Why We Have Checkpoint Saves
Letting players save whenever they like can be a technical nightmare.
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Letting players save whenever they like can be a technical nightmare.
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Why We Have Checkpoint Saves
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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Seems like if you just prevent the player from saving in combat (like a lot of games do), you solve plenty of these issues.
And even after all of this, I still can't forgive Bioshock Infinite's abysmal save system.
And even after all of this, I still can't forgive Bioshock Infinite's abysmal save system.
Same.sid said:
And what about the possibility of making a save game that sets things back to semi-default? It doesn't track every single effect, but reloads the game with characters in approximate positions (dead enemies removed) and reverts to basic AI; they see the player and switch to battle mode.
I know it's not perfect, but I think it's less back-breaking to make, and most players won't care if such a small crutch is used.
I especially hate when PC games don't allow you to save on demand. Also, if bug-prone shops like Bethesda can pull it off, then there's no excuse!
You could add 10 more paragraphs of stuff that has to be saved and it wouldn't be impressive. It's not like you are manually saving this stuff by writing it down. Gathering information, organizing it into files, and saving it is something that computers are really good at. If the developer goes in with the knowledge that they will need to save this stuff, then it shouldn't be super hard to do so.
And, yes, captcha, fezes ARE cool.
And, yes, captcha, fezes ARE cool.
One of my favorite things to read about are save game hacks, where modders will pinpoint what each part of a save file is actually saving and learn to alter it in order to create custom save game states. I think anyone who spends enough time gaming knows how complicated save game files have to be, but I also have never really had a problem with checkpoints as long as they're within reasonable distance of each other (I'm looking at you, first part of Borderlands 2).
Honestly, I don't see why more shooters don't do the Kingdom Hearts thing, where the game recognizes two states of being in combat and out of combat and only allows you to access menu options when out of combat.
Honestly, I don't see why more shooters don't do the Kingdom Hearts thing, where the game recognizes two states of being in combat and out of combat and only allows you to access menu options when out of combat.
Wow. Had no idea it was so complicated.
But . . .
I mean, Half-Lif 2, as an example. Some really cool visual effects (lighting, physics, animations, etc.) and some tremendously smart AI, and it still has - to my knowledge - almost flawless quicksaving. Is it just engine/game optimization? Is is just the Source engine?
But . . .
Yeah . . .sid said:
I mean, Half-Lif 2, as an example. Some really cool visual effects (lighting, physics, animations, etc.) and some tremendously smart AI, and it still has - to my knowledge - almost flawless quicksaving. Is it just engine/game optimization? Is is just the Source engine?
If I have to defeat all the enemies in an area to save, or go to a specific "safe zone" which I know the location of in advance to save, that's fine. But not knowing when I'll next be able to turn off my system without losing all my progress- that's just bad design, frankly.
I think if there were a sufficient amount of save spots where you could save or if you'd be limited to not save in combat (like most games do), this wouldn't be much of a problem.
Plus, games where you have some sort of skill system that encourages playing a game in a completely different way/class should have manual saves... I love replaying games that allow me to play in a different way by skilling my character (melee, ranged, mage...) differently. But not if I'd have to replay the whole 'newbie' part of the game (where you can't really specialize anyways) again.
Plus, games where you have some sort of skill system that encourages playing a game in a completely different way/class should have manual saves... I love replaying games that allow me to play in a different way by skilling my character (melee, ranged, mage...) differently. But not if I'd have to replay the whole 'newbie' part of the game (where you can't really specialize anyways) again.
Shamus, I'm glad that you exist. Furthermore, I'm happy that The Escapist scooped you up. Finally, I'm pleased that you're able to articulate these concepts for microbiologists like me to understand.
As a software developer myself (not games....yet) whenever I hear another developer say "Its too challenging to..." I translate it in my mind to "I'm too lazy to...."
Off the top of my head STALKER and Doom 3 were bit time FPS games that pulled off save anywhere just fine. Aliens vs Predator 2000 shipped with no save system and it was introduced later in an expansion.
Unity has the ability to just save the state of a scene in its entirety and I can't imagine more industrial strength engines don't have the same capabilities. Maybe back in the olden days of one-off engines saving might have been challenging but there is no more excuse now. Even emulators let you save the state of the system they are emulating to reload later. In summary yes it might be "hard" but that isn't an excuse.
Off the top of my head STALKER and Doom 3 were bit time FPS games that pulled off save anywhere just fine. Aliens vs Predator 2000 shipped with no save system and it was introduced later in an expansion.
Unity has the ability to just save the state of a scene in its entirety and I can't imagine more industrial strength engines don't have the same capabilities. Maybe back in the olden days of one-off engines saving might have been challenging but there is no more excuse now. Even emulators let you save the state of the system they are emulating to reload later. In summary yes it might be "hard" but that isn't an excuse.
