SpaceVenture - Space Quest spiritual successor by Two Guys from Andromeda

[Sceptic]

I mean, most Sierra games inactivated saving during specific sequences so this isn't such a big deal.
But the fact that they are having so much trouble implementing a simple save system in an adventure game, of all things, is just baffling.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I mean, most Sierra games inactivated saving during specific sequences so this isn't such a big deal.
But the fact that they are having so much trouble implementing a simple save system in an adventure game, of all things, is just baffling.

This is the general state of modern indie games, where devs completely rely on third party game engines and are unable to implement a proper save game system. This is also the reason why roguelites or arcade platformer, where when you die you just restart the level from a fixed check point, are so ubiquitous.
Now we are so brainwashed to think that it is normal to have only check point in games, that there are also many new adventure games without a save system but with check points. Check points. In point & click adventure games...
They say "muh savescumming", but I am sick of this shit.

Edit: this is from 2013: (https://forum.unity.com/threads/is-...-complex-feat-to-achieve-with-unity-4.192685/), but the situation is basically the same nowadays. Also check what Pyke said. Note also that in 2013 there were still people complaining for the lack of manual save everywhere in a RPG game.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Who are these rabid backers chomping at bits instead of champing?



Drives me nuts when people make that vernacular mistake.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

bertram_tung

The euphemism is “champing at the bit”, but idiot Americans are unable to parse the British accent the phrase was coined with and have decided it’s “chomping”. It’s an incredibly common mispronunciation in the States, and at this point is so ubiquitously used that it’s somewhat forgivable for anyone who hasn’t made a study of English Literature, but it still irks me to no end.

 

[bertram_tung]

I hit the "what" tag because I didn't even know what made you bring it up. Seemed like a non sequitur. Then I just noticed it was on the update on the previous page.

 

[Zarniwoop]

So, they're going for 2 records? Longest development time I believe is still held by Cleve at 20 years, they're only at 11.

Longest Kickstarter, they might have something. I don't think even Scam Citizen has been active this long.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So, they're going for 2 records? Longest development time I believe is still held by Cleve at 20 years, they're only at 11.

Longest Kickstarter, they might have something. I don't think even Scam Citizen has been active this long.

UnReal World, a rogue-like made by a couple of Finnish developers, spent 26 years in development hell before being released in 2016.

(Dwarf Fortress turns 20 next year, that is also considered to be in perpetual development hell.)

 

[Jarpie]

So, they're going for 2 records? Longest development time I believe is still held by Cleve at 20 years, they're only at 11.

Longest Kickstarter, they might have something. I don't think even Scam Citizen has been active this long.

UnReal World, a rogue-like made by a couple of Finnish developers, spent 26 years in development hell before being released in 2016.

(Dwarf Fortress turns 20 next year, that is also considered to be in perpetual development hell.)

There's been older versions of UnReal World released, IIRC the first version was released in 1992.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

(Dwarf Fortress turns 20 next year, that is also considered to be in perpetual development hell.)

As far as I know the situation of DF is different. It is not a kickstart with definite time deliveries or a pre-alpha commercial game.

 

[infidel]

But the fact that they are having so much trouble implementing a simple save system in an adventure game, of all things, is just baffling.

This is the general state of modern indie games, where devs completely rely on third party game engines and are unable to implement a proper save game system. This is also the reason why roguelites or arcade platformer, where when you die you just restart the level from a fixed check point, are so ubiquitous.

I don't use any engine and save system in any game with significant amount of state is a pita. There's just no easy way to implement recursive object dump/restore unless someone did a very good job at lower level, then you can mark properties as serializable or something (I think Unreal Engine has that but I might be mistaken) and hope it works by itself. And even then it's a lot of tedious work because restoring object state inevitably leads to something related to assets, because game state is usually tied to graphics in some way. I'm not ashamed to admit that I put off any work on saving/loading until the game is close to completion because not only you have to do it once but you have to keep it in mind forever after that. And if there's a way to not do it, I take it without any misgivings. The players start complaining though... In case of a game based on Unity you have to load your state from the file and then manipulate the scene to have the desired state, likely another source of pain.

