Saving

JuJu · Feb 25, 2007

First of all hi! I've been lurking these forums for quite a while and im really excited about AoD.
My question is: what are the save system going to be? I imagine it's going to be a standard save anywhere/anytime system. Or will it be limted to non-combat situations?
Also when will autosaves happen? The Dungeon Cleaners used an interesting autosave system - saving before every dialogue, creating one save for each person. This system worked, because almost all combat started after a dialogue. If save files aren't too large i beleve this system would work well in AoD too. I imagine there wont be a lot of combat without dialogue before it.
So how will it be?

Vault Dweller · Feb 25, 2007

JuJu said:
First of all hi! I've been lurking these forums for quite a while and im really excited about AoD.

Well, I barely know you, but you strike me as a man with an impeccable taste in games.

My question is: what are the save system going to be? I imagine it's going to be a standard save anywhere/anytime system. Or will it be limted to non-combat situations?

Currently it works everywhere, but I'm in favor of disabling the save system during combat to prevent saving after each successful attack/dodge.

Also when will autosaves happen?

Currently, on entering a new location.

The Dungeon Cleaners used an interesting autosave system - saving before every dialogue, creating one save for each person.

We have way too much dialogue in the game. I don't think it would work well.

Balor · Feb 25, 2007

We have way too much dialogue in the game. I don't think it would work well.

Eh, Dungeon Cleaners also has loads of dialogues. Yea, it does lead to LOADs (pun not intended

) of saves - but it is cleverly hidden on a separate tab in a 'Load game' screen, sorted in descending order by date, one save gave for a person.

In fact, it IS good for curious people who'd like to see most of dialogues... but don't have 'fastsavegameitis'. .
Also, it is also good to 'backtrack' your progression to replay w/o going thru the very first level, for instnace. Very handy.
Of course it's a minor feature, but for a game with lots of dialogue in a game, it's worth considering.
Unless your game saves itself like Gothic 3

. DC saves take a fraction of a second and, therefore, unnoticeable.

Vault Dweller · Feb 25, 2007

Balor said:
We have way too much dialogue in the game. I don't think it would work well.

Click to expand...

Eh, Dungeon Cleaners also has loads of dialogues.

Really? Any plans to translate it? Maybe not officially as that would take fucking years, but by true patriots like you and metallix? It would be a shame if gamers here never get a chance to play this game.

One Wolf · Feb 25, 2007

my two cents. no saving in combat. one of the things i liked about bgII. get to the end of a fight, fuck up, and 2 party members bite it. in the end i don't care either way, since i refuse to save in combat even when it's allowed. the primary advantage of using a no save in combat policy is that it prevents overeager players from getting something/going somewhere that you, the designer, had intended to be inaccessible.

speaking of two cents, what is the currency going to be for AoD? denari? sestershi?

Balor · Feb 25, 2007

Really? Any plans to translate it? Maybe not officially as that would take fucking years, but by true patriots like you and metallix?

Uhm. Unofficial translation will ALSO take years, that's to be sure

. While it may not rival P:T, I think, has quite a few dialogs that span many pages, loaded with textual descriptions of emotions and actions (take that, nex-gen, heh).

Also, I simply have no idea how to translate some dialogues - anybody outside of Russian (even some Russians who didn't see a particular movie, for instance) would not understand a thing...

And besides, I'm fucking busy on a fucking work

.

One Wolf · Feb 25, 2007

Unofficial translation will ALSO take years

that's too bad, DC looked kinda interesting. i guess i'll just have to learn russian.

Vault Dweller · Feb 25, 2007

One Wolf said:
speaking of two cents, what is the currency going to be for AoD? denari? sestershi?

Generic coins, i.e. "it will cost you 200 coins". If I have time, we'll replace it with a better system similar to that in Dungeon Master. I really, really liked it for some reasons. If we don't have time, then it's just coins.

JuJu · Feb 25, 2007

Vault Dweller said:
Well, I barely know you, but you strike me as a man with an impeccable taste in games.

Thanks. It might seem so. My favorite games are Fallout and Planescape:Torment. Theoretically i like good RPG, but they are so few...

Vault Dweller said:
We have way too much dialogue in the game. I don't think it would work well.