You've clearly never actually tried to write a game-save system.Clovus said:
The current state of any game is represented by a very, very complicated nest of objects each with their own data and linking to each other in complicated ways. In order to save it all, you have to make every object such that all of its data can be accessed. Then you need to send all of that data up through the complicated object structure to a top-level object which can turn it to a serialized game state. Since your object structure isn't a simple branching tree, you need to be able to only save each object once, then recognize when you've already saved an object, and have a way to include that reference as part of another object's data. Then you have to be able to put all of it back together.
But that's only part of the fun: you don't want your save games to become unusable every time the code changes. Meaning that you need to find a way to do all this without tying it too closely to the details of the object structure.
And, no, computers are not "good at organizing information". They need to be told, in excruciating detail, how to organize any information you give them. We've got plenty of general-purpose cases which have already been solved by programmers, so you've never had to worry about it before, but none of those are going to work with the game engine that you just built.
Having an emulator save the state of the game it's playing is much easier- you can just straight up write the emulator's memory and register contents to a file. You don't have any external resources to worry about, and nobody expects to re-load a save emulated game state after patching the game.rembrandtqeinstein said:
It's a good question. Making a save on one system shouldn't be any harder than on another, so I'm tempted to assume it's all due to expectations and conventions: PC players expect save-on-demand, and console players are okay without it. So PC devs put in the extra work and console devs sometimes let it slide.sid said:
That's just a guess, though.
So what you mean is that the complete contents of the game's allocated RAM could be dumped to a file and then considered a "save file".
For Unreal games, that would be bad news, since Unreal uses A LOT of RAM (generally around 2 Gigabytes independent of map or game; I don't know why that is, it just is).
Though for SOURCE, CryEngine, PATH4 and RAGE-Engine based games that means that that would actually be doable. Considering we can buy terabyte hard drives for cheaps now, you'd just need a warning message saying "Attention! This save file is going to use up X MB. Continue?" so that people actually know how big their save files are (so that they don't wonder too much when their HDD is suddenly full when they save scum).
The system most open world games use is similar to a checkpoint system though, with most of the games barely even keeping track of your position. The system Bethesda (Gamebryo & whatever Skyrim is running on) games are using is similar to what you said, but the save files don't keep track of neither animations nor AI or anything like that. You've got "item XY has had its placement modified. Now at position XYZ", "player is at this location on map: XYZ2" and "NPC killed: X" followed by all other killed NPCs, and then statistics.
On the subject of free saving on consoles: most console game don't seem to need it for whatever reason and are most of the time actually made to be enjoyable without it. See the checkpoint system Crysis 2 uses, where you're never really spawned awkwardly or anything like that. Other good examples: Bioshock Infinite (checkpoints often enough) and Tomb Raider 2013 (checkpoints you at nearly everything you do). Come to think of it a little more, though... nearly all the games where I didn't feel that free saving was needed were linear games, not nonlinear or open-world ones.
For Unreal games, that would be bad news, since Unreal uses A LOT of RAM (generally around 2 Gigabytes independent of map or game; I don't know why that is, it just is).
Though for SOURCE, CryEngine, PATH4 and RAGE-Engine based games that means that that would actually be doable. Considering we can buy terabyte hard drives for cheaps now, you'd just need a warning message saying "Attention! This save file is going to use up X MB. Continue?" so that people actually know how big their save files are (so that they don't wonder too much when their HDD is suddenly full when they save scum).
The system most open world games use is similar to a checkpoint system though, with most of the games barely even keeping track of your position. The system Bethesda (Gamebryo & whatever Skyrim is running on) games are using is similar to what you said, but the save files don't keep track of neither animations nor AI or anything like that. You've got "item XY has had its placement modified. Now at position XYZ", "player is at this location on map: XYZ2" and "NPC killed: X" followed by all other killed NPCs, and then statistics.
On the subject of free saving on consoles: most console game don't seem to need it for whatever reason and are most of the time actually made to be enjoyable without it. See the checkpoint system Crysis 2 uses, where you're never really spawned awkwardly or anything like that. Other good examples: Bioshock Infinite (checkpoints often enough) and Tomb Raider 2013 (checkpoints you at nearly everything you do). Come to think of it a little more, though... nearly all the games where I didn't feel that free saving was needed were linear games, not nonlinear or open-world ones.
Well, actually they didn't. Remember the whole thing with PS3 Skyrim being unplayable on on save games with 100+ hours playtime?the7ofswords said:
Personally I was a big fan of how Bioshock Infinite handled save games: quitting the game would set you back to a checkpoint, dying would merely play a cutscene, heal up nearby enemies, and then restore your health.
The main advantage of that is that it allows you to have dialogue / scripted events just after a checkpoint, without potentially forcing your players to sit through them a million times as they repeatedly die just after.
Honestly, there should be a special circle in hell reserved for game devs who combine checkpoints, unskippable cutscenes, and tough bosses - in that order.