Ultra Realism Possibilities?

[Ishtvan]

I don't think we've been saying limited # of saves is useless. This is by far the easiest add-on to code; I just think the player should set the number of saves they want in the playstyle options, to whatever number they want in order to fit their personal lifestyle/playstyle, rather than reading some absolute number that the FM author puts in.

 

Save points are pretty immersion-breaking. Especially on a nonlinear map where you're going all over. Imagine if you were playing T2 First City Bank & Trust and you had to go back to one particular utility closet on your way between all the different objectives, simply because you can save in that closet. That just adds an artificial goal to me, one that has nothing to do with the story of the mission, and makes no sense in the context of the game.

 

Also, if you make the save points automatic, you get into situations where say the player loses 3/4 of their health, at that point they have to think "Do I want to run over that save point? Maybe I should just reload because I don't know if I can finish the level like this and I don't want this to get saved." Again, the player is forced to break from the story of the game and think about completely artificial constructs.

 

Save points also take more coding to detect and work by the FM author to put in.

 

IMO, a playstyle option where you put in the number of saves you want to allow yourself for a given mission would be a good compromise.

[Domarius]

In that case, don't do any extra coding and introduce the concept of a "par for saves" where the FM author says "this should take about 5 saves", and you can ignore any saves you made because you had to check the oven (and don't know how to pause the game by pressing ESC). But this is boring and doesn't provide much incentative.

 

Imagine if you were playing T2 First City Bank & Trust and you had to go back to one particular utility closet on your way between all the different objectives, simply because you can save in that closet.

 

This situation is deliberate, but you're thinking about it the wrong way. They require the player to start playing more carefully. The issue is not that you have to run back to the closet. You can if you want, but it's probably a bad idea. The main point of this restriction is to encourage you to play through till you get near enough to another save point, and to do this, you have to be very careful and things will get very tense. And yes you have to make the sacrifice if you get called away from the game to start from the previous save point. It's a sacrifice you make for a more engaging game. The same as other games that use save points.

 

And remember people, this would be a player optional feature. If its disabled, save locations are ignored and you can save when you want. If this feature was implemented, I would leave it on and get very excited trying to play the game the way the FM author intended. If he or she decrees this particular part is too important to let you get away with saving right in the middle of it and it's possible to get past without saving, then I want to do it.

 

You could even allow it to be toggled during the game, in case circumstances change in your life and you decide its not worth playing with save points enabled at the moment. But the stats screen would always show "save points disabled" for this mission, for any save games made after you toggled the feature off, even if you toggled it back on again. If you wanted to redeem yourself, you could re-load from a save game that was created before you turned the option off.

Edited June 2, 2005 by Domarius

[Ishtvan]

The thing is, how do you define things like "that part of the mission" and "keep going" to the "next savepoint" in a completely nonlinear mission?

 

Immersive missions have realistic architecture (bathrooms and all), and only in the smallest of houses will you find only one "choke point" separating two areas of the house. When you make architecturally realistic mansions and whatnot, you're going to have tons of different connections between different parts of the mansion, and, like in T2, the objective could be appearing randomly in any of those parts, or it could be a pickpocket objective on someone who's moving around.

 

A decent sized mansion might have 5 stairways between the 1st and 2nd floor. If you want to let the player save just as they're getting to the 2nd floor, are you going to make all 5 of those stairways be save points? What if the player opts out of taking them and ascends up along the outside with a rope arrow? Do you make all balconies/windows going in to the 2nd floor also a savepoint? What if the player ropes up the outside to the 3rd floor instead, bypassing the 2nd floor initially and choosing to work down instead of up. They don't get to save then?

 

I really like the openness of realistic architecture and nonlinearity, and think it adds a lot to the immersion. I would hate to see an FM author put an artificial choke point in their map simply to make for a convenient save point.

 

I don't think I've ever seen save points implemented well in a nonlinear game, aside from something like an older RPG where you don't have single missions, but you go around exploring and have to "go back to town" to save.

 

Hitman2 was a nonlinear game that limited saves, but they chose to just limit the number instead of using savepoints. Savepoints would not have worked well in that game.

 

You might get away with putting savepoints at objectives, but then if the objective is heavily patrolled, you might inadvertantly save right as an AI you can't see is about to discover you, then get stuck with that save. On the other hand, it would be lame to have a little non-patrolled room around every objective simply so it could be a save point.

Edited June 2, 2005 by Ishtvan

[obscurus]

Anyone ever play any of those arcade games where if you died near the end of the game, and didn't have any lives left, and no money to continue, it was game over? Nothing like that for incentive to play the game as it was intended... Save games are usually found in abundance on PC games, consoles have always used saves sparingly, but then most consoles are very linear.

