CyberWhale
Arcane
Checkpoints + quicksave on exit works fine. Just make sure you position those checkpoints correctly. Even Dark Souls had some really stupid ones, and it mostly worked there.
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KickStarter Monomyth - A first person action RPG/dungeon crawler - now available on Early Access
- Thread starter RatTower
- Start date
RoSoDude
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2016
- Messages
- 750
You should absolutely design an alternative to Save Anywhere (really, it's Load Anytime that's the problem, but we'll get into that). While unrestricted saving may be an option you wish to provide for some players, you should consider your game as having unfulfilled potential for truly coherent player incentives and tightly designed challenges and consequences if that's the only way to play. I'm going to get on my soapbox here RatTower, so don't think I'm accusing you personally of not understanding these things, I just want to make the argument in full.
My personal philosophy is that a keenly designed restricted save system is always superior to a Save Anywhere system. Being able to save and load your game is not "meta", nor does it exist apart from player incentives, strategies, and experience -- it's deeply embedded within a game's mechanics and structure. We're talking about rewinding time here -- try to imagine how you'd do things differently in every realm of your life if you could rewind time at will. The player will take a different approach to gameplay depending on what they stand to lose. If permadeath (in a longer game such as this), the player will feel increasing levels of tension as the game goes on and may feel it necessary to employ extremely conservative low-risk strategies to ensure they don't have to redo hours of the game. With savescumming it's the exact opposite with almost no stakes for failure, and players will have a strong incentive to employ high-risk strategies and simply "reroll" even marginally bad outcomes. Neither is particularly fun -- the former is tedious and limiting, and the latter is devoid of excitement and challenge. The purpose of a good save/load/death system should be to strike a balance between these two extremes.
With Save Anywhere, the developer is basically offloading the work of designing intelligent and fair checkpoints to the player. How should the player know when and how often to save in order to keep the game from becoming tedious, while also maintaining an acceptable level of tension and challenge? They have no knowledge of the obstacles in the level, nor perhaps of their own potential and ability to rise to meet certain challenges (the thing that makes e.g. Dark Souls' hardcore checkpoint system work). People often retort "just don't abuse the saves, then!", but this is like giving the player infinite medkits and requesting that they not ruin the game for themselves. You're asking players to design their own experience, which is a dangerous thing to do when players are conditioned to optimize their performance in games, which is at direct odds with the sort of metacognition they have to exercise to strike this balance. Granted, in some cases this may be preferable -- in particular, when designing checkpoints for a highly open-ended game is simply too difficult, or when there are large disparities between your most hardcore and most casual players. But this shouldn't be the bar you set for yourself as a designer, and it is possible to create flexible options in and outside of the game that manage this. So let's talk about some solutions.
This discussion has been happening in certain corners of the Immersive Sim community, which obviously has some parallels even if you don't outright consider Monomyth as explicitly following those design principles. I have a few guidelines and recommendations to offer of my own, but I thought I'd highlight a video I found where someone stumbled onto the same key points:
As it turns out, this is not just a thought experiment. The GMDX mod for Deus Ex already features restricted saving in its Hardcore difficulty mode, matching exactly the design specifications that the above video's creator independently hypothesized. There are autosaves between level transitions (this means that the more nonlinear and explorative civilian hub areas are more lenient with checkpoints), and single-use save points scattered within the levels, often as rewards for exploration and as a way to balance certain paths. Hardcore is unlocked after you complete the game once (or through a config file), ensuring that players understand the game systems before they have to deal with the consequences that restricted saving imposes on failure. The feature is a resounding success among the mod's fans, and is the preferred way to play the game for the masochistically inclined (such as myself). Traditional manual saving is still available, but the design problems stated earlier are more or less solved.
This is not the only option, of course. I'm quite fond of System Shock 2's (and to a lesser extent SS1's) resurrection chambers, which more or less act like Dark Souls' bonfires. Once you've activated one of these, you no longer lose temporal progress when you die, but you pay a resource penalty and lose geographical progress as you have to trek back to your objective, encountering newly spawned enemies on your way. I wish I could say the same about Ultima Underworld's Silver Sapling, as it obviously later became the resurrection idea in Shock, but it really just functions as a tool to let you run roughshod over the level, to a worse extent than savescumming (I'm not opposed to the concept, I just wish there had been some penalty like enemies healing up and maybe some marginal respawning when you resurrect). With contiguous player respawning, you can decouple death from saving and loading, and instead have the game saving all of the time, and/or whenever you quit the game.
