Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Restricting saves in creative ways


snatcher

Recommended Posts

56 minutes ago, datiswous said:

When loading, you get loaded into a different area. So if you load a lot you have to do the mission in a less linair way.

Another way at this is that  when loading, certain things change. So it's like you write a new story.

 

39 minutes ago, snatcher said:

Technically impossible as a global feature, I am afraid. Too many variables the devs no have control of.

Besides, this should come with some kind of load restriction because, what's preventing you from reloading and reloading again till you get the advantage you are after?

In any case, thanks for sharing the idea @datiswous !

Edited by snatcher

TDM Modpack 4.0

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/21/2022 at 10:11 PM, snatcher said:

Going a different route:

Time-bomb mode: every now and then, at random intervals of time, you get a countdown: 3... 2... 1... if you don't save, the mission ends.

This would force you to save in the most inappropriate of scenarios, otherwise you don't progress 😁

I think I can elaborate this one a little better:

Countdown mode: Saving is disabled but every now and then, at random intervals of time (from 1 up to 5 minutes), you get a countdown: 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... if you don't save, you missed this chance.

TDM Modpack 4.0

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was beyond TDM burn out by virtue of what was becoming a relentless sprint towards release on my own mission. I started to play the contest missions and they all had elements that made TDM feel vital again (also full of humbling reminders there was still a lot to learn).

One of my favorite moments in TDM ever was when I head shot a zombie in front of a security camera in HP and the corpse sent the camera into an alarm state pulling 4 more zombies into the area (not even sure if this was intended design for the security camera). I actually hit the reload key out of habit but of course nothing happened. Then I remembered I had picked up a vial of holy water and and I still had a couple of water arrows left. Here were four zombies all clustered right together and this problem became an opportunity. Wouldn't of happened if that reload key worked. 🤷‍♂️

Never say never on this mechanic or other new (to TDM) concepts in my opinion.

  • Thanks 1

-=  IRIS  =-    ♦    = SLL =

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/22/2022 at 7:45 AM, kingsal said:

It's definitely something worth exploring imo. I played around with this in Hazard Pay- it was kind of a mixed bag of players that liked and didn't like it. To be honest, I learned a lot and made some mistakes, but I think it can be a lot of fun for some and gives the mission that extra level of intensity and survivalist feel. 

I did something similar to resident evil. Save rooms with save items that you collect throughout the level. I ended up only doing it on expert and to be honest it was difficult to test and balance. However,  I'm always up for playing missions with more options for difficulty, including save restrictions. 

Call me crazy @kingsal but I would have made the save room mechanics mandatory, mate. A one of a kind mission. Period.

You take the risk, get players to play it, get some feedback and improve unbalanced areas in further versions. I kind of feel you wanted it to be this way all along. As the artist you have proven to be, next time stick to your vision and be proud, I say.

All the bashing, backlash and criticism would only have made the mission stand out even more, perhaps to the point of becoming a cult classic.

TDM Modpack 4.0

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Obsttorte said:

I don't know that specific game but it doesn't seem to obvious to me. It is also a possibility that the developer wanted the player to decide for one approach and then life with it.

That might have been the case if they would have given enough information on the choices or actually made them logical, which they often didn't. Also regarding different endings, would you really replay a whole game for a different ending if you choose something near the start or would you just look the endings up on YouTube? Wouldn't early choices need to affect the whole game, which means you would need to basically have several games in one for example depending on which side of a conflict you choose? And last not least, not all of us have all the time in the world to play games. I have a full time job and a kid and I prefer games where I can save whenever I need to stop playing to start from where I left another time!

Edited by wesp5
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, snatcher said:

 

Besides, this should come with some kind of load restriction because, what's preventing you from reloading and reloading again till you get the advantage you are after?

Sorry I forgot about the global part. But I thought there is already a lot of talk about non-global stuff in this topic.

You just make a rule to not load the area that you are in.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, wesp5 said:

That might have been the case if they would have given enough information on the choices or actually made them logical, which they often didn't. Also regarding different endings, would you really replay a whole game for a different ending if you choose something near the start or would you just look the endings up on YouTube? Wouldn't early choices need to affect the whole game, which means you would need to basically have several games in one for example depending on which side of a conflict you choose? And last not least, not all of us have all the time in the world to play games. I have a full time job and a kid and I prefer games where I can save whenever I need to stop playing to start from where I left another time!

