Help Save Doom 3!

[Ichor]

One thing I can't stand about recent games is that every time you do save the game, it goes into a brand new slot (by default anyway). In Doom, Heretic, etc., you would just overwite the previous saved game and it would be in the same slot as before. Instead, we get games like Half-Life and Alice where you'll have dozens of saved games (Alice had around 15 pages worth by the time I beat it). I'd rather do without all that clutter.

[sniperfrommars1]

Ichor said:

One thing I can't stand about recent games is that every time you do save the game, it goes into a brand new slot (by default anyway). In Doom, Heretic, etc., you would just overwite the previous saved game and it would be in the same slot as before. Instead, we get games like Half-Life and Alice where you'll have dozens of saved games (Alice had around 15 pages worth by the time I beat it). I'd rather do without all that clutter.

The reason being that if you accidentally save the game in a spot where the game has a bug or your stuck in some hole you cant get out of for some odd reason you can just choose another quick save point instead of *having* to start over

[Ichor]

If there's a bug in the game, that's the game designer's fault. And if I'm stuck in a hole, I would just use a noclip code to get out.

[AndrewB]

Yeah, what a way to cover the game designer for sucking.

[Arno]

Fredrik said:

Isn't that the point of a game? Or are you saying a game should let you go straight from the start to the end without giving a crap?

With a quicksave option you still have to repeat some parts of the game, depending on how often you quicksave.
If I just made it through a difficult part and then die without quicksaving first, then I'll blame myself. If there was no quicksave option in the first place, I'll blame the game designer.

[Fredrik]

What's so hard to accept about challenges that don't come in separated portions?

[toxicfluff]

Fredrik said:

Walk through walls whenever I please.

Solid walls and the like are sooooo damned frustrating. They do not increase the tension in a level, they increase how pissed off I get at having to repeat over and over taking long detours to reach a room I can see right in front of me. That isn't tension building and it rips me out of the experience and doing it is no more realistic than walking straight through walls anyway. Solid walls will have one guaranteed outcome - I will have used some form of cheating before even completing the game for the first time.

For those that don't want the ability to walk through walls, the answer is simple - don't do it. Pretend you can only move through open space - just like if the walls were solid. Why should I have a map designer telling me where to go in my game running on my machine all bought for with my money? I want my fun that I paid for, and I want it my way. I certainly don't want to be told when I can walk in a direction, especially as the walls are bound to get placed wrong for my particular game and set of circumstances.

I love it when you do this.

The Flange Peddler said:

Save whenever you want.

Having limited saves (by whatever method) is just a cheap way for developers to try and stretch the longevity of a game. Whilst it is a method that probably works, it means you'll just be playing the same bit over and over and over again until you get it just right... Not what I call fun.

And as has been said, it's not like you can't just choose not to save if you want more of a challenge.

But if the game is designed well, and you have picked the right difficulty for your proficiency, this will not happen.

[Fredrik]

ToXiCFLUFF said:

I love it when you do this.

Love Enjay for playing such a munificent serve ;)

[toxicfluff]

There's something very pleasing to my mind, when someone just repackages a point and sends it back to the original creator pretty much exactly the same, yet contradicting it's original meaning.

[AirRaid]

Ichor said:

Instead, we get games like Half-Life and Alice where you'll have dozens of saved games (Alice had around 15 pages worth by the time I beat it).

Alice, yeah OK. But HL? HL had 2 quicksave slots, 0 and 1. If you accidentally quicksaved in a bad spot (like just as you were falling to your doom, no way out), you could load up the previous quicksave and play from there. and the standard saves, you could choose to make a new save or overwrite an old one. So uh?

[toxicfluff]

AirRaid said:

Alice, yeah OK. But HL? HL had 2 quicksave slots, 0 and 1. If you accidentally quicksaved in a bad spot (like just as you were falling to your doom, no way out), you could load up the previous quicksave and play from there. and the standard saves, you could choose to make a new save or overwrite an old one. So uh?

Really? I seem to remember the autosaves piling and piling up in H-L.

[Arioch]

ToXiCFLUFF said:

Really? I seem to remember the autosaves piling and piling up in H-L.

Quicksave != autosave.

[toxicfluff]

Heh. Well anyway, some kind of save piled up and up, and I don't like that.

[Enjay]

Fredrik said:

Love Enjay for playing such a munificent serve ;)

My pleasure. :-) the return was the stuff of champions too though.