Adventures tend to have huge amounts of unique objects and object states that are tied to art and animations often controlled by scripting and especially timer scripts. So save/load anywhere becomes a tremendous task unless you have a custom scripting environment that was designed with that in mind from the ground up. In case of Sierra Ken Williams himself and his early cohort of programmers did that - a custom scripting system that can control any objects and assets in a flexible and powerful way. He himself is very proud they've had that competitive advantage with AGI/SCI VM. Same thing with LucasArts, excellent job by Ron Gilbert, Aric Wilmunder and probably others implementing ScummVM and modifying it over the years.

 

[Neuromancer]

In case of Sierra Ken Williams himself and his early cohort of programmers did that - a custom scripting system that can control any objects and assets in a flexible and powerful way. He himself is very proud they've had that competitive advantage with AGI/SCI VM.

From what I read, the SCI games from Sierra (maybe AGI as well) have no sophisticated coding for a save game system, but just just did a memory dump of the whole base memory.
That is also the reason that Sierra savegames tend to be quite large for their time and also that they were incompatible between different versions or upgrades of the same game.

 

[infidel]

From what I read, the SCI games from Sierra (maybe AGI as well) have no sophisticated coding for a save game system, but just just did a memory dump of the whole base memory.
That is also the reason that Sierra savegames tend to be quite large for their time and also that they were incompatible between different versions or upgrades of the same game.

Downloading a random SCI game savefiles pack from here (LSL3) shows me that the average save file is 40kb. SQ2 is 3kb each. Looks pretty small to me. They might've done that later (Gabriel Knight savefiles increase from 40kb to 170kb) but it doesn't look that way. I'd say for AGI it's inventory flags, room flags and global flags (if they even had them in AGI). Incompatibility between versions can be explained by implementation details.

BTW, LSL1 script code is available on Github, for example: https://github.com/historicalsource/leisuresuitlarry/blob/master/RM11.CG
You can see how a lot is done in "initLog" block, all the asset loading (manual for everything!), animation and state setup. AGI likely only has inventory flags and room object flags to save, very strict limitations on when and what to save make their job way easier. The save system has to call room init (which also inits animations/object art if the flags say they're there), position the player, then accept input. For example, interacting with takeable object is done like this (no art for it, very useful): https://github.com/historicalsource/leisuresuitlarry/blob/master/RM12.CG#L309-L336
Looking at it, they can't save while the player climbs the ladder for example, because it's a transitional state, player input is disabled until the movement finishes. Also if you think about it, there are no NPCs in AGI games that can move independently from player, like going from A to B and back. Whenever any animation starts, the input is paused until it's done. It was done pretty efficiently.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

But the fact that they are having so much trouble implementing a simple save system in an adventure game, of all things, is just baffling.

This is the general state of modern indie games, where devs completely rely on third party game engines and are unable to implement a proper save game system. This is also the reason why roguelites or arcade platformer, where when you die you just restart the level from a fixed check point, are so ubiquitous.

I don't use any engine and save system in any game with significant amount of state is a pita. There's just no easy way to implement recursive object dump/restore unless someone did a very good job at lower level, then you can mark properties as serializable or something (I think Unreal Engine has that but I might be mistaken) and hope it works by itself. And even then it's a lot of tedious work because restoring object state inevitably leads to something related to assets, because game state is usually tied to graphics in some way. I'm not ashamed to admit that I put off any work on saving/loading until the game is close to completion because not only you have to do it once but you have to keep it in mind forever after that. And if there's a way to not do it, I take it without any misgivings. The players start complaining though... In case of a game based on Unity you have to load your state from the file and then manipulate the scene to have the desired state, likely another source of pain.

Adventures tend to have huge amounts of unique objects and object states that are tied to art and animations often controlled by scripting and especially timer scripts. So save/load anywhere becomes a tremendous task unless you have a custom scripting environment that was designed with that in mind from the ground up. In case of Sierra Ken Williams himself and his early cohort of programmers did that - a custom scripting system that can control any objects and assets in a flexible and powerful way. He himself is very proud they've had that competitive advantage with AGI/SCI VM. Same thing with LucasArts, excellent job by Ron Gilbert, Aric Wilmunder and probably others implementing ScummVM and modifying it over the years.