As said I haven't played the game, so maybe it was really bad design or to stretch the game.

Regarding the endings: It doesn't have to be the other extreme. But if you can do whatever you want and then decide the faith of the world within the last hour of your playthrough, it just feels artificial and from my point of view negates the whole idea of meaningful choices and different endings. And no, I don't want to play the game several times to see the different endings. And I would neither do so nor look them up on youtube or anywhere else. Similar to how I ignore steam achievements, although almost all games I own have them.

I am no completionist. In TDM missions, if there are optional goals I ignore them unless I get the impression it might prove useful to fulfill them. I don't care whether I found all loot as I have no use for it anyways and I couldn't care less about my stealth score (OK, I tried once to beat too late with a stealth score as low as possible. But I was bored and the mission is small.)

And even though I may not seem to raise the impression, but I work for a living, too. ;) (But I admit not having a kid. I have enough of those little zombies at work :) ).

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@snatcherAlthough no fan of the idea here are some for you:

  • On reload you loose something of value. Either loot, or once that is getting low it takes away gear. Obviously the game needs to save automatically after load. The loot taken away could be respawned in the mission, so you can reobtain it.
  • Enemies respawn and lights get relit. Obviously only a viable option if the mission is designed so that it encourages you to actually take out enemies or extinguish lights. An alternative could be to add guards or increase your visibility (maybe reloading is intented to take time, so the sun is rising)

 

4 hours ago, snatcher said:

Besides, this should come with some kind of load restriction because, what's preventing you from reloading and reloading again till you get the advantage you are after?

This may be avoidable by using a semi-randomized approach. The area you spawn after load will only check with progress. So if you spawn at a location A currently you will keep spawning there unless the amount of loot acquired has changed significantly or you have taken out guards or used gear or fulfilled an objective or a combination of both. Not easy to implement, actually an interesting challenge with the existing system.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Obsttorte said:

I am no completionist. In TDM missions, if there are optional goals I ignore them unless I get the impression it might prove useful to fulfill them. I don't care whether I found all loot as I have no use for it anyways and I couldn't care less about my stealth score (OK, I tried once to beat too late with a stealth score as low as possible. But I was bored and the mission is small.)

I'm a completionist in most games and also TDM, when it comes to goals and such. But like you I don't really care about loot or secrets or the stealth score :)! As for multiple endings, I like the Bloodlines approach: You can choose between most of them if you haven't previously pissed off a faction in the game, which might have given you a hint that it might be important later :).

Edited by wesp5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/23/2022 at 6:35 PM, Wellingtoncrab said:

One of my favorite moments in TDM ever was when I head shot a zombie in front of a security camera in HP and the corpse sent the camera into an alarm state pulling 4 more zombies into the area (not even sure if this was intended design for the security camera). I actually hit the reload key out of habit but of course nothing happened. Then I remembered I had picked up a vial of holy water and and I still had a couple of water arrows left. Here were four zombies all clustered right together and this problem became an opportunity. Wouldn't of happened if that reload key worked. 🤷‍♂️

I actually happened to have a similar moment. I was at an elevated position unreachable for the zombies and quicksaved before i heatshot the zombie in front of the cam. As expected, the cam draw the other zombies and made them sitting ducks from my sniper position. Didn't use the holy water - just good ole broadheads to the zombies' heads...
That was before i made a safe restriction disabler mod - so i played on a non-restricted difficulty of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

I am 100% on board with optional bonus challenges (mutators) you can activate before launching an FM. Could be a nice project for me for 2.13.

As posted in the "Hazard Pay" thread, my idea for a save restriction mutator is that you pay for each save with some resource like a water arrow or a health potion. Something that hurts, to make players who seek the tension think twice about saving.

