Best Save System I have ever seen in a game: ICO.

In this game (admittedly, its a Playstation 2 game, and I don''t even really like consoles as a general rule) there are special save points scattered throughout the game. There aren''t really "missions" per se.. the flow is continuous, just like the Half-Life SP game. Anyway as I was saying -- there are save points scattered throughout and they are conveniently located after major challenge areas (the game is about 90% solving rather ingenious environmental puzzles). What you end up with is a constant "I''ve just got to get to that next save point" scenario.

This doesn''t work if there are too few save points. Placing one in the middle of a single "level" is terribly unfair to players who work hard to solve the many challenges the game throws at them. In this system, save points should only be just outside the scope of achievement -- in other words, they should always be just around the corner by the time the average player is saying "Man, where is that save point?"

But unlike the majority of you, I disagree that infinite save/load capability is bad form. Players work hard to make their way through a level, and how they get through it beyond that should be up to them. Some may not ever use the save button; but some people prefer to save after virtually every step they take. And contrary to popular belief here thats not a bad thing! The goal of the designer should be to let the player have fun, NOT to MAKE the player have a more realistic experience.

Don''t get me wrong, realism has its place too -- but while permanent death is realistic, its not fun. The more permanent you make a PC''s death (i.e., by forcing them to redo a large number of difficult challenges if they die), the more likely the player is to give up, walk away, and tell his friends not to buy it.

A trustworthy Save/Reload system is an absolute necessity.

Brian Lacy
ForeverDream Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@foreverdreamstudios.com

"I create. Therefore I am."

quote: Original post by irbrian
But unlike the majority of you, I disagree that infinite save/load capability is bad form. Players work hard to make their way through a level, and how they get through it beyond that should be up to them. Some may not ever use the save button; but some people prefer to save after virtually every step they take. And contrary to popular belief here thats not a bad thing! The goal of the designer should be to let the player have fun, NOT to MAKE the player have a more realistic experience.

The problem with infinite save/reload comes when a player feels forced to (ab)use it. The usual complaint is from someone who just spent a couple of hours replaying the same small section of a game simply in order to get through it - there''s often no real sense of achievement in getting past it because you get the feeling that it was just a matter of time and luck that got you through rather than actual skill, and the feeling I get is that the situation is the result of lazy design. I''ve had a lot more fun, and got more sense of achievement out of tackling a Goldeneye mission a few dozen times to unlock a cheat than out of save/reloading my way through a tough encounter in Half Life.

quote:
Don''t get me wrong, realism has its place too -- but while permanent death is realistic, its not fun. The more permanent you make a PC''s death (i.e., by forcing them to redo a large number of difficult challenges if they die), the more likely the player is to give up, walk away, and tell his friends not to buy it.

On the other hand, a game needs some sense of challenge or there''s no point. I''ve played DOOM with ''iddqd'' active and, while it''s kind of fun for a little while, it gets boring pretty quickly. On the other hand, I''ve played the game several times on Ultra Violence and, while I tend to end up stuck on some of the levels, I keep coming back because the challenge is still there. The trick is to create and maintain a sense of (barely) achievable challenge, and in my experience, save/reloading kills that.

Like I was saying, better game design would replace the need for alternative save/load systems. For example, you could award the player save tokens and let them ration it as a resource, or do what I was saying about the pseudorandom tinkering. Convienitently placing save points within 10 minutes of each other also works. Another idea is counting saves, and then giving an award at the end of the level based on how many saves there were. If the player quicksaves and loads constantly through the level, then you don''t give him any prizes.

Theres a lot of little things you can do around the save/load system that have the psychological effect you want, which is to get players to not save/load cheat their way through the game. If you can manipulate the players into not abusing it, why actually change the mechanism?

On a side scroller game you should certainly have "save points" along the level. They will be something like check points. If your character die you will start at the last check point you have. About maintaining character stats there are two situations:

1. Player has the same stats as when he died but items he aquired will not appear anymore nor monsters killed or quests resolved.

2. Player has the "check point stats" and just replay the level from there as usual (easily to implement). This is more challenging because by playing again a SMALL portion of game he gets familliar with game concepts and become more skillful to defend some monsters (i got this feeling when playing Hercules).

For a fps game this is a not such a good aproach because you will always produce frustration to a less-skilled player and too many security to a skilled player (the game will appear to easy to him). So let them save whereever they want (examples quake 2, unreal 2). I personaly consider a system like player can save whereever he wants and the game make an autosave at some checkpoints (maybe being kept in the game universe he forget to save and when he die...oh my God! I have to play again all that stuff...it happened to me many times).

About your system: i like the idea with two slots. Player has always a backup save (an earlier save) to recover from if he want to go a bit back. I think I used this system to save alternatively on two slots while playing Max Payne (but i am not sure :D).

"I design for eternity."

I typically save in two slots alternately simply because I''m paranoid about the computer crashing or otherwise corrupting my save file - or, of course, finding myself in a dead-end situation with no way to finish the game - in either case, that happening after about 30 hours of gameplay is seriously annoying - happening after 30 hours with a backup save maybe an hour earlier is relatively acceptable. In general, I''d prefer a system that maintained two saves to a single save setup. The other thing I use some saves for is to allow me to play certain sections again later without having to go through the rest of the game to get there...

The save system I''m planning on using is very specific to the game I''m working, but I will share it with you anyway.

In the game world ''quick save'' is a drug. Taking ''quick save'' allows you to look into the future. For example, before entering a building the player takes ''quick save'' and dies in an ambush, but of course that was just a future vision and as a result of taking ''quick save'' they can avoid the ambush.

''Quick save'' like most drugs has side effects and abusing ''quick save'' can seriuosly damage your health and performance. Now these side effects will wear off, but the player will have to go cold turkey and avoid taking ''quick save'' for period of time.

Remember, winners don''t take drugs.

quote: by inmate 2993
Another idea is counting saves, and then giving an award at the end of the level based on how many saves there were. If the player quicksaves and loads constantly through the level, then you don''t give him any prizes.

This is a good idea imo, the only issue with it would be letting the player know that this is the case but then players may also feel that the game is simply being bias to good players and punishing the worse players. I''m saying that its good in concept but needs more balancing to work.

From my experience from saving in games comes from a lack of information of what is around the next corner - so i save. The players fear of losing stems from a sence of insecurity. If you can plug this up somehow without reducing the enjoyment of risk taking then the problem of people saving to often will start to be solved at its source.

Theres actually precedence behind this, a lot of Treasure games record performance. There no item benefit, but they do record high scores. Its like FPSes that count shots and accuracy rating, making that a measure of challenge. If you make a big SAVE / TIME count, show it on some menu, or status window somewhere, and then show PAR at the end of the level... Doom did that with time if I recall right.

Yeah ok doom did it with time and i hate to sound like a critic one post after another but i can''t recall that time issue really meaning anything as in ''did people know what the appropriate time should have been?'' etc.

Performance bonuses are going to encourage people to reload isn''t it?

Loading and Saving is treated by players as a luxury but for game designers its a neccesity. Maybe this is where we are going wrong. Maybe it needs to be alined so that it means the same to players and game designers alike.

What I was saying with Save/Load, treating it like Time. Count how many times the player has saved (I''m not sure if we can count loads) and award a trivial bonus at the end. Money, ammo. Something thats not absolutely important, but it''d make a nice incentive to make it through without saving a lot.

Of course, thats just one idea, the other idea was treating saving as a resource by allocating save tokens or something. I think Diakatana did that. Wild Arms 3 did that.

So, the process doesn''t need to be altered really, just a different mindset would work.