I think that the approach of object oriented programming (as opposed to data oriented programming) and the ubiquitous graphics/gaming engines now used (that obfuscate the data), are among the main reasons why games with a proper saving game system are less and less frequent, in particular in the indie gaming scene.

In the past a data oriented approach, where similiar data are stored and computed contiguously, was preferred, because it is more efficient from the point of view of needed resources. This is also the preferred way to program to implement a complete save system. Conversely, object oriented approaches obfuscate the data. This is fine and dandy until you realize that you need to access to that data in order to create a proper save system.

Here I further theorize that this state of programming is also the reason why, at present, so many indie games are based on game-loops that don't need complex persistent data access, management and storing: metroidvanias, roguelikes, soulslike, etc.
It is not because these are the most enjoyable genres available. It is because these are the easiest games to develop with the available game engines and programming tools, since they not require persistent complex data management.

 

[OndrejSc]

Just dump the entire 16GB of memory with each save. Done.

 

[infidel]

I think that the approach of object oriented programming (as opposed to data oriented programming) and the ubiquitous graphics/gaming engines now used (that obfuscate the data), are among the main reasons why games with a proper saving game system are less and less frequent, in particular in the indie gaming scene.

Well, OOP lends itself very well to gaming. It's very intuitive, every monster, every item, etc is an object that can be manipulated to some degree with stock methods.

Here I further theorize that this state of programming is also the reason why, at present, so many indie games are based on game-loops that don't need complex persistent data access, management and storing: metroidvanias, roguelikes, soulslike, etc.
It is not because these are the most enjoyable genres available. It is because these are the easiest games to develop with the available game engines and programming tools, since they not require persistent complex data management.

I don't think it's the main reason. I think that it's mainly due to that action games are the most visceral and enjoyable to kids. We've got multiple generations of gamedevs now that have all grown up playing fucking Mario and they want to do Mario and their brains are wired to ignore anything but Mario. Coincidentally, Mario has a very primitive save system, basically all you need to store is a level number. In case of vanias you store your inventory and the number of the save point, maybe some progress flags, the rest is reset or generated on loading.

Unity has its roots as a 3D engine (they do 2D now of course) and Unreal is at its core, Unreal (1998), a corridor shooter. I mean that they were both made for corridor shooters first and everything else second (Unreal still has troubles with making anything that's not a corridor, I think, and they've all but abandoned their 2D plans). Same visceral feel but in 3D. Now, why a lot less people do shooters? The answer is obvious, they're a lot more expensive and need more expertise for details and time for development. The recent wave of low-poly shooters like Amid Evil, Prodeus and DUSK comes from that reason, they're way cheaper to make and there's an audience for cheap visceral entertainment. And BTW, there are really quite a few people that barf all over monitor when playing shooters.

 

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Today marks the 10th Anniversary of SpaceVenture's funding!

1.2 micro-issues remaining. Here's to 10 more years, chaps!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...re-by-the-creators-of-space-que/posts/3565784

Latest news on SpaceVenture being released​

First off, thank you all again for your patience. We realize every time you hear from us, you are hoping we'll announce the official release of the game. We all wish that were the case as well. The main reason for this update being so late coming is because we were feeling like the problems would be resolved within a couple of more weeks of development. That mindset kept going on and on. All we can do at this point is assure you that the game is going to be released and that we are very close to finishing.

SO WHERE ARE THINGS WITH THE PROJECT RIGHT NOW?

Within this whole year, the main focus has been to fix existing bugs and to finish the save load system. After doing more testing and purposely trying to break things, we discovered even more issues with our existing system. Unfortunately this means further time spent in development. The issues discovered weren't just on the save load system itself but on how certain scenes of the game dealt with relating information back in ordered to be properly loaded.

