I dunno, this has probably gone on too long, it's losing it's appeal for me. I mean I'm all up for discussion, but some things just go on for too long. I have a bit of a habit whenever I see something that someone has written that I think is wrong I have to write something.
Tell you what, those who don't think quicksave is a viable game design technique can go and make games without quicksave, and I'll go off and make games that may or may not have quicksave depending on what I think is best. I believe that games that work well with quicksave are a very small specialised area anyway so it's not a biggie.
Edit: and besides, I really really need to work on my game instead of posting on this forum.
[Edited by - umbrae on November 16, 2005 1:07:45 AM]
Paying to save your game
Author
Quote:Original post by umbrae
btw punishment isn't as strong a driving factor than reward, and it attacks the player, they have failed. I think it's a good idea not to punish the player of your game too much. Realism in that way can be bad for a game.
I wouldn't punish them at all. I mean it's not like I'm saying you lose that and that and that. They would lose the mission itself. Whatever it is tied to is lost.
In death, they may lose something. But since I'm shooting for realism, it won't be a percentage of their cash. I wouldn't carry my money into hostile territory. It might be as simple as sustaining the injury that killed them. Maybe it needs to heal. Maybe the limb will be slightly weakened for a short time. They might want to pay some cash to fix the weakness with good drugs, or pay for the construction of a cool mechanical device to support it.
Quote:I'm not talking about a game you might make, I'm also not talking about a game I might make. I'm talking about a action game where you play an invincible type hero.
I guess I didn't mention it, but my game is an action game. The combat is very action oriented. I guess you could say it's similar to Prince of Persia, but the techniques lean much less toward acrobatics. The main character can be built into a very formidable weapon. A bit beyound modern human potential. But that's something the player earns, and something the game world is totally aware of.
Quote:If you aren't using this narrower idea of immersion then I would argue that tetris doesn't 'have' immersion and you can't 'give' it immersion, but you can be immersed in it.
I was talking about the act of forgetting that you're playing a game at all. So no, not Tetris. You're absolutely correct. Tetris wouldn't benefit from added 'world immersion'. But Tetris does benefit because of the lack of a save feature.
Quote:I hardly ever used bullet time. To make this experience enjoyable quicksave is useful to balance the gameplay.
Bullet time is Max Payne's natural in-game ability. It's supposed to be used to counteract the difficulty. But you chose to use quicksave instead? I guess it just depends on how you like to play.
Quote:Tell you what, those who don't think quicksave is a viable game design technique can go and make games without quicksave, and I'll go off and make games that may or may not have quicksave depending on what I think is best.
It wasn't my goal to prove that saving is destructive to games. I'll just leave it at my own personal opinion that a lack of saving can introduce more quality to a game. I guess that's what I started with, isn't it? Damn.
Quote:Edit: and besides, I really really need to work on my game instead of posting on this forum.
Sounds like a design strategy that I really really need to consider.
Idea
I apologize if this has been proposed before but I think I have a good solution for allowing quick save while preventing spammed use (to an extent) of it. Everytime the player loads a save the save file is updated with the a "loaded from" flag checked (since this happens during loading, it could work on consols too since you are supposed to leave the memory card alone during saves and loads). If the loaded flag is already checked when the player tries to load the save, then the game sends the player back to the last checkpoint instead of the instant which they previously saved. If the flag is not set then the player loads back from that instant.
Such a system would allow the save to work like an extended pause which could only be loaded from once. Of course this would still allow spamming because the player could save, then play, then lose, then reset the game and load. However, once they do that they can no longer load from that same point, they have to return to the original checkpoint.
With this, people could have lives outside of the game without taking the difficulty out of the game, (Read if you think players should have a right to do whatever they want) and without forcing them to reset everytime they have to get up and go to work.
(Of course that flag could be hacked, but so can any save file)
I apologize if this has been proposed before but I think I have a good solution for allowing quick save while preventing spammed use (to an extent) of it. Everytime the player loads a save the save file is updated with the a "loaded from" flag checked (since this happens during loading, it could work on consols too since you are supposed to leave the memory card alone during saves and loads). If the loaded flag is already checked when the player tries to load the save, then the game sends the player back to the last checkpoint instead of the instant which they previously saved. If the flag is not set then the player loads back from that instant.
Such a system would allow the save to work like an extended pause which could only be loaded from once. Of course this would still allow spamming because the player could save, then play, then lose, then reset the game and load. However, once they do that they can no longer load from that same point, they have to return to the original checkpoint.
With this, people could have lives outside of the game without taking the difficulty out of the game, (Read if you think players should have a right to do whatever they want) and without forcing them to reset everytime they have to get up and go to work.
(Of course that flag could be hacked, but so can any save file)
Quote:Original post by Kest
Isn't that normal? That's usually how it works, isn't it? Is accepting the fact that you messed up a mission really that bad? Wouldn't it be interesting to exist as a human being in another world, rather than pretending to be a hero? Just once?
Some people will accept that they messed up a mission and continue, retrying it or doing something else instead. Others prefer quickloading. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. If they have fun that way, why interrupt them because it's not how you planned the game to be?
Take speedruns for example. Those people surely don't play the game as intended, but it's amazing (and fun) to see them doing it.
Of course, quicksaving could be used as a form of cheating (doing kamikaze intelligence runs to get to know things you normally couldn't get to know because you would die, just relying on a quick savegame, for example). Then again, you can't stop people from cheating once they know how to do so. I see it as a players choice - they decide to make things easier for themselves but they also get the result of that. Cheating is easier but makes games boring. Players will see after a while that they're not getting the fun out of a game that they could by playing without cheating or evil trickery. To me, this is totally a players responsibility.