 

Regarding save points, in a non-linear mansion (as I've said before), it would probably be better to have saves linked to specific objectives (ie, "find the Ornate Chalice of Doom" - Chalice is frobed, game saves, player can reload with one chunk of the level completed if they need to) rather than particular locations. That makes way more sense to me... And since you need to complete the objective anyway, the incentive to do it for the sake of saving is moot - if you don't like how it went up until then, restart (however it could be frustrating if something bad happens right on that save, like a game bug, and a separate save might be warranted).

 

And many games these days will automatically save when you advance from one level to the next (especially console games).

 

Still, if anyone can give me a good reason why they need more than one (1) save per level[i/], I would like to know what it is... at least with only one save per level, you are still stuck with the consequences of your actions up until that save, which means you can still leave your game to do the weekly shopping and come back to where you left off, but are still encouraged to take the game seriously...

 

I am all for choice and freedom normally, but superfluous savegames to me are a choice that leans towards the same category as enabling god mode or unlimited ammo etc, and so should not be enabled by default.

[Domarius]

The thing is, how do you define things like "that part of the mission" and "keep going" to the "next savepoint" in a completely nonlinear mission?

You guys are talking about this like it's never been done before!! Like I said, many many console games, dramatically non-linear (eg. huge 5 CD RPG epics), have been doing this for years.

 

Eg. City Bank and Trust? Put one in the vault. Put one after every hard-to-get-past barrier. Every thief mission has them. There are plenty of appropriate places for save points, but I'm not going to elaborate.

 

But in all honesty, if you haven't played such games, it's like me trying to explain red to a colour blind person. There is no way I can convince you it works. But I know it does because I've been playing those kinds of games for years.

Edited June 2, 2005 by Domarius

[sparhawk]

Spar, save points aren't specifically for linear games at all.  Every single console RPG is an example of a non-linear game that uses save points.

You are shooting yourselv in the foot. Did you think WHY consoles use this almost exclusively?

 

Consoles are not PCs. Ofthen they don't even have a harddisk. THis means that the developers REALLY have to think about how to handle saves and how much space they can store. On many games for PS/2 I can even see in the description where it is mentioned how much space a savegame will take. I never saw this mentioned for PC games. Guess why. You can't really mean THAT as a serious argument because it isn't comparable.

Another reason is that console gamers are not needed to be computer proficient. They want to play a game and not worry about technical details like where to store a save game, how much space does it take and naming conventions and whatever.

 

Spring, the novel analogy is a bad one because you have no effect on the course of action in the novel. The main character doesn't do better just because you decide to re-read the last few pages and say "well THIS is how it should have happened."

 

In a game you have the same choice. Even though you may be allowed to play different maps in a different order (read the pages in random order) the outcome is still the same. If you think a game offers you more freedome it is an illusion for most games. Exceptions are probalby strategy and card games but not games that are telling a story. Try to replay T1/T2 as often as you like and change your playstylem, the story is ALWAYS the same and it doesn't change depending on your decisions.

[sparhawk]

In that case, don't do any extra coding and introduce the concept of a "par for saves" where the FM author says "this should take about 5 saves", and you can ignore any saves you made because you had to check the oven (and don't know how to pause the game by pressing ESC).  But this is boring and doesn't provide much incentative.

 

I certainly wouldn't play a mission which would have SUCH a useless objective.

 

This situation is deliberate, but you're thinking about it the wrong way. They require the player to start playing more carefully.

 

You are assuming a campaign with a well known set of maps. We are creating a toolset. This means the FM author can always put in paths that are not reversible. For example. You have to rob a mansion. In the course of the mansion you find notes about a hidden escape tunnel where the owner put some very valuable items there. So the objective is to clear the house, find the expensive painting (which happens to be located in the topmost room of the mansion) and you must also find this hidden stash of valuables in this dungeon. Unfortunately the ladder down the dungeon is broken and the owner didn't have time to fix it. So you can jump down the hole but you can't get back up anymore. Now what the player sees on the scree is, that he should find all these objects, but he doesn't know where they are. So once he enters the dungeon because this happens to be the first entry he stumbles upon, he can no longer fullfill the remaining objectives because he can't get there anymore.

 

Of course you can now come with the argument that it is the players fault because he should have thought of that (but how should he have known). You can also blame the mission author that he allows the player to get into a situation that can not be reversed, but that's live. You also don't have the chance to make everything right in real live, so this would be an acceptable situation. But the impact on the gameplay would be that the player is forced to replay everything even though he may not want it to. And don't tell me that a "carefull" player could avoid such situations under all circumstances, because he can't without foreknowledge.