On the longevity thing (which has been mentioned a couple of times). I think save anytime and cheating extend a game's longevity. It means that once you have completed a game, you can go back and pick the bits you want to play over, or maybe just have a bit of fun by blowing away bad guys with weapons you shouldn't have at that stage or whatever. Which is quite different to extending how long a game takes to play by forcing you to replay a section over and over just because the checkpoint falls at an inappropriate place. That's not increased longevity. It's just an artificially lengthened game that I would be less likely to go back and play a second time.

As an example (for cheats), I loved Thief and Thief II. I wanted to go back and play certain levels over and over, or just really cool bits of certain levels. However, with almost nothing in the way of cheats available this proved quite difficult, and the game got deleted from my HD long before it would have if I could have cheated.

[toxicfluff]

Enjay said:

My pleasure. :-) the return was the stuff of champions too though.


On the longevity thing (which has been mentioned a couple of times). I think save anytime and cheating extend a game's longevity. It means that once you have completed a game, you can go back and pick the bits you want to play over, or maybe just have a bit of fun by blowing away bad guys with weapons you shouldn't have at that stage or whatever. Which is quite different to extending how long a game takes to play by forcing you to replay a section over and over just because the checkpoint falls at an inappropriate place. That's not increased longevity. It's just an artificially lengthened game that I would be less likely to go back and play a second time.

As an example (for cheats), I loved Thief and Thief II. I wanted to go back and play certain levels over and over, or just really cool bits of certain levels. However, with almost nothing in the way of cheats available this proved quite difficult, and the game got deleted from my HD long before it would have if I could have cheated.

You're grouping cheats and the save system as the same thing though. In Doom3, regardless of saving system, if you want to play a level/cheat all you have to do is type "map xxx" or "give all" or "god". This has very little to do with the save system.

Whatever happened to having an attention span, being patient and persevering with a game though? I remember on the NES, I used to get stuck on an area for a while, playing something else and coming back and completing the troublesome area - which gave me a huge amount of satisfaction. I still do it to this day on console games. And sometimes, I have a better experience for this - it's only on PC that I expect to have a quicksave feature.

[Lectrix]

Na i'd prefer it if it auto saved after each level, otherwise id be saving it every 5 seconds on some of the harder levels, and itll just spoil it for me. :(

Problem is if the levels massive youd have to redo the level from the start if killed right at the end.

[Lectrix]

Na i'd prefer it if it auto saved after each level, otherwise id be saving it every 5 seconds on some of the harder levels, and itll just spoil it for me. :(

Problem is if the levels massive youd have to redo the level from the start if killed right at the end.

[Lectrix]

Sorry for the multiple posts, but it posted two of the same thing?

[Wobbo]

The Flange Peddler said:

Save whenever you want.

Having limited saves (by whatever method) is just a cheap way for developers to try and stretch the longevity of a game. Whilst it is a method that probably works, it means you'll just be playing the same bit over and over and over again until you get it just right... Not what I call fun.

And as has been said, it's not like you can't just choose not to save if you want more of a challenge.

stole the words right out of my mouth. excactly

[Enjay]

ToXiCFLUFF said:

Whatever happened to having an attention span, being patient and persevering with a game though?

Sorry, what? I drifted away there. Oh attention span and perseverance?

Nothing happened to them, I never had them. ;-) It's just not how I like to play games, nor is it the way that I have ever liked to play games. I have plenty of things in my life that require perseverance. Playing a game where my main motivation is to be entertained isn't one of them. Just my choice and what "rows my boat".

Oh, and on the cheats thing, I was grouping them together for 2 reasons. 1 Fredrik's reply to my first post kind of brought up the subject, and 2 as I said earlier, IMO saving to allow you to restart or replay a section really is a cheat anyway.

[sniperfrommars1]

Ichor said:

If there's a bug in the game, that's the game designer's fault. And if I'm stuck in a hole, I would just use a noclip code to get out.

And thats with games that have them. Not all games do, although many include a nice suicide cheat for just the same reason.

[toxicfluff]

Enjay said:

Oh, and on the cheats thing, I was grouping them together for 2 reasons. 1 Fredrik's reply to my first post kind of brought up the subject, and 2 as I said earlier, IMO saving to allow you to restart or replay a section really is a cheat anyway.

Fair point on the initial section of your post.

I find a distinction between the two though in that a game is designed with usage of the save system in mind, whereas a game is not designed to be normally played with cheats.