That should be my last point, which is that restricted saving/loading doesn't mean you can't quit the game to go make a sandwich, because I'm so sick and tired of that rebuttal. SUSPEND SAVES, people. The "sandwich problem" has had a solution for ages. Even if you had restricted saving, you can have an additional suspend save system which allows you to suspend and resume the game at any time, but loading the suspend save also deletes it so you can't keep it as a personal checkpoint. Now go and enjoy your stupid BLT.
My personal philosophy is that a keenly designed restricted save system is always superior to a Save Anywhere system. Being able to save and load your game is not "meta", nor does it exist apart from player incentives, strategies, and experience -- it's deeply embedded within a game's mechanics and structure. We're talking about rewinding time here -- try to imagine how you'd do things differently in every realm of your life if you could rewind time at will. The player will take a different approach to gameplay depending on what they stand to lose. If permadeath (in a longer game such as this), the player will feel increasing levels of tension as the game goes on and may feel it necessary to employ extremely conservative low-risk strategies to ensure they don't have to redo hours of the game. With savescumming it's the exact opposite with almost no stakes for failure, and players will have a strong incentive to employ high-risk strategies and simply "reroll" even marginally bad outcomes. Neither is particularly fun -- the former is tedious and limiting, and the latter is devoid of excitement and challenge. The purpose of a good save/load/death system should be to strike a balance between these two extremes.
With Save Anywhere, the developer is basically offloading the work of designing intelligent and fair checkpoints to the player. How should the player know when and how often to save in order to keep the game from becoming tedious, while also maintaining an acceptable level of tension and challenge? They have no knowledge of the obstacles in the level, nor perhaps of their own potential and ability to rise to meet certain challenges (the thing that makes e.g. Dark Souls' hardcore checkpoint system work). People often retort "just don't abuse the saves, then!", but this is like giving the player infinite medkits and requesting that they not ruin the game for themselves. You're asking players to design their own experience, which is a dangerous thing to do when players are conditioned to optimize their performance in games, which is at direct odds with the sort of metacognition they have to exercise to strike this balance. Granted, in some cases this may be preferable -- in particular, when designing checkpoints for a highly open-ended game is simply too difficult, or when there are large disparities between your most hardcore and most casual players. But this shouldn't be the bar you set for yourself as a designer, and it is possible to create flexible options in and outside of the game that manage this. So let's talk about some solutions.
This discussion has been happening in certain corners of the Immersive Sim community, which obviously has some parallels even if you don't outright consider Monomyth as explicitly following those design principles. I have a few guidelines and recommendations to offer of my own, but I thought I'd highlight a video I found where someone stumbled onto the same key points:
- In games built around systems-driven interactions, much of the fun comes from forming mental strategies about how to overcome obstacles, executing them, and then adapting according to the situation as it actually unfolds
- In these games, there are typically many states between failure and success (as a basic example, enemies in Thief hearing a sound and becoming suspicious but not yet hostile, rather than murdering you instantaneously)
- With the ability to Save and Load at any time, you rarely feel the consequences for your mistakes, and can miss much of the actual gameplay loop from these intermediate failure states as well as much of the feeling of accomplishment when you do succeed
- The player could solve this problem for themselves by designing their own rules around manual saving or relying on autosave checkpoints (that's what I recommend for Prey), which seems natural for games built around player freedom
- However, the incentive to use saves strategically still remains, and you shouldn't expect players to behave in a manner that the game rules actively discourage
- As such, it would be nice to have some kind of "Adaptive" mode where you can only save at certain checkpoints, ramping up the tension and aligning the player's incentives with the game design goals of encouraging good planning, execution, and improvisation. These checkpoints can further incentivize exploration, and if they are are single-use, their overall effect can be multiplied
- The argument against this could be that these games involve a lot of player experimentation, as the player learns through trial and error how to manipulate the game systems and better predict the consequences of their actions, and manual saving helps the player do this. Hence, it may be appropriate to restrict this "Adaptive" mode to a higher difficulty setting, something you try after you've already played through the game once
As it turns out, this is not just a thought experiment. The GMDX mod for Deus Ex already features restricted saving in its Hardcore difficulty mode, matching exactly the design specifications that the above video's creator independently hypothesized. There are autosaves between level transitions (this means that the more nonlinear and explorative civilian hub areas are more lenient with checkpoints), and single-use save points scattered within the levels, often as rewards for exploration and as a way to balance certain paths. Hardcore is unlocked after you complete the game once (or through a config file), ensuring that players understand the game systems before they have to deal with the consequences that restricted saving imposes on failure. The feature is a resounding success among the mod's fans, and is the preferred way to play the game for the masochistically inclined (such as myself). Traditional manual saving is still available, but the design problems stated earlier are more or less solved.
