeons, towns, you can only save at certain points. Some games, allow for saving anywhere. Those are for the more difficult games. The player should not be punished for wanting to go to the real world, of course, but, there also needs to be a balance to keep the game hard. Having a certain number of saves seems to "Arcade"-y for this type of game. Hope you guys agree/find valled points with and in my post.

I think I will make saving Diablo 2-style. But is there a way I can make it so that it will save when manually closed by clicking on the close button?

This may seem harsh, and yeah, it would probably result in a bunch of unhappy customers, but I''ve never thought of as myself as developing "for the masses". I''m making a game that first and foremost *I* would like to play, and if some other people find it enjoyable that''s great.

With that said, I think you should be able to save anywhere at any time. The caveat is that if you die, your saved game is removed/wiped/deleted.

Yes, you''ll have to start over completely from scratch. And no, this probably wouldn''t suit every type of game.

But I plan on making things as open ended as possible, so there will be many different ways to accomplish things. As well as implementing tons of random stuff, so no game is the same as any other.

Finally, I also plan on implementing things that would allow a chance to come back to life, even if dead. Say when you die the game checks for the presence of certain factors that could result in your resurrection (e.g., you''re in a fight with some friendlies and die - the game would continue the fight in the background while displaying something about the fact that you''re dead, but not for good...yet - if the friendlies won they could perchance return you to a safe haven and get you brought back).

Talk about making the players cautious. Heh. The fact that you can save any time, any where would totally serve the people with only a bit of time here, a bit of time there, while the "perma-death" would encourage people to play with a whole new paradigm. I hate games where there is no penalty with any weight. Typically these games are catering to the masses and give up gameplay over money (i.e., more copies sold = more money). Bah. Pansies.

UO comes to mind....

Care.

Florida, USA
RTS Engine in Development
http://www.knology.net/~heaven
Jesus is LORD!

Well I can see a way around that save system already. Unless you find someway to embed the dynamic save file into the game''s structure and make it so that the player cannot back up the save file without pretty much screwing with the whole game that wouldn''t really work.

FIrst of all most people will download a trainer that makes the game not delete their save when they die. Or players would just take the save file and copy it everytime they save to another folder. It may be tedious for the second solution I personally would do it.

Anyway that''s something you may want to look out for I''m not trying to undermine one of your great ideas or anything just pointing out some slightly obvious flaws.

I''m sure the fact that only about 40-60% of the public will like this type of saving system unless the game works around it in someway to make it an experience most don''t encounter.

Bleu Shift - www.bleushift.tk

I think that you are much better off using a few predetermined "safe" save areas, that way the player knows that they have to get back to one or all is lost... making them feel more involved in your game.