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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: Original post by Telastyn Other games like RPGs I prefer to pick and choose my save games, as it's fairly difficult to have auto-saves save at a reasonable point. Auto-saves in awkward points are worse than just burdening the player. A game with autosave can still allow user saves. The point here is that users should have this convenience so that they don't have to think about it if they don't want to. If a game wishes to provide the opportunity to think about it if the user desires to, that's absolutely no problem.

Oh indeed. I'm just saying that a user that never uses the auto-saves is more likely to be annoyed by the slight interruption they generally cause since that's the only effect they have upon the player. Usually these players are only a few, and they can deal with the annoyance for the benefit of those who do use the autosave [or better yet turn it off]. There have been a few cases I've seen though that the auto-save was so awkward or poorly implimented that nobody used it, and it only served to provide periodic interruption of actual gameplay.

All things considered, having a game that autosaves everywhere implies that the game itself allows the player some degree of control over the 4th dimension of the game's play. I.E. The player can rewind and alter time. Now, perhaps this shouldn't be a focus of the game neccessarily, but its entirely possible to perform.

First thing to note of course is that the purpose of a Save File is to allow the player to return to the game later. It doesn't always mean it has to be a complete freeze of time in the gameworld that is completely restored to normal working function. For example, an AutoSave at the start of each level means that we can draw the initial state of the world off of the CD/DVD/HDD and not need to store it in the save file. That means the save files can be significantly smaller and the game can have more freedom with saving all over the place.

Lets think for DataCard saving mechanisms for a second. The space is limited, but a little intelligent design could maximize the use of that small space. For instance, in an RPG, you could have a "Chapter Mode" which would start you at a given place, and during the chapetr you could save "Bookmarks". If its irrelevant what items the player is carrying around (for the most part), then you would only need to store that information once, and the bookmarks are just a record of location and progression in the story.

There's the problem - a save system serves quadruple purpose - to come back to the game later, to handle a crash/power-outage, as a system of "extra lives" when the user dies/fails, and as a "rewind" feature incase the user needs to backtrack their game. Imho, save anywhere is the best for the first two, but stupid for the 3rd, and allows the 4th (which I consider optional and kinda stupid).

Beyond Good & Evil has an excellent system. You can only save at certain points, but these are copious, and intelligently-placed. The only way you can screw up (barring things out of your control, ie crashes) is by dying. If this happens, you are 'rewound' to a suitable spot just before. This gives the game designers a clever way of varying the difficulty - to make a section harder, put the restart spot further back. If done carefully, it's very rarely frustrating.

Another very good way is to allow the player to manually rewind time, and in theory be able to start playing again from any point, any time they like. I think one of the Prince of Persias had something like this. Only practical if your game logic is completely deterministic, though.

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Original post by Ajare This gives the game designers a clever way of varying the difficulty - to make a section harder, put the restart spot further back. If done carefully, it's very rarely frustrating.

How often is it done carefully, though? And doesn't it break the suspension of disbelief by making save points corporeal? I mean, you're introducing extremely extra-diegetic elements in a blunt and obvious way.

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Another very good way is to allow the player to manually rewind time, and in theory be able to start playing again from any point, any time they like. I think one of the Prince of Persias had something like this.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. You possessed a glass dagger that could be filled with the Sands of Time, convienently retrieved from enemies in combat, which allowed you to rewind time up to a full minute. As you progressed in the game, you got more sand tanks for your dagger, in effect allowing you to rewind time several times in succession. You could also slow time down, allowing for complex gymnastics or combat manouvers.

Blinx, an Xbox title which I haven't played (and which has an interesting looking sequel due out soon), made this even more explicit. You can pause, rewind, advance and even record sequences of specific objects in time - using rewind and pause to reassemble a collapsed bridge and cross over it, for instance, with the bridge collapsing again once you un-pause. But this has little to do with save games.

The Sands of Time presented you with a save screen between each chapter (and had just enough save spots for all the chapters), but internally autosaved checkpoints within the chapters. You can then revisit any checkpoint at any time thereafter, which is useful if you haven't unlocked all the game's secrets, such as the original Prince of Persia game or PoP 2.

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Only practical if your game logic is completely deterministic, though.

And if it is consistent with your game's story.