We do have some encouraging news on that though. In the next two weeks, a couple of our developers (one of which is the lead programmer) are going to get together in an office and put in some 16-18 hour days to try and solve these existing issues. We are feeling pretty confident that this will stamp out the remaining bugs on the system and get us where we need it to be for releasing the actual game.

As soon as we have more to update you all on, we'll post it here.

BESIDES THE SAVE LOAD SYSTEM, WHAT ELSE HAS HAPPENED DURING THE LAST FEW MONTHS?

NOTE: This info will be especially helpful if you played the Beta

• Bugs have been fixed in the Nostradamus areas of the game
• Missing narrative comedy has been added to the Nostradamus area of the game
• Missing SFX have been added to the Nostradamus area of the game
• Bug fixes for the objective system not working correctly in the Escape Pod area of the game
• Bug fixes on the cutscenes between the Nostradamus and Scraps Garage areas of the game
• Bug fixes in the Scraps garage area of the game including issues where sequences weren't happening in the correct order
• Bug fixes have occurred involving the Objectives System for helping players know what they have accomplished
• A SFX has been added for when the player has scored points
• New 3D music added for Scraps radio being heard higher or lower depending on which area you are in
• New music has been added to the Rooter Repair sequence
• A "Wimp out" (Think Space Quest 4 Monolith Burger) button has been added to the Rooter Repair sequence for people that really don't enjoy the kind of puzzle that is being used in that area
• In the Crane Pit area there have been some much cooler polish animations added
• In the Crane Pit area there has also been a lot of polish added to SFX management involving junk piece collision
• Bug fixes have been added to the Crane Pit area involving Aces PDA not working correctly for downloaded Apps in the game.
• Bug fixes to landing on Tatoorakis
• Bug fixes to Tatoorakis Hydrolator and Desert areas of the game involving a missing component sometimes not be available for finishing the sequence
• Bug fixes to the finishing cutscene for the Tatoorakis area of the game including ship take off
• Bug fixes to landing at Taco Nova
• Improvements to the Taco Nova mini game including a fun reason to get a high score
• Some artwork changes to Andromecon, including some additional alien creatures added

ART BOOK TEASER

One of the things that Mark Crowe has been working on along with game testing and artwork polish is the official art book for SpaceVenture. This is something he had not spent time on putting together since the game artwork wasn't officially complete. Now that 99.9% of the artwork is complete, he was able to put some time in on getting it together. We wanted to show you all a little teaser of what it will look like.

Remember, even though he has completed the book, this is just a teaser. The full artbook contains over 30+ pages.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL TEASER or use the QR Code from your phone

JUST A REMINDER

Please do not message us your updated address information for rewards. We will eventually send out a survey that will allow you to put your updated information in there for us.

KEN AND ROBERTA WILLIAMS ARE MAKING A NEW GAME

Just in case you're out of the loop, we wanted to do a shout out to Ken and Roberta Williams along with our friend Marcus Mera. They are knee deep into remaking the game "Colossal Cave" into a new 3D/VR adventure game. We are really excited for them and can't wait to play their new game!

Please go check it out when you have some time!

https://www.colossalcave3d.com/

 

[Grauken]

Wait, shouldn't that have been released like years ago?

 

[OndrejSc]

Make save system a DLC.

 

[Taluntain]

Wait, shouldn't that have been released like years ago?

The count is at the first decade now, not just years any more.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I wasn't aware that the problem taking this game so long was the save system. While I do feel for the developers, considering the absolutely obnoxious nature of creating one, so much so that I a non-programmer is aware of it, you'd think they would have planned for that back when they started.

 

[Taluntain]

That's just the last of a series of problems, the biggest of which was not taking an existing engine and making a game with it, but instead thinking that they can make their own engine as well.

 

[OndrejSc]

there has also been a lot of polish added to SFX

Polish dub confirmed!

 

[Zarniwoop]

Wait, shouldn't that have been released like years ago?

Real Soon®
Some micro-issues remain.

 

[Spectacle]

Why on Earth does an adventure game require a save system that takes years to develop?