This is not the only option, of course. I'm quite fond of System Shock 2's (and to a lesser extent SS1's) resurrection chambers, which more or less act like Dark Souls' bonfires. Once you've activated one of these, you no longer lose temporal progress when you die, but you pay a resource penalty and lose geographical progress as you have to trek back to your objective, encountering newly spawned enemies on your way. I wish I could say the same about Ultima Underworld's Silver Sapling, as it obviously later became the resurrection idea in Shock, but it really just functions as a tool to let you run roughshod over the level, to a worse extent than savescumming (I'm not opposed to the concept, I just wish there had been some penalty like enemies healing up and maybe some marginal respawning when you resurrect). With contiguous player respawning, you can decouple death from saving and loading, and instead have the game saving all of the time, and/or whenever you quit the game.
That should be my last point, which is that restricted saving/loading doesn't mean you can't quit the game to go make a sandwich, because I'm so sick and tired of that rebuttal. SUSPEND SAVES, people. The "sandwich problem" has had a solution for ages. Even if you had restricted saving, you can have an additional suspend save system which allows you to suspend and resume the game at any time, but loading the suspend save also deletes it so you can't keep it as a personal checkpoint. Now go and enjoy your stupid BLT.
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hello friend
Arcane
Why so prejudiced against the mentally ill? Save scumming isn't a crime, it's a disease.
Srsly tho, why punish your players to prevent a handful of people wasting their time with what amounts to playing blackjack? No harm no foul.
What if there's a bug you haven't gotten around to fixing yet? Freedom of saving prevents such things from wiping out your last hour of play through no fault of your own.
Besides. If a boss kills you, and you start from the last checkpoint, everything up until getting to the boss again is like doing chores, you're just going through the motions in order to get back to the most recent challenge. It's a time waster, non gameplay. RoSoDude is correct about freedom of saving making room for less conservative gameplay, but that's not a bad thing. You learn game mechanics by testing them. If you can save when you want it's easy to experiment with the game - a godsend for any game without an extensive manual and well considered tooltips.
You could always add in ironman mode.
Srsly tho, why punish your players to prevent a handful of people wasting their time with what amounts to playing blackjack? No harm no foul.
What if there's a bug you haven't gotten around to fixing yet? Freedom of saving prevents such things from wiping out your last hour of play through no fault of your own.
Besides. If a boss kills you, and you start from the last checkpoint, everything up until getting to the boss again is like doing chores, you're just going through the motions in order to get back to the most recent challenge. It's a time waster, non gameplay. RoSoDude is correct about freedom of saving making room for less conservative gameplay, but that's not a bad thing. You learn game mechanics by testing them. If you can save when you want it's easy to experiment with the game - a godsend for any game without an extensive manual and well considered tooltips.
You could always add in ironman mode.
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2012
- Messages
- 2,334
How about automatic checkpoints when you enter an area and allowing the user to save whenever they want with the save storing the full world state, your inventory, killed enemies, etc but when loading you spawn at the nearest checkpoint area (or other designated spawn point) instead of at the point where you saved? This way there is an incentive for players to avoid relying too much on the save system (they'll have to run back where they were), but it doesn't make people replay sections they've already finished nor lose any sort of resources (that could potentially break the game later). Basically the System Shock approach, but without explicitly enabling the spawn points and with all saves working like that (instead of the duality of manual saves and resurrection).
