Where's the pause function going?

Am I the only one that has noticed that real pausing is slowly disappearing from PC games? Many older PC games use the pause/break key to pause the game normally without bringing the menu up or continuing music. It's been disappearing even from engines that once had it. You can pause in Half-Life 2, but not it's episodic sequels (at least episode 2, haven't tested it in 1). idTech5 doesn't have it, but I know that previous idTechs had it. You can pause in many Unreal Engine 2 games, but not ones made with 3.

Seriously, why can't I pause normally without having to bring up the menu anymore? What makes things worse it that there's usually some sort of transitionary animation between gameplay and the menu.

Just push esc?

^ people like that are why

Pause is still useful to go straight to Windows Device Manager. It felt almost like an easter egg. What other weird shortcuts from Pause do you know (apart from CTRL+PAUSE = break debug program)?

THE LACK OF A DEDICATED PAUSE FUNCTION ISN'T THAT BAD!!! SERIOUSLY!!

Why does this bug you?

Heh, I found it humorous how the pause button in Doom III was apparently still bound to the pause command -- but the pause command didn't actually exist so hitting pause would just make the message "unknown command pause" show onscreen, heh.

As to why, it's been discussed before

Mr. T said:

Just push esc?

Mostly this. Why have two functions that do the same thing (except one has less use)? It's an old tradition, but one I've never really noticed going "out of style" until this thread.

Just a guess but maybe it's to do with newer games requiring more default hotkeyed buttons to do more things. Alot of new fpses have more functions than previous games.

I hadn't even noticed Doom had a pause function until the topic came up.

And I still use esc, regardless.

Like the others have said, there still IS a pause button; its just that the "pause" button brings you to a menu. It's still the same thing.

get a laptop, you'll stop worrying about the pause when its key equals to fn+pgup. the boss key, on the other hand...

My laptop has Pause its own key. Fn-Pause is Break.

I've never really used Pause, just Esc.

DuckReconMajor said:

My laptop has Pause its own key. Fn-Pause is Break.

Aren't Pause and Break the same scan-code?

Huh, my Apple keyboard doesn't even have a pause/break key.

...right, ok.

Haha I just use the esc key if I want to pause....

This reminds me of playing online in Two Worlds and you could have it set so others can join your game. Sometimes somebody would get booted and they'd try to get back on and the game would pause everybody, then there would be a lot of waiting with nothing happening. Then somebody would press the pause key and it would say... 'so and so unpaused the game' but everybody would still be stuck. Most of the time if somebody did get back on, the game would still be paused. Not sure if it was the fault of the game or that we were all so far apart the lag screwed the game.. or it was a combo of bad lag and shitty code. Whatever the case it was fukken stupid.

Speaking of the 'esc' key. I recall loading on an olde Tomb Raider game (forget which one) and the 'esc' key wasn't used for opening the menu for some odd reason. I ended up trying everything to get the hell out of the game.. Annoying much.

I used to use the pause key all the time back when I had a keyboard that had a pause key. After that though, I had to use a laptop, so I got into the habit of using the escape key. I miss using the pause key in multiplayer to fuck my opponents up.

dew said:

get a laptop, you'll stop worrying about the pause when its key equals to fn+pgup. the boss key, on the other hand...

Ahaha, I remember the Boss Key. I remember some old Sierra games had fake boss keys. Like in Space Quest 3, if you hit it, it would say "Oh, so you don't want your boss to know you've been playing this game for 3 hours, 17 minutes and 32 seconds" or however long you'd been playing it.

These days, it just exists as alt+tab.

You can often find it after someone implies something gay and fails to follow it up with "no homo."

Its purpose is made redundant by the menu key ESC pausing the game.

I suspect the only reason it was ever supported was because most ancient OSes let the pause key stop all screen output or even execution of the current program. This can be extremely useful when watching console output scroll by (even in a game). I've never seen DOS stop the graphical output of a game, but it would be pretty jarring to users if it did. If it didn't then some users would have expected it to stop the game, and thus the pause function.

I was never a big fan of the pause key unless I was trying to show somebody something that would be obscured by a menu. The key I missed was print screen. In DOS it just dumped the screen's contents to the printer port. Was great for making maps or games with confusing layouts.

I asked in the other thread to no response, but is the Print Screen button really going away? I thought it was still widely used to take screenshots.

It's now the "copy screenbuffer to clipboard" key. It was somehow cooler when it dumped the screen directly to the printer port.

Danarchy said:

These days, it just exists as alt+tab.

Some games you can't alt+tab from, those annoy me the most. Either the combo is disabled or alttabbing opens windows under the game screen.

I don't get this thread. The OP complains about not being able to pause without going to the menu...but that's STILL A PAUSE FUNCTION. I mean what's the big fucking deal if it doesn't freeze-frame the screen with the word "pause" appearing in the middle or up top? What is really so fundamentally different that it's actually upsetting?

Some of us liked it. Sure I won't miss it enough to go fight for it or anything, but if we liked doing that I don't see why we should have to justify it.

I like Pause for demos and I don't watch demos on anything other than doom and quake.