 

The issue is not that you have to run back to the closet.  You can if you want, but it's probably a bad idea.  The main point of this restriction is to encourage you to play through till you get near enough to another save point, and to do this, you have to be very careful and things will get very tense.

 

For you it may be tense. For me it would be tedious because I don't want to be forced into a playstyle that doesn't suit me.

 

If you wanted to redeem yourself, you could re-load from a save game that was created before you turned the option off.

 

Which means you can easily cheat it and brag how you solved the map without saving while in truth you switched it on in-between.

[sparhawk]

  You guys are talking about this like it's never been done before!!  Like I said, many many console games, dramatically non-linear (eg.  huge 5 CD RPG epics), have been doing this for years.

Console games are predetermined. Games you buy in the store are predetermined. Show me ANY gamecreation toolset that supports savepoints in the final game that you can create with it.

[Fingernail]

and you can ignore any saves you made because you had to check the oven (and don't know how to pause the game by pressing ESC).

Not everyone lives in a world where their computer is always theirs to use and always left in games. Sometimes you absolutely have to check your email. Great, you could pause and minimize, killing performane of everything else, just because you can't save.

 

WIN.

[obscurus]

In a game you have the same choice. Even though you may be allowed to play different maps in a different order (read the pages in random order) the outcome is still the same. If you think a game offers you more freedome it is an illusion for most games. Exceptions are probalby strategy and card games but not games that are telling a story. Try to replay T1/T2 as often as you like and change your playstylem, the story is ALWAYS the same and it doesn't change depending on your decisions.

However, you can play Deus Ex in avariety of ways, and it most certainly does affect the outcome of the story - kill one character and different things happen later on in the game, and there are three alternate endings. No reason you can't do that with Thief style game...

 

Console games are predetermined. Games you buy in the store are predetermined. Show me ANY gamecreation toolset that supports savepoints in the final game that you can create with it.

 

Uhmm, well, lets see, now how about any of the Quake 2/ Half - Life engine games - you simply put an entity in the map which saves the game when the player intercepts it, and Doom 3 from my cursory observation is no different - it has savepoints in the game, no reason why any mods would be unable to make use of this. Most games have savepoints, and all that have editors for them allow you to create auto save points - Far Cry, Medal Of Honour (Most singleplayer Quake 3 engine games), quite a lot of Unreal engine games...

 

Not all games, not even console games are so predeteermined, quite a few are non-linear, with various paths for the player to chose from...

 

 

You are assuming a campaign with a well known set of maps. We are creating a toolset. This means the FM author can always put in paths that are not reversible. For example. You have to rob a mansion. In the course of the mansion you find notes about a hidden escape tunnel where the owner put some very valuable items there. So the objective is to clear the house, find the expensive painting (which happens to be located in the topmost room of the mansion) and you must also find this hidden stash of valuables in this dungeon. Unfortunately the ladder down the dungeon is broken and the owner didn't have time to fix it. So you can jump down the hole but you can't get back up anymore. Now what the player sees on the scree is, that he should find all these objects, but he doesn't know where they are. So once he enters the dungeon because this happens to be the first entry he stumbles upon, he can no longer fullfill the remaining objectives because he can't get there anymore.

 

I have never come across a comercially released game that will allow you to irreversibly access part of the level before completing an essential part of the level, thereby forcing you to restart or reload. If you can provide an example of any game where this has occured, write an angry letter to the game designer, because that is one of the biggest no-nos in game design! No level designer worth their salt would make a map that allowed the player to become stuck in this way. A lot of games actually have a variety of fairly contrived means of avoiding this situation (play Half-Life and you'll see what I mean), because it is such a bad design flaw if present in a map.

 

This is all beside the point, as this is a level design issue, and nothing to do with savegames. A level should never be designed in such a way that the player needs to reload, unless they explicitly die or fail the objectives of the map. In your above example, the player should either be reminded to complete other objectives before proceding beyond that point, or there should be another way back up to the attic from the dungeon. That might not be how it could happen in RL, but that is one piece of realism that has no place in a game (this from a diehard realism fanatic!).

[oDDity]

What's wrong with my original suggestion of the only saving being auto saves which ocur every n minutes (Say 20 or 30) this will happen without the player even knowing about it, and can be toggled off of course for people who don't want to have auto saves.