I'll tell you a story about Fang. He was the gnarliest, most sinister little kobold who ever lived. He didn't have strength of arms nor did he have much brains, but what he did have was a great affinity to poisoning every living thing he saw and creating unholy abominations from their remains (whatever was left after he engorged himself with their flesh). Once he tasted the wrong potion which partially turned him into a venomous serpent, but he learned to appreciate it later. Another time, one of the Elven-king's sorcerers cast him into the demon-inhabited Abyss but he miraculously found a way to escape. He amassed an army of undead and marched on the realm of Zot, where he retrieved the Orb that was his quest. Pausing briefly at his lair, he raced through the dungeon toward the surface with the hordes of hell behind him, until he was ambushed in a circle of stones by a pack of pit fiends and met his end in a cloud of hellfire.
This was in a game called Dungeon Crawl. No save games besides the any time save&quit. Everything is irreversible. If there was a "legal" way to save and load this peculiar crippled but powerful character and his tragic story would never have existed, and it would've been just another game where only the things you want to happen ever do happen. And what's the fun and drama in that? Fang is dead, his end was appropriate and dramatic and final. Regardless of how many weeks it took to get to the point where he was, Fang only lives on in legends among the kobold-kind, and perhaps as a ghost somewhere around dungeon level 11... Resurrecting him would be an injustice to the character.
In the next episode, a demonspawn fire elementalist named Gorgar burns a path through the Lair of Beasts. :)
This was in a game called Dungeon Crawl. No save games besides the any time save&quit. Everything is irreversible. If there was a "legal" way to save and load this peculiar crippled but powerful character and his tragic story would never have existed, and it would've been just another game where only the things you want to happen ever do happen. And what's the fun and drama in that? Fang is dead, his end was appropriate and dramatic and final. Regardless of how many weeks it took to get to the point where he was, Fang only lives on in legends among the kobold-kind, and perhaps as a ghost somewhere around dungeon level 11... Resurrecting him would be an injustice to the character.
In the next episode, a demonspawn fire elementalist named Gorgar burns a path through the Lair of Beasts. :)
Quote:Isn't that normal? That's usually how it works, isn't it? Is accepting the fact that you messed up a mission really that bad? Wouldn't it be interesting to exist as a human being in another world, rather than pretending to be a hero? Just once?
Unless the player loves ultra-realism in games (or is a masochist), he'd generally like to be able to undo his single-player mistakes. That's sorta the idea behind playing games.
Author
Quote:Original post by Captain P
If they have fun that way, why interrupt them because it's not how you planned the game to be?
The same reason you didn't have unlimited saves in Resident Evil. The same reason there's not a button to see the game ending on my title screen. The same reason it's even possible to lose in games at all. If you don't follow the reason, I can't help any more than I've already tried.
Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Unless the player loves ultra-realism in games (or is a masochist), he'd generally like to be able to undo his single-player mistakes. That's sorta the idea behind playing games.
To undo your actions? That's a stretch.
Quote:Original post by Kest
The same reason there's not a button to see the game ending on my title screen. The same reason it's even possible to lose in games at all. If you don't follow the reason, I can't help any more than I've already tried.
This is a bit off-topic, but in The Secret of Monkey Island they actually did have a keyboard shortcut listed in the manual to win the game. If you typed Ctrl-W, the game jumped to a "You Win!" screen, and then rolled the credits. It was very amusing, as it highlighted that simplying "winning" wasn't really the point of playing the game.
Just wanted to state that the link that T1Oracle is very interesting reading (about how to manage the methods of losing in a game). For platform games having a quicksave/quickload function would really spoil the gameplay dynamic, in my opinion.
Author
Quote:.. it may destroy the player's motivation because the game is too hard, or lose his interest because the game is too hard
I think this is a typo. I might be mistaken.
I, for one, think that quick save and savepoints should be, for most games, mixed.
As an example, I want to rehash through most of what has been previously said.
Sometimes, you have to quit lpaying at a moment's notice, so there SHOULD be something to allow you to do so without losing EVERYTHING.
On the other hand, it shouldn't be so that you can go back whenever you want to that point too...
So maybe you can have sort of endmission gateway autosave PLUS automatic quitting position-saving? This way, you can enjoy your game on a very casual basis, while still having that adrenalyne pumping come back quick? Well, that's "maybe"... So if you actually fail at some point, you still DO have to go through the whole mission, or something, but if you have to quit for dinner, and don't want momma to find out, you can still do it and retain whatever you got through your previous gaming session?
Only, I hope that you don't have to do it Discworld's Yeti's style, because it DOES sting a bit (insider joke, here. sorry.)
As an example, I want to rehash through most of what has been previously said.
Sometimes, you have to quit lpaying at a moment's notice, so there SHOULD be something to allow you to do so without losing EVERYTHING.
On the other hand, it shouldn't be so that you can go back whenever you want to that point too...
So maybe you can have sort of endmission gateway autosave PLUS automatic quitting position-saving? This way, you can enjoy your game on a very casual basis, while still having that adrenalyne pumping come back quick? Well, that's "maybe"... So if you actually fail at some point, you still DO have to go through the whole mission, or something, but if you have to quit for dinner, and don't want momma to find out, you can still do it and retain whatever you got through your previous gaming session?
Only, I hope that you don't have to do it Discworld's Yeti's style, because it DOES sting a bit (insider joke, here. sorry.)
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