I don''t see how this would be much different from free saves. You say that the suspension data is gone as soon as you resume the game. Does it also disappear if you die? Even if so, there''s nothing to stop the player from suspending the game as a safety net... when he gets into a fight he knows he can''t win, he just kills the game before the enemy can kill him and erase his save data. Then he resumes the game, ''suspends'' it again, and repeats. Call me pessimistic, but I don''t think you can find a happy medium between free saves and save points, unless you count games like FF7 where you can free save only in a certain area (the world map).


-Ironblayde
Aeon Software

In tabletop RPG when you die it is final, you dont reload your character. It is as if every action was saved. Perhaps implementing RPG like this could sort between players interested in the roleplay wich would assess the risks of what they do and powermaxer trying to fight everything to gain combat skills or xp. This way the game would be continuous and getting out of difficult situations would much more rewarding for the player.

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Arius there was an age undreamed of..."

I think it''s worthwhile to point out what Diablo II did for saving. Whenever you go back to town, it saves. Whenever you quit, it saves. Whenever it feels like it, it saves. But you can only have one saved game per character, and it''s automatically loaded when you come back to the game. I thought this was a great technique for saving. It meant that you couldn''t save, try something, and if you died load, because you couldn''t load again without saving first (did that make sense?)!

Anyways, it was a great idea, and I think deserves more consideration.

I''m developing a 2d horror game very similar to Resident Evil. Any suggestion on how to save? I thought about something like in Resident Evil, but I want to use something else.


-------
Me Hardguy.
and here is my game...

Well i''d go for save spots because:

1)I hate free saving.
You just can''t save a game whenever you like.It is really irritating in an RTS/RPG.You can just waste your life and take any risk without any significant cost.I only like free save in games like Doom where you die in a regular base of 1 or two minutes.But not in RTS/RPG games.

2)I hate replaying the whole thing when i lose.
Now to the other side of saving - the lack of save game.
I wouldn''t vote for it as long as you die that easily like in most RPG''s nowadays.When i''m going to lose my "life" in just a few seconds and after two or three days of playing, well i wouldn''t like yo restart the whole thing.

3)Save spots make it equal for everyone.
Save spots give the same chances to everybody.
You can''t blame your misfortune when all of a sudden a huge monster attacks you and sends you to hell,because your last save is a thousand miles away.
You just know that every other player had the same luck with you and if they died they had to start from the same save spot again.
Equality!

Ok i don''t believe save spots are the remedie cause they depend on the designer''s "design" abilities and they may not be good...

But anyway.
Voodoo4

Heh, you''re right Chronos, I totally misunderstood what you were saying. Chalk it up to the difficulty of trying to communicate with actual people after a day of programming in isolation with only NPCs to keep me company.


-Ironblayde
Aeon Software