[FishFace]

oDD's proposition is not a bad one, but in the end, I think it's best to have perhaps two methods: limited saves (the number of which the player decides) and autosaves (the frequency of which the player decides - say from every 10 minutes to every hours) along with no saves and unlimited saves. I think autosaves every <time interval> is better than savepoints, for the reasons already outlined. I.E. savepoints would suck for a Thief style game. Either you have them at every possible place where the player might encounter danger or you have them at set points (and with Thief's non linearity this would most likely introduce too many, or just be sucky) or have them in arbitrary places, which would downright suck.

Yes, in a nutshell, I believe savepoints would suck.

[sparhawk]

Timed autosaves are even worse than no save at all because it means that the action of svaing is in no way connected to what happens inside the game. If autosaves are considered then I like the proposal of linking the save with the objectives much more, because this would make more sense. But IMO all automated saves are problematic, because they can always put you into a situation where it is not save to save and then you are screwed because you will have a savegame that is not usable.

[oDDity]

Timed autosaves are even worse than no save at all because it means that the action of svaing is in no way connected to what happens inside the game. 

Exactly - it shouldn't be connected to the gameplay, that's the entire point of limiting saves in the first place- so the player can't chicken out and save before every hard part, while leaving it so the player doesn't have to play forever before being able to quit the game and do something esle.

And the prolem of an autosave happening at an impossible place is not a problem at all, in the rare event that this does happen, the player can always go back to the previous autosave.

The savepoints would stack up, which also solves the problem for people who like to have a bunch of saves throughout a misison so they can drop in at any point at a later date.

Edited June 2, 2005 by oDDity

[FishFace]

The savepoints would stack up, which also solves the problem for people who like to have a bunch of saves throughout a misison so they can drop in at any point at a later date.

 

Yes, I like this idea for this reason. Previously I thought I'd perhaps limit the saves (probably to higher number than the rest of you, because I'm nowhere near as hardcore) but actually, oDD's system sounds far better. 20-30 minutes isn't too much time to replay, really, but it absolutely prevents savegame whoring, unless the player decides they want to wait around for 19 minutes after KOing every single nasty.

On the other hand, it would make certain really difficult places quite tedious, as one mistake could send you back 20 minutes. Still, this situation would at least in a well designed FM be quite rare (i.e. it would be challenging, not tedious) you'd only have to repeat 20 or so minutes (depending on preference) and YOU MADE A MISTAKE YOU GODDAMN DESERVE IT!

 

In essence, oDD's idea rocks. throw in some other options.

Edited June 2, 2005 by FishFace

[thestemmer]

I really don't understand why so many people are worked up over this. Saving isn't a part of the gameplay, it's a utility. Of course some people will overuse it. So what? It's their loss. I don't see how not letting them save makes the game experience any better for you individually. To me, it sounds like a rather spiteful attempt to force people to play the game in a way that they don't want to play it. I don't think that's in keeping with the spirit of the project, and I seriously doubt that it would give the victims a better "appreciation" of their game experience.

Edited June 2, 2005 by thestemmer

[Springheel]

how about any of the Quake 2/ Half - Life engine games - you simply put an entity in the map which saves the game when the player intercepts it, and Doom 3 from my cursory observation is no different - it has savepoints in the game

 

Half Life and Doom3 are extremely linear games. You know that a player MUST enter a certain part of the map and you can pretty much know the order he has to do it in. Thief is an entirely different kind of game. Even Farcry had constant choke points.

 

20-30 minutes isn't too much time to replay, really, but it absolutely prevents savegame whoring

 

So what happens to those people who may only have 30 minutes a day to play? I get 25 minutes into the game and it crashes. I've just wasted the only time I had available. I get 30 minutes into the game and miss a jump onto a rope. Death, and I've wasted the playing time. Or worse, the game automatically saves while I'm in the air. Wow, fun and immersion abound. If I have forty-five minutes to play, I have to stop after half an hour anyway.

 

Let the "savegame whores" quicksave every footstep if they want. It doesn't hurt my enjoyment of the game. Having a game tell me when I can and can't save does.

[AtariThief]

Timed saves every now and then are in a word DUMB.

You might have an autosave in the middle of a sneak and get creamed right as it saves.

RE-load = death every time.

+ the saves would add up very quickly

then you would have to save over old ones which might not be what you want.

 

It is quite simple Save if you like, but don't limit it. You play your way and I play my way. If you close it off to a limit then no one has a choice and people won't play.

I'm behind Fingernail on this one - Don't Limit Saves.

 

K I S S

Keep It Simple Stupid

The number one rule of programming!

[FishFace]

In actual fact, the every n minutes would be relatively simple to introduce, since I believe a) Doom has timers and TDM will be implementing saving. Duh.