If there are a lot of dialogue with unimportant characters it wouldn't work. You could also limit number of autosaves by, for example, keeping only 5 most recent saves and saving at every third dialogue. Actually that would confuse players, but in a dialogue heavy game like this it would be a nuisance to restart from entering a location, because you offended someone too much.

Well Dungeon Cleaners had a great style and humor, but the combat just killed the game. Also it had some 'handholding' - every interactable npc was marked on the map, as was every quest goal.

P.S. While talking about russian games, you should try Space Rangers. A great game.

Vault Dweller · Feb 25, 2007

JuJu said:
If there are a lot of dialogue with unimportant characters it wouldn't work.

Conversations with unimportant characters are replaced with "you made small talk with..." or something similar.

... in a dialogue heavy game like this it would be a nuisance to restart from entering a location, because you offended someone too much.

It's teh role-playing gaem. If you offended someone too much, just keep playing.

Well Dungeon Cleaners had a great style and humor, but the combat just killed the game....

How so?

Also it had some 'handholding' - every interactable npc was marked on the map, as was every quest goal.

That sucks.

Vault Dweller · Feb 25, 2007

JuJu said:
P.S. While talking about russian games, you should try Space Rangers. A great game.

I did; loved the game. Here is my review:
http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=126

Balor · Feb 25, 2007

Well, it's very like BG. Part action - lame RTwP combat (not that I'm against it by default, see E5, but there it's indeed lame due to cheesy balancing of health armor and damage, among other things), part classical - lots of nice dialogues, choices that are not always cosmetical (however, even cosmetical, like saying same thing different ways according to your archetype, is valued these days, and is abundant here), and detailed background and setting that is quite close to Gothic in atmosphere.

The world fakes being alive - but, arguably, does better work at that then much-hyped Radian AI of Oblivion (Radiant AI of Oblivion... hmm... that's some nasty AI!

).
And if you think that Gothic setting is 'gritty' - think again. Imagine a prison, with all it's 'merits' like forced gay sex, abundant violence, racism, cheating, etc. And now extend that to whole planet, and throw some 'political' prisoners in, who are none-the-less then your hardcore Nazies... add a few sects into the pot, and you have a quite a mix.

Btw, I just love how a gullible player, based on his experience with other RPGs like, heh, Morrowind with it's 'no cheating PC' rule, will be lied and abused, and then again, and again... until you get so sick of it then you simply turn down some quests.

The interesting thing is, those 'quest refusal' are not simple one liners 'accept quest' or 'decline quest', but elaborate musings of your PC - and often they are so funny (and so true) that you cannot resist and argumentatively tell that playing prick to fuck off.
The game actually makes the simplest choice of ‘taking or not taking a side quest’ feel REWARDING.

Oh, and more about combat - well, it's very messy, does not allow you to queue your actions, and most (especially armored) enemies take a whole LOAD of shots to take down.
Firing ranges are VERY, and I mean VERY close... most gunfights end up with enemies standing point-blank firing at each other.
Most of the time, it's BORING, and it's the worst epithet you can slap on a game design element.
Anyway, it's pretty much like Arcanum combat, only RTwP. And I bet your really don't count combat as one of Arcanum's main merits... especially RT part of it.

FrancoTAU · Feb 26, 2007

I'll toss in my two cents. Save anywhere with an auto save for every new area. There definately shouldn't be any saving during combat. I'd never do it if you had it in there, but it'd only encourage people with severe OCD.

Azael · Feb 26, 2007

Agree, I want to save wherever/whenever the fuck I want, but I'm fine with no saving in combat. The exception to this rule is if you have huge combat sets that take a long time to play through, in that case the ability to save might be warranted.

kingcomrade · Feb 26, 2007

Saving in combat should take AP.

galsiah · Feb 26, 2007

Either that's a joke - which is somewhat depressing -, or it isn't - which is somewhat depressing.

kingcomrade · Feb 26, 2007

It's a joke

Lord Chambers · Feb 26, 2007

Balor said:
-snip-

What are you talking about?

galsiah said:
Either that's a joke - which is somewhat depressing -, or it isn't - which is somewhat depressing.