Another mutator idea was "Ghost", i.e., mission fails as soon as stealth score turns non-zero and blackjacking is disabled. I wonder why everybody jumped on the save restriction topic, instead of this mutator, which would be really useful for quite a few players, wouldn't it? 🙂

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, STiFU said:

As posted in the "Hazard Pay" thread, my idea for a save restriction mutator is that you pay for each save with some resource like a water arrow or a health potion. Something that hurts, to make players who seek the tension think twice about saving.

 

1 hour ago, STiFU said:

Another mutator idea was "Ghost", i.e., mission fails as soon as stealth score turns non-zero and blackjacking is disabled. I wonder why everybody jumped on the save restriction topic, instead of this mutator, which would be really useful for quite a few players, wouldn't it? 🙂

If the "mission fails as soon as stealth score turns non-zero," that would not be good for ghost players. They might need to find out "how" they failed and experiment to avoid alerting guards. They might need to take those score points as a "bust". They might need to take those score points to complete an objective. Then, mission authors would need to encode exceptions into their missions, which would be a lot of work (if they decide to do it at all). However, part of what makes ghosting challenging and fun is when mission authors do not create their missions with ghosting in mind.

Please see:

Creating an official mode could alienate these dedicated ghost players, because it would clash with what is considered ghosting in the community. Including the Stealth Stat Tool mod in the official release would be more useful. Or, making the audible alert states of guards quick and easy to recognize could help as well. For these reasons, I don't agree with an official "Ghost" mode. If the dev team were to do it, we should consult with @Klatremus so we get it 100% correct or not pursue it at all.

(This ghosting bit should probably be in its own thread.)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, STiFU said:

Another mutator idea was "Ghost", i.e., mission fails as soon as stealth score turns non-zero and blackjacking is disabled.

Do create (suggesting, not asking) a dedicated topic when ready. Such project will clearly not be limited to "save restrictions" and as the driving force you will have control over the opening post.

Great initiative. Good luck!

TDM Modpack 4.0

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, Daft Mugi said:

 

If the "mission fails as soon as stealth score turns non-zero," that would not be good for ghost players. They might need to find out "how" they failed and experiment to avoid alerting guards. They might need to take those score points as a "bust". They might need to take those score points to complete an objective. Then, mission authors would need to encode exceptions into their missions, which would be a lot of work (if they decide to do it at all). However, part of what makes ghosting challenging and fun is when mission authors do not create their missions with ghosting in mind.

Please see:

Creating an official mode could alienate these dedicated ghost players, because it would clash with what is considered ghosting in the community. Including the Stealth Stat Tool mod in the official release would be more useful. Or, making the audible alert states of guards quick and easy to recognize could help as well. For these reasons, I don't agree with an official "Ghost" mode. If the dev team were to do it, we should consult with @Klatremus so we get it 100% correct or not pursue it at all.

(This ghosting bit should probably be in its own thread.)

Fully agree. Do it right, if at all. As I said, I was just brainstorming what other things could be done via optional mutators.

Also, of course if a player enabled mutators, there's no guarantee that the mission if finishable with those, so there should be some form of disclaimer saying that FMs weren't designed with these mutators in mind and that they might not work properly. The existence of mutators should ideally never affect any mapper in their work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, STiFU said:

The existence of mutators should ideally never affect any mapper in their work.

I know from experience with Bloodlines that something like this will make finding bugs much more difficult, because if people use different mutators and then report issues with a mission, the mappers need to bear that in mind when looking for the reasons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My own suggestion which I was thinking of earlier after this was brought up again: When a new mission is started, under the 3 difficulty options (Easy, Medium, Hard), why not offer a separate setting for save restriction independent of difficulty level? It could be a separate checkbox with which the map's difficulty setting decides how severe save restrictions should be. While initially I may have welcomed this as a map choice for the standard difficulty setting, I now believe restricting saves should be a separate user-controlled choice, which would oppositely also make it usable on all old FM's.

I think there's one potential issue with this plan, correct me if I'm wrong: Some FM's implemented checkpoints where the map itself decides when to auto-save, and that can only be specified by maps themselves. If the two features can be separated, does anyone else think we can limit no-saving to a separate field picked in the mission briefing menu?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      Please vote in the 15th Anniversary Contest Theme Poll
       
      · 0 replies
×
×
  • Create New...