The save/load problem

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.

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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.

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Narrative based games should definitely be completable.

I think this is how saving shood be (this might be exacly what you mean but i got cunfused at the last part): 2 save files for each save. You can save and exit at any time you like. Once you load up the save and exited save file it is deleted. Then at given locations there is permanent saving points, where you have the option to just save and make a file permanent untill you delete it.

So the save and exit thing is like being able to pause the game for long peiods of time while the machine is off. A permanent save is like saving the game, except you can oinly do it in predetermined locations.

This make is so that there is unavoidable concequences for screwing up, dieing, missing somthing. And you have to go back a ways to make these screw ups you did right, by loading a save. Therefor increasing the difficuly of the game by adding consequeses making it so the player will not zoom thru knowing if he dies heall be right where he left off. This adds intensity to the expirence therefor increasing the fun. Or occasionaly frustration. The save and exit function eliminates the annyoance of the whole "crap it was an hour of playing since i last saved and an hour untill the next save point, and i have to go, what will i do" dillema. Instead its "phewf, lucky i can save and exit and end up right where i started" and belive me, its a nice feeling. So scince we both eliminate frustration and add difficulty, It is safe to say that this is the ultimate saving system.

I''m going to keep it short n sweet. I don''t think players should be saving unless they''re not going to be playing anymore. Anything else could be improved on.

So when the person starts the game again is the save deleted? if so what happens when they die?

If save on exit (and delete that save on load) is the only save option, then it matters when you die. Depending on the game, it might matter too much. In those cases, a save at the start of each level might be a good idea (or save points in a level-less game like an RPG). If you can only save in certain spots, then saving means something, and dying doesnt mean "reload and redo the hallway battle for the 73rd time". Save options need to be taken into account when designing the game though. You can''t make the levels with "save anywhere" in mind and then suddenly change it to only "save and exit" because they imply different types of gameplay.

I think save anyhwere is generally a bad idea, but you need to be able to go to real life, so that is the reason for the save and exit. Since that save is deleted on load, you can go to real life but you can''t use it as a normal save anywhere feature.

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.

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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.

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Zelda (pretty much any of the series) - When you save, your progress is kept, but you position is reset back to the last continue location (eg dungeon entrance). In Majora''s Mask, a "permanent" save sets you back to the beginning of the three day cycle (and going back to the beginning of the cycle autosaves), but "interrupt" saving can be done any time from any of several save points, which can be warped to from almost anywhere (and the save self-erases when you resume).

Goldeneye - relatively short levels and the game autosaves between them (it''s possible to spend half an hour or more on some levels if you''re playing slowly, but every level can be completed in less than 10 minutes - which is how you unlock secrets ). In fact, the silent autosave when progress is made is pretty common amongst games for N64 (and GameCube as far as I can tell).

The only real problems I can see with a self-erasing save are: in narrative driven games, where a number of players like to keep saves around important cutscenes in order to watch them/show them to friends later without having to play all the bits in-between; game crashes (which can be worked around by having a constantly updated "current state" "save" - probably actually two used alternately - so that the game can be recovered); abuse by players copying the save-games (which effectively converts the system back to free saves - with an awkward interface )

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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.

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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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A Problem Worthy of Attack
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

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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.

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You''ll like Nethack.

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.

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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.