Saving in combat is generally used as a way to reduce danger and overcome in-game obstacles, wouldn't you agree? So what's wrong with linking it to some sort of in-game cost? When quicksaving presents no negative consequences, it makes you a stupid gamer not to take advantage. Currently the only reason a gamer would choose not to save is idealism and theory about how saving should function. Tying it to in-game costs brings saving into thel realm of strategy. In implementation, it probably won't figure into much strategy at all. It will however, give gamers like me a reason not to save, when almost no games do.

Its the same arguement with having fast travel in Oblivion. Are you the type of person who would say "JUstd on't use it?!11"

galsiah · Feb 26, 2007

kingcomrade said:
It's a joke

Lord Chambers said:
So what's wrong with linking it to some sort of in-game cost?

Great - now I'm depressed for two reasons

.

The problem of applying in-game cost to saving is that it makes a nonsense of the game world. The player's action of saving becomes an event in the game world, where it has absolutely no business. It brings saving into part of the player's decision process - even when he ought to be thinking in character. E.g. "I've got 1 AP left and there's nothing useful I can do with it - I'll save." or "I could save, but I'd probably do better using my 2AP to attack."
Any potential there might have been for suspension-of-disbelief is gone. It sucks horribly.

Its the same arguement with having fast travel in Oblivion.

No it isn't. Fast travel is an abstraction of a game world concept. This ought to have a cost, since the non-abstract version (i.e. travelling manually) has a cost. [the nonsense here is the disparity in result when performing the same game world action (walk from A to B) with different commands - it's an interface choice influencing the game world: i.e. nonsense]

Saving is not an abstraction of a game world concept. It's entirely separate from the game world, and good design should keep things that way. (usually

)

Gosling · Feb 26, 2007

Saving in combat makes the stats/skill system somewhat useless. Who cares if my charachter's chance to hit is only 15% if I can reload 20 times in real world and as a result hit on every strike each turn in the game world.
Being able to save everyhere else is okay.

Section8 · Feb 26, 2007

Saving is not an abstraction of a game world concept. It's entirely separate from the game world, and good design should keep things that way.

Although it doesn't have to be, and that doesn't necessarily make it bad design. I quite liked the timeshift thingo in Total Overdose, and Eve Online has a couple of curious method of handling player resurrection (namely, monetary insurance of ships and the like, and clones of your character). Admittedly, you're dealing with some leaps of faith in terms of plausibility, but I think you can introduce some interesting mechanics that require game world resources to [save the game].

So the problem then becomes how can we convincingly write a plot element that regresses the time line of the story to a different tangent? Or, is there an acceptable stylistic wrapper that integrates different tangents, such as Lola Rennt, which is in effect 3 (?) different stories with an identical beginning and common elements.

Alternately, there are also ways to prevent death from being final, but that's a whole different thread.

As for AOD, I can't really see a plausible way to integrate something like AP cost for saving the game, so it's a dumb idea in this context, but I think good things could be done in the right setting.

[edit] Oh snap, where did that "usually

" come from?

JuJu · Feb 26, 2007

Vault Dweller said:
Conversations with unimportant characters are replaced with "you made small talk with..." or something similar.

Thats cool!

Vault Dweller said:
How so?

Actually it is phase based with pause masked as RTwP. My combat usually consisted of hitting enemy 10 times for 1-2 damage, and recieving 2 hits for each 15 damage, then pausing, eating a whole bunch of potatoes, rinse and repeat.

Vault Dweller said:
It's teh role-playing gaem. If you offended someone too much, just keep playing.

Not if he decides to give you a little stab in the chest.

Balor said:
Big text

True indeed.
The humor in DC really great. Imagine you are a secret agent sent on prison planet to undertake a mission of a great importance. After a lot of danger you finally meet your contact person and he gives you a mission: collect 20 skins of small rabbitlike critters. Why? Because he'll kill you otherwise. How cool is that?

galsiah said:
Saving is not an abstraction of a game world concept. It's entirely separate from the game world, and good design should keep things that way.

Personally i like games which don't require saving/loading (much), for example Black&White or System Shock 2. But that doesn't matter in case of AoD.

Back on topic: How long are the save/load times currently? How big are the save files? Are there limited number of save slots?

