Make it a pain in the arse to save at a cerain points (forcing the user to create a backup of a current game state, using MadKeith''s idea would be a good example). That way, it becomes too much of a hassle to save at every doorway. Besides, if you get killed, and didnt save, and have to do a battle all over again... you deserve it. I had this happen yesterday in HL...7 hp, 3 grunts, most difficult setting... took me about 25 tries, and then i died again, and had to go for another 25 tries. I deserved it out of stupidity =).

Z.

quote: Original post by Garott
@MadKeithV -
Can''t you just make a backup copy of the save-state and restore it when you want to? This would make it a pain in the butt for your average gamer, and this system was implemented in some of the old classic games.

This is a possibility for the simplest implementations of the system. It''s not really a bad thing either - I used to do it for games such as Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.
You can also put in extra checks to make sure it doesn''t happen - though it isn''t really necessary. People will go to great lengths to have their save games

What you could ALSO do - just occurred to me writing this - is combining both systems. The game always has the latest state on disk - secure and crash-proof. It also has a "branching" mechanism, whereby you can choose to "set aside" the current state. You could tie the amount of "branches" you have available to the difficulty level for instance, or some other method of saving. You could even just have the "branching" available all the time, but you needn''t use it to continue the game, only to "branch" it or to preserve at a dangerous place.




People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

quote: Original post by Zaei
Make it a pain in the arse to save at a cerain points (forcing the user to create a backup of a current game state, using MadKeith's idea would be a good example). That way, it becomes too much of a hassle to save at every doorway. Besides, if you get killed, and didnt save, and have to do a battle all over again... you deserve it. I had this happen yesterday in HL...7 hp, 3 grunts, most difficult setting... took me about 25 tries, and then i died again, and had to go for another 25 tries. I deserved it out of stupidity =).

Z.

You are right!.

In fact, Aliens vs Predator, the save option is only available in the end of scene.. this sux because you die 5 o 7 times in each scene. For this, they put a patch for save in any points.

In opposite, Resident Evil 1,2 you have a save points, and a amount (limited) of "save options". Is good because you have enough "save options" (even for rookies), and you avoid to save in any point. Also, is good for proffesional players, because if you don't save more that 10 times, then you can reach a secret level/stuff.

-----------------------------------------------

"Cuando se es peon, la unica salida es la revolución"

Edited by - eng3d on December 17, 2001 11:39:14 AM

I didn''t read all of the posts but I know when a game has "save points" like some monolith the player has to touch, the game is less fun.. (?)

One of my friends has a couple games w/ save systems like that, and usually he will jump back how ever far it takes to save is progress.


"Yes I am lame, how did you know ?"

First off, I'd like to say it's good to see you again MadKeithV, hope you start showing up more often

Now then, I have to admit that the constant save option is a good idea, but what about the overhead? What do you define as a game state? There is just so much data that goes into saving a game, a lot of games take minutes these days depending on the user's system. If you have the game constantly do writes to the hard drive, that will just drag the framerate all to hell. So while this is a good idea, you'd probably have to devise some new save-state method that stores all the neccessary data in the smallest and quickest way possible. This calls for R&D, which is probably why a lot of companies don't bother with it. Sorry to be realistic but you didn't specify how much data is being saved. I mean even a "snapshot" of time can be rather large these days in terms of data sizes. You may think that cause you've written data to the drive earlier you just have to update certain values, while others may not need to be touched. This may be true, but I just don't see the benefits coming from the development side, and it's sad that we have to think about it that way but there it is. Maybe one day when publishers aren't so nitpicky and tight on their purse strings we can look into stuff like this that would benefit the player.

_________________________________________________________________

Drew Sikora
A.K.A. Gaiiden

ICQ #: 70449988
AOLIM: DarkPylat

Blade Edge Software
Staff Member, GDNet
Public Relations, Game Institute

3-time Contributing author, Game Design Methods , Charles River Media (coming GDC 2002)
Online column - Design Corner at Pixelate

IGDC - the International Game Developers Chat! [irc.safemalloc.com #igdc]
NJ IGDA Chapter - NJ developers unite!! [Chapter Home | Chapter Forum]

quote: Original post by Gaiiden
Now then, I have to admit that the constant save option is a good idea, but what about the overhead?

True, a very valid point. It''s probably because I''m more of a "slow games" player - CivIII and the like - where save time is not really an issue, and complete "game states" are reasonably small. I used to play things like Quake, but I never found the need to "save" there - it was always multiplayer.
But, considering the "future" of single player roleplaying games, such as Deus Ex, machine performance is an issue. I should have realised this point - because I''m also a musician, and my hard-disk performance while recording is so abominable that it drags down my whole windows performance (and that''s on a system with 400megs of memory!). So yes, implementing the "constant save" in a game would require a lot of careful planning - planning that will cost too much money for most game projects that can make do without. It''s not a big enough change to warrant a significant increase in budget. So, I guess an independent developer will have to prove the point in order to get it accepted into the mainstream.

I''m thinking that the whole concept of a "game" (i.e. what you start when you click "new game") will have to change to something akin to a database: you start a new "record", and everything you do happens within the database, with advanced visualisation. At a frame rate of 90FPS, that''s a hell of a hit to take. It might require locking down the framerate to the "visual maximum", something like 50FPS, and using excess power to make the saves. It might also mean that the game state is not "written" as often as every frame, but rather every second or so.
If I get the time, I''ll do some reading into the systems used for databases, see if I can come up with good reasons for or against this system, performance-wise.



People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

Savegames should never be used if they allow a player to "go back in time".

Remember Wizardry 1? You could only save your game if you went all the way back out of the dungeon. If you died in the dungeon, sorry dude!

Of course, if there''s a good reason (plotwise) for allowing the player to go back in time...

You could have a system where the player saves the game at some point (fixed or otherwise) and then can load it up later, if they don''t die. The worldstate is restored but the player''s state remains from before the game was loaded, perhaps wounded and crawling away from a tough fight to a healer''s shop where they saved in the past. This would probably have to be limited somehow, possibly through characters that age (so if you keep going back in time you will die of old age and never finish the plot).

What about a timeline of the current game ''record''?
Using the already described method of Tick-saving (let''s say 1 Tick = 5 seconds) the game creates automatically a timeline of the players progress. When the game character dies and the player has to reload, he chooses the place from where he would like to restart out of the timeline, and here''s the trick (i hope ^_^):
the further the player goes back in the timeline to reload, the more he''ll get his game character safe from dangerous situations, but, at the same time, he''ll have to re-play more of the actions he performed the last time...err, i''ve made

a diagram to make it easier for you to understand
=)

IMHO, I really don''t think saving deserves any spot whatsoever in gameplay. It''s a function that allows the user to either save his progress or back himself up from making stupid mistakes and having to repeat things over again. Like I said earlier, it''s a choice the player can make whether to be hardcore and save only when he absolutly needs to (like leaving the game) or more casual by saving a lot. This isn''t a decision the designer should make for the player.

_________________________________________________________________

Drew Sikora
A.K.A. Gaiiden

ICQ #: 70449988
AOLIM: DarkPylat

Blade Edge Software
Staff Member, GDNet
Public Relations, Game Institute

3-time Contributing author, Game Design Methods , Charles River Media (coming GDC 2002)
Online column - Design Corner at Pixelate

IGDC - the International Game Developers Chat! [irc.safemalloc.com #igdc]
NJ IGDA Chapter - NJ developers unite!! [Chapter Home | Chapter Forum]