Saving During Combat

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Very interesting results so far.

I need more data on average encounter length and such, but it looks like I'll have to serialize the data regardless. Quitting in a pinch when real life calls and not having to redo something is basic QoL.

Plenty of time left to make a final decision on saving during combat.

Putting it in a cheat options menu like rusty_shackleford said might work. That would make it clear the game wasn't designed around savescumming but still allow it.

Also a game where you can accidentally miss click and fuck up a well calculated attack might also do well to have a way to either recover from the miss-click or offer saving during combat..

This is why some Turn Based games have an "undo" button. To solve exactly the situation in which you just described.

Having an action rollover log to facilitate an undo button adds a lot of complexity. I've only ever seen it in 4x games. Any tactical combat examples?

panzer general type games sometimes have it, but their combat is usually fairly simple although they do have fog of war..they are sort of similar to 4x games sort of it from a map/combat perspective..well at least 4x that have on map combat. Seems like war games in general often have it--perhaps its because they sometimes have many units/counters to move in a constricted area and it can be easy to click the wrong one or wrong hex or whatever..

 

[Volourn]

Xtremèeeeeeeeee!!@@@@@@!0

 

[Modron]

Voted the third option but I suppose that depends entirely on how long your combat encounters are, RPGs don't tend to have those 2 hour long encounters like SRPGs. Still when you have to go you have to go.

 

[gurugeorge]

I'm very much a liberal when it comes to saving, despite the good arguments against. But saving in combat is a definite no-no (unless it's a proper turn-based game I guess).

(As an amusing aside related to saving, I'm still pootling about with DA:I, which has a few mild jumping bits to get to loot. I was engaged in a sequence and I thought to quicksave halfway through, I fell a bit later, and quickloaded - and the game had put me back at the start of the sequence. Very canny of BioWare in that instance - but interesting how they must have done it, I should imagine some kind of "carpet" of non-saveability in the areas relative to the jumping sequence? It was extra naughty of BioWare to make me think I'd successfully quicksaved though )

 

[Harthwain]

You can solve the problem with saving mid-combat if it works like "save on exit".

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So, stop with the intellectual idiocy, moran

If he's a moron how can he stop being an intellectual idiot.
Checkmate, Volly old boy

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

I like to save during combat. Can never be too sure. And if I can't, cheatengine is my next preferred tool so that I can fire recreational nukes at the army of medieval knights. If the devs didn't intend for me to do that, they would've encrypted their files much better.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The possibility to save on exit in every moment (yes, even during cutscenes or combat) and the possibility to restore exactly where you left, should be among the basic human right.
It's incredible that in 2022 this possibility is still almost unknown in games.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

savescummers purposely conflate suspending progress with unlimited saving/loading anywhere to muddy the waters
disgusting vermin

 

[Nifft Batuff]

savescummers purposely conflate suspending progress with unlimited saving/loading anywhere to muddy the waters
disgusting vermin

Savescumming is a second order problem not even worth discussing, if a game doesn't even have the basic feature of save on exit.

 

[Pink Eye]

So, stop with the intellectual idiocy, moran

If he's a moron how can he stop being an intellectual idiot.
Checkmate, Volly old boy

Holy shit. The Barbarian has a point there.

 

[Volourn]

Not really. He us as intelligent as a college graduated SJW. It is all smoke and mirrors.

He seems like he has intelligence because he can type and form ideas, but he is a complete retart when it comes down to it.

 

[gaussgunner]

Having an action rollover log to facilitate an undo button adds a lot of complexity. I've only ever seen it in 4x games. Any tactical combat examples?

If you have in-combat saves, you can just save to memory or a temp file every turn, then reload to undo.

You may as well implement saves during combat for testing, anyway.

Personally, I like fairly long battles and it's nice if I don't have to finish them in one sitting. If I have an hour to kill before an appointment, I'm not gonna play a game where I have to choose between being late, rushing through it, or losing an hour's progress. Games also have a tendency to crash or get corrupted during big battles, so I like to have a few savegames during and before combat.

If people want to savescum, who cares. I don't even like to do it. If I make one dumb mistake I'll reload in combat. If that fails I'll start over from the beginning or look for a way to avoid the battle.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Really depends on the time it takes to finish an encounter. And also what the time is spent on in combat. You can have combat that plays out very quickly if you know what you're going to do, and most time is spent thinking about your moves. But once you have your battle plan ready you can quickly play it out. Then you have games that take forever to play even if you know what you're going to do due to lengthy animations, long AI turns, tons of button presses to execute an action etc. Or unskippable dialogues and cutsecenes before combat. Add a free saving option if your game is of the second type, otherwise disable saving during combat. An option to drop in an out during combat should be there, I'd only skip it if the majority of combat can be played in <15 min.