As RoSoDude wrote, you can also make an exception for when the user selects a "Save and exit" option, so the user wont feel the need to go near a spawn area to save before leaving the game to do something else.
As RoSoDude wrote, you can also make an exception for when the user selects a "Save and exit" option, so the user wont feel the need to go near a spawn area to save before leaving the game to do something else.
Nyast
Cipher
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2014
- Messages
- 609
Maybe you could ask advice from Bards Tale 4 and Ultima Ascendent developers on how to develop a good saving system.
More seriously, use a standard saving system. You're simply going to frustrate a lot of your players by doing checkpoints. Let those that want to save scum do what they want, it's their freedom to play the game however they want.
More seriously, use a standard saving system. You're simply going to frustrate a lot of your players by doing checkpoints. Let those that want to save scum do what they want, it's their freedom to play the game however they want.
Thal
Prophet
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2015
- Messages
- 419
In this case, I'd go along with the traditional approach, unless you come up with an extremely good idea. Looking at replies here, it seems clear that an entirely original approach to saving would also require you to consider the entire design. Is it worth it to do so, just because you want to prevent save scumming? It's a huge risk with little payoff.
My suggestion is to consider designing the game in such a way that an ironman playthrough is possible, for those who would desire it. For others, let them save whenever they want. Hardcore/softcore modes worked for Diablo II, wouldn't it work here as well?
My suggestion is to consider designing the game in such a way that an ironman playthrough is possible, for those who would desire it. For others, let them save whenever they want. Hardcore/softcore modes worked for Diablo II, wouldn't it work here as well?
Curratum
Guest
Dumped an infopost for Monomyth on the Steam hub. Hopefully the poor sods who got burned on UA will take note.
Doktor Best
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2015
- Messages
- 2,877
Why not make a checkpoint system and then implement an item that only appears on some difficulties which lets you manual-save a limited number of times? This number goes up the further you go down the difficulty levels and reaches infinite on easy.
You should also provide custom difficulty settings by the way. Look at System Shock 1, Fallout 2 and Elex as guidelines. So if someone wants harder enemies but infinite saving, he just picks his options and vice verca. You should also communicate that you design the game around a checkpoint system and they shouldnt use infinite saves if they want the "true" experience.
Preventing player frustration has been an convenient excuse used by devs to make games designed for braindead retards devoid of any challenge. Potencial of frustration is part of a good game.
You should also provide custom difficulty settings by the way. Look at System Shock 1, Fallout 2 and Elex as guidelines. So if someone wants harder enemies but infinite saving, he just picks his options and vice verca. You should also communicate that you design the game around a checkpoint system and they shouldnt use infinite saves if they want the "true" experience.
Preventing player frustration has been an convenient excuse used by devs to make games designed for braindead retards devoid of any challenge. Potencial of frustration is part of a good game.
That potential frustration shouldn't come at the expense of convenience though. You don't need to look further than UA for this. If the player can't play the game because the save-game restrictions interfere with daily life for example, you'll end with unnecessarily frustrated players. The frustration you want from a game should be something the player can overcome by getting better, or thinking differently; Not by changing his schedule/life.
That sounds hyperbolic, but I hope you get my point.
Custom difficulties are a good idea, and I'm all for having a way for the player to get the designed experience. But in my opinion, there should also be a save system that allows the player to play how he prefers.
Sinatar
Arbiter
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2014
- Messages
- 569
The ability to save anywhere gives the player some control over their difficulty. People can save as often or as infrequently as they wish. It also gives the game some protection against crashes. Limited saves are all well and good when your game is 100% functional, but that's rarely the case.
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 4,234
Just tell player that limited savepoints are the way the game is intended to be played, have the restricted saving applied by default, but also let player turn it off anytime. You can even give players useless achievement for playing the game with limited saves all the way through.
Regarding UA the best thing they could do if saving the world state is impossible would be to just let player save anytime and have all the character progress (items, levels etc.) persist, but also let him spawn at any sapling he planted upon loading. I'm sure they can store the data regarding which saplings are active or not.
EDIT:
I've just realized that it's a Monomyth, not UA thread.