 

Springheel, you completely ignored what I said about customisation: You only have 30 minutes of gaming time? Set it to 10 minute intervals, and I expect with all of these systems there will be a savegame that may be used when exiting. Like I and everyone else says, the system should suit different tastes. i.e. a system where you'd select from (for example:)

 

Number of saves per mission: <number> (-1 for unlimited, 0 for none)

OR

Saves per <number> minutes

Save game on mission change: <yes/no>

Save game on exit: <yes/no>

 

In fact the latter two probably needn't even be options, just do it.

 

Some people want to limit these things with in-game enforcement. Think about it - you can select difficulty levels, and the highest difficulty on TMA was always "don't kill anyone." If you played Hard, you could choose not to kill people, but I'm sure you all chose expert for more than just the small increase in guard sensitivity, didn't you? This is just the same, except not tied to the difficulty specifically. If people want to abuse saving as we put it, then let them. They'll probably find a way around it if they want to, anyway. However, the people who would be tempted by unlimited saves but would like to play the game properly can enforce that with actual rules.

[Renzatic]

If you were to ask me, and you should, I'd say the best way to approach this would be to give the option for limited or full on saves to the player regardless of difficulty. That way if someone doesn't want the temptation to spamsave they can turn it off from the options menu and won't be able to turn them back on til they either restart or complete the mission.

 

It's a conscience choice on their part, they know that if the mission ends up being tougher than they thought then they'll have to replay it if they want to turn saves back on. It makes it the players fault because it was his choice, not a bad design decision on our part.

[Springheel]

Springheel, you completely ignored what I said about customisation: You only have 30 minutes of gaming time? Set it to 10 minute intervals

 

If you can customize it, then there doesn't seem to be much point. Keep in mind that saving the game will mostly likely result in a system slowdown for at least a few seconds, which could get very annoying.

 

As long as the player has the choice to set the system they want, then I don't see why Ishtvan's idea wouldn't solve everyone's problems.

 

You basically have three choices:

 

Unlimited Save (default)

 

Pick Number of Saves (a value from 1-10, or whatever)

 

Save only on exit.

 

That should cater to everyone's taste, is easy to code, and doesn't force anything on anyone who doesn't want it.

[obscurus]

Half Life and Doom3 are extremely linear games. You know that a player MUST enter a certain part of the map and you can pretty much know the order he has to do it in. Thief is an entirely different kind of game. Even Farcry had constant choke points.

Thief is still ultimately quite linear, less so than doom, and Half-Life had some puzzle sections that broke up the linearity (and you could seamlessly travel back and forth between a lot of levels). But none of these games engines inherently limit games to linearity - you can quite easily make a level that has two alternative endpoints, resulting in a game with branching storylines (Unreal engines have a 'teleporter' set up that makes it easy to create reticulated, highly non-linear levels, Deus Ex made use of this feature quite markedly). You can also just as easily teleport the player using scripts that don't rely on a specific location in the level to trigger things (could be you killed a Burrick, stole a jewel, whatever).

 

Besides, I still think tying saves to specific objectives is the best option, maybe timed autosaves next. In non linear levels, autosaves would be problematic if done any other way.

 

I still don't see what the problem with limiting saves by default is - have you actually looked at how much hard drive space save games take up in D3? In TDS they were huge, and if you went around saving all the time, your performance could very well suffer if hard drive space got smaller, and save game files got more fragmented...

Games only started offering unlimited saves when hard drive sarted getting bigger and cheaper, and I don't think anyone would really suffer if you limited saves to ten or less (Thief 1 & 2 were limited to about 20).

[Springheel]

I don't think anyone would really suffer if you limited saves to ten or less (Thief 1 & 2 were limited to about 20).(

 

I think people are using the term 'limiting saves' to mean two different things. I'm talking about when and how many times I can save the game. You seem to be talking about how many save -slots- you can use.

[toolman]

I like the idea of having an option for unlimited, and player chosen no. of saves (didn't SOF have this?). I guess in the briefing or readme, the FM author could display his recommendation for the number of saves the player might wanna use on the mission. But no way should a limit be imposed by default, and be unchangable.

[obscurus]

I think people are using the term 'limiting saves' to mean two different things. I'm talking about when and how many times I can save the game. You seem to be talking about how many save -slots- you can use.

Oh, sorry, I didn't really say it, but my preference would be for something that gives you either a single save on exit, plus either objective-linked autosaves or a save slot or two that restrict you from saving again until a certain amount of time has lapsed (say 15 - 20 minutes). So by limited save I mean number of save slots, as well as some limitation on how frequently you can use those saves.