 

[Falksi]

Saving mid battle is essential for anyone who's not 12-years old, and has other people rely on them for whatever reason. Real life happens, and having the ability to stop and come back to a game when your free time has returned is a must.

Save-scumming is for pussies, and everyone should be self-disciplined enough to not indulge in it regardless of it being on offer.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Saving mid battle is essential for anyone who's not 12-years old, and has other people rely on them for whatever reason. Real life happens, and having the ability to stop and come back to a game when your free time has returned is a must.

Save-scumming is for pussies, and everyone should be self-disciplined enough to not indulge in it regardless of it being on offer.

suspending progress and saving are not the same thing in the same way that suspending your computer and creating a backup is not the same thing

 

[Abu Antar]

You could handle saving during combat like some Japanese tactical rpgs do it, where they have a suspend feature. It does not allow you to go back to earlier turns. Once you load a suspend file, you will have to save again, because the file will be gone if you do not. I use this feature when there are time consuming encounters, and I have to quit the game in the middle of combat. You can then load from where you were, and continue.

 

[gaussgunner]

Also a game where you can accidentally miss click and fuck up a well calculated attack might also do well to have a way to either recover from the miss-click or offer saving during combat..

This is why some Turn Based games have an "undo" button. To solve exactly the situation in which you just described.

This shit drove me insane in DOS2. Characters are animated during combat and their hitbox moves with the animation.

They didn't fix that in the second one? WTH man!! Fucking TB-wannabe popamole devs. It's not hard to fix. Just set a mouse movement threshold like 4 pixels or 0.5% of monitor height when an object is highlighted. When the mouse moves further than that, THEN you do another raycast, and if it highlights an object you reset the threshold.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I prefer to be able to save anywhere at anytime. Combat saving feels like cheating though and therefore I dont use it. But I don't care how someone plays a single player game. If a game has combat saving and you dont like it show some restraint and don't use it. Anything though is better than save checkpoints. No game is 100% crash proof.

 

[MF]

Having an action rollover log to facilitate an undo button adds a lot of complexity. I've only ever seen it in 4x games. Any tactical combat examples?

If you have in-combat saves, you can just save to memory or a temp file every turn, then reload to undo.

You may as well implement saves during combat for testing, anyway.

Personally, I like fairly long battles and it's nice if I don't have to finish them in one sitting. If I have an hour to kill before an appointment, I'm not gonna play a game where I have to choose between being late, rushing through it, or losing an hour's progress. Games also have a tendency to crash or get corrupted during big battles, so I like to have a few savegames during and before combat.

If people want to savescum, who cares. I don't even like to do it. If I make one dumb mistake I'll reload in combat. If that fails I'll start over from the beginning or look for a way to avoid the battle.

Good idea in theory, but that would be one slow-ass undo button. I could make it so that it doesn't have to load the entire scene again or even optimize for relevance, but even loading just the relevant data would be non-trivial. People tend to hate unresponsive buttons.

Anyway, if an undo button is mostly a workaround for poor hit box detection and misclicks, my time is better spent preventing those.

 

[Malakal]

If your heavily modded game has not crashed after one hour of 10 to 1 battle you managed to win somehow in Total War you don't have the full picture.

Same logic applies to RPGs so yes, if battles take long saving should be possible during battles. What if you have to leave?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Same logic applies to RPGs so yes, if battles take long saving should be possible during battles. What if you have to leave?

saving and suspending are not the same thing

 

[Malakal]

Same logic applies to RPGs so yes, if battles take long saving should be possible during battles. What if you have to leave?

saving and suspending are not the same thing

Well for me saving pre roll or something equal is just cheating so I don't even count that as a designated save feature usage...

 

[Pink Eye]

What if you have to leave?

Why you people playing video games if you can't make the time for it. Besides, it's a single player game. Leave it on pause and come back later.

Saving during combat is very degenerate, period.

 

[Malakal]

What if you have to leave?

Why you people playing video games if you can't make the time for it. Besides, it's a single player game. Leave it on pause and come back later.

Saving during combat is very degenerate, period.

Sometimes you can't tell how long an encounter will take, if there are going to be reinforcements or other surprises. And some games have really slow combat too.