Regarding UA the best thing they could do if saving the world state is impossible would be to just let player save anytime and have all the character progress (items, levels etc.) persist, but also let him spawn at any sapling he planted upon loading. I'm sure they can store the data regarding which saplings are active or not.
EDIT:
I've just realized that it's a Monomyth, not UA thread.
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Wayward Son
Fails to keep valuable team members alive
This problem is solved by putting a checkpoint near the boss.
Zep Zepo
Titties and Beer
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2013
- Messages
- 5,233
Don't forget to put that checkpoint before the boss, just before the 5 minute unskippable cut-scene plays!
Zep--
Feargus Jewhart
Savant
Discovered this thread and went slightly mad out of excitement. This looks way better than Underworld Ascension or even some AAA titles, damn.
Is there any chance to get mild mod support to get new levels in the game? It looks amazing and the features seem perfect for some diverse custom levels.
I read about the climbing feature a few pages back and I've had for a while now a need for a game that has a dungeon based on climbing, or better yet as part of the thiefs way to play (like dark messiah had climbing arrows)
Is there any chance to get mild mod support to get new levels in the game? It looks amazing and the features seem perfect for some diverse custom levels.
I read about the climbing feature a few pages back and I've had for a while now a need for a game that has a dungeon based on climbing, or better yet as part of the thiefs way to play (like dark messiah had climbing arrows)
For the love of the game design gods, do not tell people how to save their games.
If you want to make some limitations of any kind, make it the default, but always provide the option to just do save/load anywhere.
Everything else leads to a ton of trouble that just isn't worth it (especially if your engine/game can already technically save at any point).
It works for Dark Souls because the entire game is designed around death being mostly meaningless, you can (almost) always get your stuff back and - most importantly - you'll learn something from each death (enemy move sets).
In a game like KC: D, not being able to save anywhere just means you lose progress for certain, and have gained nothing (there's no such thing as enemy move sets).
From what I gather, your game falls in the second category, so just learn from the fact that the most used mod is the "save anywhere" mod.
Do what you want as default, but at the very least provide the option to let players decide themselves how they enjoy your game.
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RNGsus
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2011
- Messages
- 8,106
Hey RatTower, I think you should consider a free save system, if only because Arx was great without checkpoints, and I think you should play it conservative your first game of this scope. You're from out of nowhere, a no name dude and his passion project, but you might just be carrying the torch of all immersive sims now. Arkane are retiring Dishonored, Prey bombed publicly, and they're talking about multiplayer shit, so you're it my man. No pressure.
Big Wrangle
Guest
An option would be nice; keep the checkpoint saving and allow free quicksaving and all that jazz, then have a mode where you can't free save.
Black Angel
Arcane
Big Wrangle
Guest
Yes, I do like Jazz. :D
RatTower
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2017
- Messages
- 476
And when I say soon I mean now:
Swimming mechanics are in, including diving and drowning.
No UI or time for a gif right now so here is the console output:
The numbers are the timer.
The drowning message will simply be replaced by receiving damage (currently every second).
Gonna brush this up visually and get back to level design.
Interesting side note for those that played the first version of UA:
The sliding on water bug happens when you set your player's physics/movement component to "swimming/flying" right after the overlap between the water volume and the player collider. At least that's in Unreal, but I assume it's the same in Unity.
To avoid that you wait for a subcomponent of the player (which is roughly at chest height) to collide with the water. That way you can normally move in water (with slight friction from the water physics, which is okay) and go into swimming mode once you are actually in. Similar concept for diving.
Swimming mechanics are in, including diving and drowning.
No UI or time for a gif right now so here is the console output:
The numbers are the timer.
The drowning message will simply be replaced by receiving damage (currently every second).
Gonna brush this up visually and get back to level design.
Interesting side note for those that played the first version of UA:
The sliding on water bug happens when you set your player's physics/movement component to "swimming/flying" right after the overlap between the water volume and the player collider. At least that's in Unreal, but I assume it's the same in Unity.
To avoid that you wait for a subcomponent of the player (which is roughly at chest height) to collide with the water. That way you can normally move in water (with slight friction from the water physics, which is okay) and go into swimming mode once you are actually in. Similar concept for diving.
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rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
your lighting needs rebuilt
please rebuild the poor lighting! oh the tragedy!
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