Save points don't have to be giant glowing crystals like in FF7 - in Abuse they were nice big control panels on the wall - graphically they fit well, the save GUI fit well with game graphics, and there was this wonderful mechanical "tape rewind/eject" sound when you saved. IMHO, frequent save points (or invisible automatic checkpoints if teh game is very linear) are much better than "press quicksave every 5 seconds".

I enjoy an autosave feature because I don't always remember to save (or don't expect to die soon). The thing that irks me is like what FarCry does, where you have to rely on the autosave. It wouldn't be bad if FarCry didn't have cheap deaths.. but it does.. I think both forms of saving should be present.

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Original post by Oluseyi How often is it done carefully, though? And doesn't it break the suspension of disbelief by making save points corporeal? I mean, you're introducing extremely extra-diegetic elements in a blunt and obvious way.

BG&E proves that it can be done well. As for suspension of disbelief, you have to compromise somewhere - how realistic is reloading in the first place? The terminals that you use to save at allow you to read data discs. One of the discs has a 'savegame' function, so it's integrated reasonably well. A dictionary couldn't help me with 'diegetic', so I'm not sure what you meant exactly, though.

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And if it is consistent with your game's story.

Not necessarily. It may be better to use an unapologetically obvious savegame system, than it is to use an strongly-contrived gameplay device to integrate it 'seamlessly'. It depends very much on the scenario and genre of the game. I should have made it clear that my observations were directed at a specific genre, though.

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Original post by Oluseyi Quote: ...(death, among other things, becomes meaningless then, because the player knows he can easily reload back to a point before his death). Which is, IMO, a Very Good Thing™. It's a video game, Mr. Designer, so there's no reason for you to "punish" me. I paid for it and I'm playing it in my spare time; spare me your ideologies as to how I must play it.

Incentive and disincentive are basically the only tools we have to propel a player through the game; without them, the player has no reason to move through the game. (I'm not just talking about progression - GTA has incentive/disincentive without necessarily making you get 'further' in the game). You can take one of those two tools away over my dead body. [razz]

The facts that "you paid for it and are playing it in your spare time" are irrelevant. I could pay for a TV and watch it in my spare time, but if I throw it out of the window it will do something that I do not want it to do; that's not so much ideology as much as it is the nature of the object, the rules governing the system. The manufacturers could have made it titanium-plated with extensive padding such that it *wouldn't* break when I throw it out the window; that would be a different object, though, a different set of rules.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: You don't like it? Buy a different game. Death is how we do things around here. [grin]

Now, returning to the topic... I think we should consider the reasons for saved games once again. Primarily, we're trying to allow the player to stop playing the game (whether they're going to do something else, or whether they're forced to by a power cut) without losing their progress.

As such, I definitely agree that seamless autosaving should be present. Whenever I have progressed a significant distance beyond the last time the game was saved, it should save again. That would allow for situations like a system crash without making me re-play chunks of the game. (Of course, if those chunks are interesting then it may not be an issue anyway...)

I reckon it's important to allow us our disincentive tools, though. So, how about this.

The game is autosaved at very regular intervals, and autosaved whenever the player exits the game. When the player loads the game they can only start from the autosave. (Thus we establish 'seamless interruptions;' we also prevent the player from "reloading a room" if they fuck up, because the game autosaves inside the room before reloading (because that implies a game exit), so they don't get anywhere).

Then we establish 'spawn points' throughout the course of the game. This is much like Prince of Persia's approach - implicit checkpoints from which the player starts upon death. When the player dies in our game they are sent back to the most recent spawn point - or maybe, even, given a choice of returning to any of the spawn points they have visited so far.

The result? The player can't 'room reload' because the autosave won't stay obediently outside the doorway. They have to take the hit, die, and return to the spawn point. However, if they have a system crash at any time, they can load up the game and continue playing from the most recent autosave (maybe one or two minutes behind where they were at the crash).

This thread is probably going to become like the previous long save-game thread...

I think autosave really depends on the type of game, and is more of an issue on consoles. On the PC the only autosave games are single player first person shooters (for the most part). Games with statistics (like sports games) do autosave, but it is seamless, or it should be as mention in the OP. That is, it is not as if you see a "Load Game" option in the menu screen -- it autoloads the statistics when you start the game.

For consoles, autosave can be incredibly annoying, because some games save all the time and it really slows thing down.

A game like Diablo II autosaves when you exit the game and reloads when you enter the game. I think this is a pretty good way of doing things, and ought to be done in FPS games as well.