quote: Original post by boolean
I have been thinking a lot about this aswell. I think the best three games that have handled save games are:

1. Soldier of fortune: Just gives you 3-5 save games you can use as the game progresses. It works well, since you get cocky and think, ''ah, I will clear out this room then save'', only to go in and get blown away. When you have to restart it feels more like something stupid you did, and not a gripe with the game

2. Resident evil: Similar to the above, but there are set places you can save, and only certain amount of times. This really added to the suspense, since when you have only 3% health left, are lost, have bugger all ammo, and know that the closest save point is on the other side of the level, you can become so tense and paranoid while slowly crawling through the level, just waiting for something to jump out its crazy!!

3. Halo: Good in the way that it avoids the repition problem, and takes the concentraion of saving of the player, but does make the game a bit easy.

I believe the suggestion above about continuing where you left off is how Diablo 1 worked, and it worked very well. You had just one save game. If you save, it overwrites the old one.

See all those are good systems for permanent saving, but im more or less saying add a "pause" option in the game wher you can turn your machine off and then "unpause" it when you turn it back on. Belive me, somtimes in games like that it can be a long time between saving permanently. And it frustratem me having to turn it off and goto bed, and then have to get back to wher i was in the morning.

Perhaps I should clarify

There is a permanent save at the beginning of every level.
Say you are at level 7 but wish you didn''t have such low health after level 5, so you load level 5 and play it, retaining more health. This time when you reach level 6, it replaces the old level 6 and you continue from there

Also there is a single quicksave slot. Say mid level 7 there''s a hard bit and you die. You restart the level and quicksave before the hard bit. If you complete the hard bit and quicksave again, you can be garuanteed never to have to repeat it. But suppose you have low health which you''ll carry into the next level, since you quicksaved with low health you''ll have to restart the whole level if you want more health.

The system is designed to stop players playing incrementally and backtracking anywhere they please.

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Proves It''s Worth by Fighting Back

NetHack - Savefiles are deleted when loaded. The game is really long and hard, death is around every corner... and behind you, and above, and below Works great, finishing the game is only for the best players(or a little lower, I''ve beaten it twice).

Aliens verusu Predator - (If I recall correctly) You have a set number of saves for every level, you can''t save any more after using them all. The game is pretty hard, and a little scary I didn''t like the game anyways, but it''s an interesting system.

Any shoot ''em up - No saving at all, increasingly difficult levels. This is not something you can finish unless you play *a lot*. The reason this works so good is that it usually doesn''t take very long to finish the game.


I really like the NetHack way of saving, at least in NetHack, in other games that would not be very fun Many games feature instant death, so does NetHack, but not *that* instant. And NetHack is faster than most games.
I think the problem with saving nowadays is that games are too long and focus too much on the story.

All sound good but i think you shood evry game with saving shood have temporary save files that can only be made when exiting and are deleted as soon as they are loaded. I hate having to play longer than i feel like just because i want to save. This saving system sould be mixed with another kind.

Earthbound - You save by finding a telephone and calling your dad. Telephones are located in some odd locations, but always at hotels where you can rest. If you die, you are taken back to your last save point, however, you retain all of the progress and items you''ve acquired since the last save.

The sims shood have only had save&exit, and delete the saves on loading, would have been better that way, but maybe allways it would have an secret backup all the time, incase of a game crash.

Or simply have one save slot for the entire game

********


A Problem Worthy of Attack
Proves It''s Worth by Fighting Back

quote: Original post by Shylock
This reminds me of somthing I was thinking earlier. I was wondering if our games where too easy. Nowerdays, we regard completeion of a game as a normal feature. Wasn''t completing a game once a bonus little joke for REALLY good players? It just made me wonder if game completion should be so important, and if our games should be a lot harder.

You''ll like Nethack.

quote: Original post by Beer Hunter

Original post by Shylock
This reminds me of somthing I was thinking earlier. I was wondering if our games where too easy. Nowerdays, we regard completeion of a game as a normal feature. Wasn''t completing a game once a bonus little joke for REALLY good players? It just made me wonder if game completion should be so important, and if our games should be a lot harder.

You''ll like <a href="http://nethack.org/">Nethack</a>.

Jesus that ai''t criptic… or like a joke.

Heres some interesting precedence.

Metal Gear Solid: You can save when ever, but the load will take you to the start of the level. I imagine the implementation of this is that there is an autosave that saves to RAM, and the save process just copies that autosave to data card.

Breath Of Fire Dragon Quarter: There are two ways to save; a permanent save that requires an item and are at predefined locations, and a temporary save when you turn off the machine, which erases when you load.

Now, maybe our problem isn''t neccessarily that Saveing and Loading is letting the players cheat, but rather that the game mechanics accidentally allow that side-effect. Lets analyse a situation:

:We play some jrandom rpg, gain a level, and get HP+7 ATK+1 DEF+0.
:We reload, redo that fight and gain a different level, HP+5 ATK+1 DEF+1.
:We keep doing this until we get the level we actually want.

The game mechanics allow this situation. We can fix it through messing with the save process, or maybe we can look at what the problem actual is, the level up process.

When a player gains a level, we allocate random stats. Now since this process will happen 98 times in a game, does it actually have to be random, or just appear random? If we predetermine the level up pattern, then the player can save and load all he wants, but he''ll still get the same level.

BUT HOW DO WE DO THAT?! One way is to randomize a table of randomzer seeds (which you''d have to be careful about that process) and then on level up, make the stats based on that table.

Example. JACK''s seed is 27466329, which on level up gets him such and such bonus. The new seed is 78253623, we store that back in the table under JACK''s seed. If the player cheat-loads, the seed is reset back to 27466329, which will result in the same level up bonus.

We can apply this to A lot of other ways of thinking, though It''ll probably work best in situations where you don''t want the player to just hold out for the best result. For example, Star Ocean 2''s item creation system was the type where you could just keep reloading until you got what you wanted.