A few thoughts:

1. Autosave that doesn't interfere with gameplay is good.

2. Preventing the user from saving at will is [depending on the game] highly annoying. It effectively prevents those of us who maybe have to go at a moments' notice from playing the game. At least have full saves in town or in the world map [or at little save stones]. Then entering a dungeon for the first time or big plotlines can be done without save cheapness; but the player can still explore or shop while still being able to leave at a moment's notice.

3. Speaking of save cheapness, I agree that re-loading until you get the roll/result you want is highly lame. But it's also the players' choice in single player. If they want to ruin their own experience, why not let them? [OR, save the Random Generator seed, so that re-loading will always result in the same rolls]

4. Hiding a special file won't do anything to prevent file fiddling. It just means the hacker who makes the trainer in the first place spends 10 extra minutes. The rest just download tools anyways.

Autosave at logical intervals to a temporary game save - a session file. Let the user save/load a session whenever, and let the user load from a specific checkpoint within the session.

Voila! Perfect saving.

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Original post by Oluseyi Autosave at logical intervals to a temporary game save - a session file. Let the user save/load a session whenever, and let the user load from a specific checkpoint within the session. Voila! Perfect saving.

It's so obvious that one wonders how people could possibly manage to get it wrong.

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Original post by ManaStone What would you think of a game that auto saved everything every 5 minutes and didn't allow you to save it manually?

I'd think the developer was arrogant.

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This would make the game more challenging because the player will not be able to revert back to a more comfortable spot when things get icky. Although the player might not consciously like this option, it will give him more game time and will probably take longer for him to get bored.

Not in my case. It would more likely cause me to (1) download a crack to let me save on demand or (2) not play your game. Your game would have to be spectacularly good that I'd overlook such a fundamental flaw in the game's design.

I also don't think that it's terribly likely that I'd be less likely to get bored: I think the exact opposite is the case. If I have the choice of restoring the single session I have available or restarting the entire game, then every time I find myself in a no-win situation with my current session, I'll have no choice but to start the game from scratch. Unless the game is terrifically dynamic, that's going to get boring real fast.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage MMOs use a constant game state system that keeps you from abusing the save/load system, and nobody really complains about that.

I think there's a big difference here. Dying in an MMO isn't necessarily a permanent death. Even when it is, if you start as a new character, you don't start in exactly the same game as last time you started.

For me, the most annoying thing about dying and not being able to restore from a recent save is the fact that I'd have to play half of the exact same game again. In a MMO, you don't ever play the same game, so it's quite different.

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Original post by Talroth Have auto saves only when you can't hit a total deadend. If I enter a room where badguy with the "Sword of death +1000" and I have a dagger I picked up, I should be able to run back out of the room. Don't lock the player into things they might not be able to do, always give them the option of pulling back and regrouping.

Excellent observation.

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Original post by Telastyn 3. Speaking of save cheapness, I agree that re-loading until you get the roll/result you want is highly lame. But it's also the players' choice in single player. If they want to ruin their own experience, why not let them? [OR, save the Random Generator seed, so that re-loading will always result in the same rolls]

Perhaps a better solution to this problem is to tell the player that he's playing the wrong way. If he keeps trying something and nearly succeeding, you could wait until he manages it by pure luck, or you could offer a hint as to another way to do it. There's another way to do it, right?

Also, let the user decide. One feature of AvP and SoF that stuck out was that you got to pick how many save games you were allowed. It annoyed me that AvP didn't have a "Infinite" option, though (even though I never actually ran out).

Furthermore, if users are going to insist upon rerolling until they gets maximum points for everything, that's a clue that you should add a "god mode" where you always win your rolls. Cheating? Only if you decide that it is: Alpha Centauri has a highly flexible cheat mode and it never diminished the gameplay for me, because I just didn't use it when I wanted to win "fair and square".

While I'm in favour of a good game design that incorporates auto-saving at regular intervals rather than manual saving, I agree with the other replies that I don't think you've listed a very good reason for having that feature.

In my view, pretty much the only reason for having that feature would be to send the message "this game doesn't need you to save every six seconds, so we'll take care of the saving for you so you can go enjoy playing the game".

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that's a clue that you should add a "god mode" where you always win your rolls.

I disagree. Why waste even a minute of developer time neutering your own game design? To appease a portion of your playerbase that have no inclination to actually play the game? Might as well ship a web page with "YOU WIN!" in big red blinking font.

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Original post by Telastyn Quote: that's a clue that you should add a "god mode" where you always win your rolls. I disagree. Why waste even a minute of developer time neutering your own game design? To appease a portion of your playerbase that have no inclination to actually play the game the way you've decided they should be playing it? Might as well ship a web page with "YOU WIN!" in big red blinking font.

Fixed.

Plus, I rather suspect you'd have a god mode in there to make things easier when you're testing it. Who wants to waste hours of developer time checking some inventory glitch somewhere because you have to battle through an army of the undead every time to get to the point where the glitch occurs? The more likely scenario is that removing the god mode is what would take the extra time (although, granted, it shouldn't take any more time than toggling a constant somewhere).

Earth 2160 had a nice solution: Two autosave slots, where the older one was overwritten every five minutes.

This pretty much (because of the pace of the game) meant I never saved manually mid-level. Unfortunately, it took several seconds to save the game, so it was annoying sometimes. If possible, try to minimize the time it takes to autosave, and don't save in the middle of a hairy situation.

I don't understand the notion that the player should only be able to save at certain spots or only be able to have a certain amount of saved games. That pretty much means to me that the game either isn't exciting enough (the player has too many opportunities to save) or is too repetitive (the player really hates the idea of redoing part or all of the time between saves).

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I disagree. Why waste even a minute of developer time neutering your own game design? To appease a portion of your playerbase that have no inclination to actually play the game? Might as well ship a web page with "YOU WIN!" in big red blinking font.

There are many reasons that a player might want to "break" you game design. One could be that it is a bad design. Another is that your kid messed with it while you were on the phone. If you just had a save every 5 mins that overwrote the last and they were messing about for more thime than that, you might loos all your effort that went into getting to that point.

I think more developer time would be wasted by people getting fed up with a bad save system and abandoning the game out of frustration. If you give people the option then those that relish in the chalenge can refuse to use the save games, and those that tend to get interupted by "Real Life" (whatever that is :D) will apreciate that functionallity.

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Original post by Edtharan Quote: I disagree. Why waste even a minute of developer time neutering your own game design? To appease a portion of your playerbase that have no inclination to actually play the game? Might as well ship a web page with "YOU WIN!" in big red blinking font. There are many reasons that a player might want to "break" you game design. One could be that it is a bad design. Another is that your kid messed with it while you were on the phone. If you just had a save every 5 mins that overwrote the last and they were messing about for more thime than that, you might loos all your effort that went into getting to that point. I think more developer time would be wasted by people getting fed up with a bad save system and abandoning the game out of frustration. If you give people the option then those that relish in the chalenge can refuse to use the save games, and those that tend to get interupted by "Real Life" (whatever that is :D) will apreciate that functionallity.

Note that the original reply was not to auto-save, but to making a mode where you always 'roll 20'. There is a reason I posted a quote above that comment.