Dementia Praecox · Feb 26, 2007

JuJu said:
Vault Dweller said:

Conversations with unimportant characters are replaced with "you made small talk with..." or something similar.

Click to expand...

Thats cool!

Cool indeed. Not only do you make away with the super-lame "I have one purpose in life, and that is to say these three generic lines over and over agein"-clones that litter so many RPGs, it'll fit right in to the more distanced text-adventure theme of the game, as well as maintaining it, and keeping things consistent. So simple, and yet so cool.

JuJu said:
Vault Dweller said:

It's teh role-playing gaem. If you offended someone too much, just keep playing.

Click to expand...

Not if he decides to give you a little stab in the chest.

If I recall correctly AoD, will have some of the same death mechanics as the Gothics or Mount and Blade, so worst case scenario will be that you loose your ubar loot. (unless this has changed, or I've misunderstood completely)

JuJu said:
Dungeon Cleaner-stuff

Is Dungeon Cleaners localized to Latvian, or do you speak Russian/Latvian are as similar to Russian as Swedish is to Norwegian?

JuJu said:
galsiah said:

Saving is not an abstraction of a game world concept. It's entirely separate from the game world, and good design should keep things that way.

Click to expand...

Personally i like games which don't require saving/loading (much), for example Black&White or System Shock 2. But that doesn't matter in case of AoD.

Woah there, I save/loaded a lot in System Shock 2. At least my first times through. Well, there was a lot of auto saving in there, so perhaps I loaded more than saved. But still I wouldn't cite SS2 as the prime example of good 'avoiding-save/loading design'. Then again, my mouse were everywhere but the mouse mat every other encounter, due to me being scared shitless, so maybe I'm not your average System Shock 2-player

JuJu · Feb 26, 2007

Dementia Praecox said:
If I recall correctly AoD, will have some of the same death mechanics as the Gothics or Mount and Blade, so worst case scenario will be that you loose your ubar loot. (unless this has changed, or I've misunderstood completely)

Oh, i forgot that...

Dementia Praecox said:
Is Dungeon Cleaners localized to Latvian, or do you speak Russian/Latvian are as similar to Russian as Swedish is to Norwegian?

I know russian because Latvia is a post-soviet country - russians are about 30% of all inhabitants. I was actually born in soviet russia :D Although i don't particulary like russians, they have some cool games and movies. A lot less heroes who actually murder half the town to get revenge.

Dementia Praecox said:
Woah there, I save/loaded a lot in System Shock 2.

Not the case for me, had enough nanites to get ressurected and not to risk while hacking. It didn't worry me much. Well, yes maybe it wasn't a good example.

Hazelnut · Feb 26, 2007

Dementia Praecox said:
JuJu said:

Vault Dweller said:

It's teh role-playing gaem. If you offended someone too much, just keep playing.

Click to expand...

Not if he decides to give you a little stab in the chest.

Click to expand...

If I recall correctly AoD, will have some of the same death mechanics as the Gothics or Mount and Blade, so worst case scenario will be that you loose your ubar loot. (unless this has changed, or I've misunderstood completely)

This still needs careful handling, Gothic is good except for the fact that 50% of your gold can be taken by the victor, but there's no banks to store it safely. Mitigated somewhat by the fact that you can get it back by beating the person who walloped you previously I admit, but sometimes it still causes a reload. (case in point: had 40k+ of the 50k I needed for a quest, got into an accidental fight by doing something dumb with the controls, failed to escape, got beaten down and lost over 20k! Fucking reload time for me.)

Dementia Praecox said:
Woah there, I save/loaded a lot in System Shock 2. At least my first times through. Well, there was a lot of auto saving in there, so perhaps I loaded more than saved. But still I wouldn't cite SS2 as the prime example of good 'avoiding-save/loading design'. Then again, my mouse were everywhere but the mouse mat every other encounter, due to me being scared shitless, so maybe I'm not your average System Shock 2-player

Ditto.

Saving

Novice

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Arcane

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Scholar

Arcane

Scholar

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Novice

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Arcane

Cipher

Magister

Kingcomrade

Erudite

Kingcomrade

Erudite

Erudite

Liturgist

Cipher

Novice

Arbiter

Novice

Erudite