• @[email protected]
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    591 month ago

    Even worse. Games with a mysterious auto save “feature” that don’t allow a manual backup save. There’s a special place in hell for those developers.

    • JackbyDev
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      121 month ago

      There’s also a place in hell for devs who don’t include a “save and quit” in rogue like games because they’re worried people will save scum. As if honest people who can’t devote enough time for a full playthrough are less important than people lying about progress in a non competitive single player game.

      • Ziglin (they/them)
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        329 days ago

        I assume it’s more about the hassle of implementing a way of serializing the game state for storage in most cases but if people want to cheat in a single player game let them or better yet seed the rng so that the outcome is the same anyways.

    • @Zron
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      101 month ago

      Idk, I feel that’s okay as long as the saves are incredibly frequent and reliable.

      I’ve never lost progress in a From Software game for instance, and they have an only auto save system, but it saves literally everything you do as soon as you do it, so unless you deliberately alt-F4 instantly after doing something, you won’t lose any progress.

      • @[email protected]
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        131 month ago

        Can you reload old saves, or only the most recent? I think being able to reload an older save is important in the case of glitches (NPC walks through wall and is unreachable etc)

        • @Zron
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          101 month ago

          Ah, the trauma of every Bethesda RPG player.

          There are game studios out there that don’t release broken garbage that needs the player to walk on eggshells, backup saves, and do arcane console commands to make the game playable.

        • @[email protected]
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          430 days ago

          They solved that by having most of the game revert to starting positions frequently (e.g. every time you die, area load).

          Maybe not as immersive as Bethesda games but their lore at least tries to make sense of it.

          It’s more like playing the Edge of Tomorrow movie, you need to learn where everything is.

        • @[email protected]
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          31 month ago

          Only the most recent.

          I also have never had any issues with game breaking bugs like that. I’ve encountered some glitches but nothing a save+reload couldn’t fix. Everything just resets to its normal spawn point.

  • @[email protected]
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    231 month ago

    I think it’s no mans sky that tells you how long ago your last save was before you leave. That’s the ideal.

    • @kn33
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      529 days ago

      I think the ideal is to have 3 buttons - “Save”, “Quit”, and “Save & Quit”

      • @[email protected]
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        429 days ago

        Agreed, but you still need a confirmation on the quit button to ask if you are sure you want to quit without saving.

    • juipeltje
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      21 month ago

      I think the jedi games do this as well

  • ADKSilence
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    131 month ago

    It’s clearly bad juju if you dont then save again just to be sure.

  • @[email protected]
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    111 month ago

    They could improve this so much by saying something like “the last 2 minutes and 24 seconds of unsaved progress will be lost” instead. Just need to keep a time counter from last save, that’s not too much overhead.

    • William
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      71 month ago

      There are even games that already do this. I still end up second-guessing, but at least “you last saved 8 seconds ago” makes me pretty sure I got it.

  • @[email protected]
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    91 month ago

    Day 347: I’m still trying to exit the game. Send help, I can’t close the game without losing my progress!

    • JackbyDev
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      61 month ago

      Or even just “Has the menu been closed since it was saved?”

      • @[email protected]
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        230 days ago

        That’s harder to implement. Suddenly you need to store that extra state somewhere and don’t mess it up. The last save should already have a timestamp and is immutable. A lot less likely to get bugs that way.

        • @JustAnotherKay
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          229 days ago

          Do you not need to store that state to pause the game anyway? How else would you end the menu loop?

          • @[email protected]
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            328 days ago

            The state “the game is paused” is different from " the game is paused and saved". Sure that could be another key in some atate machine but like above: it’s the “not mess it up” part that is harder.

            • @JustAnotherKay
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              228 days ago

              I feel like I’ve seen a “Time since last save:” line on enough games to find it hard to believe that “paused and saved” is difficult to check for lol

              These are variables that already exist in most games, it just needs one more line of code to check them

              • @[email protected]
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                327 days ago

                Plus all the lines to update the state, when the menu is closed, when the game is closed (i.e should it be true or false at startup), when the game is saved obviously.

                That’s at least three more lines plus the one you mentioned for no extra value. And again it’s easier to screw it up e.g. while refactoring.

                • @JustAnotherKay
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                  226 days ago

                  I think we write our code in different enough ways that we’re not seeing eye to eye.

                  Tracking the state of the game being paused, when the menu is open and when the game is saved can all be a single match statement on a current “game state” variable which just holds “running/paused/paused and saved/exit” and when it becomes exit, it checks the save time. Only 2 lines of code and adding an enumerated state to the variable to add this functionality. Since the variable is enumerated, it’s really difficult to mess it up when refactoring because if you can’t pass the wrong code or else your game doesn’t save or close

  • @CluckN
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    61 month ago

    One time during the final mission in Batman Arkham City I hit the power button at the same frame the auto-save turned on. My save was corrupted and I had to speedrun the story again. Thank god I wasn’t doing Riddler trophies I would’ve gone insane.

  • Queen HawlSera
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    51 month ago

    This is why I have no tolerance for games with limited saving… Which is painful as a Resident Evil fan who prefers the early games

    (No surprise that I use unlimited saving mods)

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    Flashbacks of playing Metal Gear Solid 2 at a time of frequent unexpected power cuts. Painful.