Have an autosave every 5 minutes, but keep your entire history of auto-saves, and have a tree-like interface for viewing it.
Heck, track the user inputs in the 5 minutes between saves, and have an engine capable of replaying user inputs and getting the same game state, and you have a complete record of everything that happened in the game, backing up to any point in the past, and testing out "what if" game branches at will.
Auto Game Saves- good idea or bad idea?
How about making it an option like Fallout Tactics' "Iron Man" (or "Hardcore" or whatever they called it) mode. You selected the option at the start of the game. If you chose it, you could only save between missions. Thus, panzies (like me) do not select it and have a good time, while iron men get the extra challenge. Making it optional gives the best of all worlds:
Players who want/need to be able to save often don't have to deal with the troubles of being locked into the designers' saving schedule. Hardcore players can get the extra challenge and have the pride of finishing "hardcore" mode.
This is one of the benefits of including "cheats", especially if it's under the guise of "lower difficulty". By renaming cheats as "difficulty levels" you do not alienate players who want/need to use them and you give a gold star to anyone with balls of steel who can complete your higher difficulty levels. Even better, because people generally like gold stars, they'll want to complete your higher difficulty level just to say they did (i.e. they'll consciously like this option).
Players who want/need to be able to save often don't have to deal with the troubles of being locked into the designers' saving schedule. Hardcore players can get the extra challenge and have the pride of finishing "hardcore" mode.
This is one of the benefits of including "cheats", especially if it's under the guise of "lower difficulty". By renaming cheats as "difficulty levels" you do not alienate players who want/need to use them and you give a gold star to anyone with balls of steel who can complete your higher difficulty levels. Even better, because people generally like gold stars, they'll want to complete your higher difficulty level just to say they did (i.e. they'll consciously like this option).
autosaving every five minutes sounds like a good idea only three things you should consider:
1) is there only one slot for saving e.g. new autosave overwrites an older one. This doesn't work for games that are not irreversible. E.g. I might want to go back to an earlier point in the game to get some information (or roll 20 on a dice)
2) each autosave leads to a new savegame. If a game takes 10 hours to complete you're looking at 200 savegames. Consoles like ps2 do not provide for that many savegames, in addition how is the user ever going to find the savegame he/she wants to restore? An autosave (especially background) does not create a mental image in the head of the gamer where the game is in the game especially if savegames are named autosave-XX-DATE and there is no visual save implemented. If the gamer can save the game himself and give it a name he's/she's much likelier to recall the right savegame.
3) is the user aware that the game is being saved? if not how will he feel "save" to leave the game?
I've tried describing autosave in my interaction desig pattern collection for games see autosave
1) is there only one slot for saving e.g. new autosave overwrites an older one. This doesn't work for games that are not irreversible. E.g. I might want to go back to an earlier point in the game to get some information (or roll 20 on a dice)
2) each autosave leads to a new savegame. If a game takes 10 hours to complete you're looking at 200 savegames. Consoles like ps2 do not provide for that many savegames, in addition how is the user ever going to find the savegame he/she wants to restore? An autosave (especially background) does not create a mental image in the head of the gamer where the game is in the game especially if savegames are named autosave-XX-DATE and there is no visual save implemented. If the gamer can save the game himself and give it a name he's/she's much likelier to recall the right savegame.
3) is the user aware that the game is being saved? if not how will he feel "save" to leave the game?
I've tried describing autosave in my interaction desig pattern collection for games see autosave
One thing I don't like about autosaves is when it saves too late, like it saves then a second later a bomb explodes under me and no matter how many times I load I cannot avoid it. This makes me look for an older save. Therefore, I'd only run the autosave when you are in a safe place. Then let the user use quicksaves at his own peril. I get what you mean by not being able to go to a comfy spot and making it more 'challenging', but if it saves at a really bad time it would be more frustrating than challenging.
For games without permadeath (like Diablo 2), I think it is sufficient to save upon exit and load when you start the game again. (However, I remember reading in the Diablo 2 post-mortem that a lot of people wanted a save-anywhere no-monster-respawn system, but in my opinion that would have trivialized tough parts of the game.)
There was a very long thread about save games a couple years ago I think, you might want to search for that for more input.
For games without permadeath (like Diablo 2), I think it is sufficient to save upon exit and load when you start the game again. (However, I remember reading in the Diablo 2 post-mortem that a lot of people wanted a save-anywhere no-monster-respawn system, but in my opinion that would have trivialized tough parts of the game.)
There was a very long thread about save games a couple years ago I think, you might want to search for that for more input.
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