Savegames

[demich]

I know many people that have been saving each round and load the game after death of their soldier. Are we going to do something with this? We can E.G. set up limit of saves during mission. 15 saves on easies difficulty level to 3-4 saves on hardest level. What you think?

[Guest Jim69]

Hmm, I don't c why. It's a concious decision 2 cheat if they want, IMO standing in their way is usually a mistake. Sometimes this isn't the case, especially in games that most ppl only play 1ce like adventure/action genre games, but a game like this with almost indefinete replayablility is different. Maybe 1st time peeps make loads of reloads and start 2 learn some tactics. Then the next time they play it they conciously set themselves a target "Only 5 saves per battle".

 

We could of cause add this as an option, like Ironman in Civ type games. Just don't try and ram things down peeps necks, in my experience peeps don't appreciate it very much.

[Aosar]

We could of cause add this as an option, like Ironman in Civ type games. Just don't try and ram things down peeps necks, in my experience peeps don't appreciate it very much.

 

True, however indeed the option should be there, with maybe added points in... in... Will Xenocide have a sort of Highscore table?

[Guest Jim69]

I think it should, I agree u should get additional points if u do Ironman, and also u should lose points 4 every save in Battlescape.

[Raven Squad]

Internet highscore. Where few and selected 1337 can cheat their name in .

 

EDIT: Oh and ironman difficulty is great idea.

Edited August 5, 2003 by Raven Squad

[j'ordos]

I think it would be best to allow unlimited savegames on standard mode. Then, if you want, you can choose an Iron Man mode, where you can not save, except when you exit the game. Or some in-between options, like: only saving in geoscape, only saving at end of month, only one save/week, only one save in battlescape,...

[Guest Jim69]

I think it would be best to allow unlimited savegames on standard mode. Then, if you want, you can choose an Iron Man mode, where you can not save, except when you exit the game. Or some in-between options, like: only saving in geoscape, only saving at end of month, only one save/week, only one save in battlescape,...

Err, thats what I said didn't I? I like ur refinerations ( is that a word????) on the idea tho, maybe Civ could be a good inspiration on which kinda game types 2 use, maybe even that option someone ( Mikker I think ) suggested that the countries funding could be refined. Would come up just after the difficulty level IMO.

[miceless]

I would say that its a really bad idea to force something like this on people. Sometimes, when i have completed a game normally i like to play a game (mainly FPSs) by saving really often and trying out different strategies. It really bugs me if the saves are limited and I cant do this.

 

SoF2 is a good example here. It had a default "You can only save n times per mission" rule, but you were able to change that. You could set it anywhere from zero to infinity. I think that is a good idea.

 

Modifying your score based on saves I disagree on. In the normal games I believe you should not discriminate based on save frequency. However, i really like the idea of an Ironman game, and I see no reason why that could not be a special game type with different scoring. Opens up the idea for Xenocide competitions.

[Puasonen]

Ironman difficulty has been talked about before.. Back then there also was some guy who wanted to do something to prevent cheating. They came to the conqlusion that it's stupid to force people to play in someway and ironman difficulty was created.. About as hard as superhuman but saving possible only once a month or once an hour(real time) or so.. Bad thing about save possibility at the funding screen once a month is that when you have played like 6 months or more, months starts gettin' A LOT longer in real time. One month can take forever to play and if you have something else to do and you can't save, it sucks..

 

If you ask me, who needs that? If you want to cheat, then cheat.. If you want to play fair, you just don't load! Are you people really so weak you need a different difficulty level to be unable to load? Just don't load you loading-addicts!

[miceless]

I think the point of the ironman they had discussed above was to introduce scoring, so that people can say "I got a score of 64700 last night, using ironman." Then, other people can play ironman too, get their scores and they will be comparable. As far as normal games go, i agree with you. People can make their own minds up about saving, and can implement their own rules.

[Guest Jim69]

Well, I think that in Geoscape there should be unlimited saves. Most of the cheating happens in Battlescape, so it is there that the Ironman rule should be applied. In that way if u have 2 go then u have 2 go, u still get a couple of saves 4 battlescape if u have 2 go but it reduces cheating. Of cause this option would be available at the start of the game, and u could turn it off at the beginning if u want.

 

Maybe u r right about the saves in normal game not mattering to the score, then peeps would be like "I got 2500 points in normal game" then other peeps would be like "Yeah, u probably cheated, I got 2500 points in Ironman, so there." Nothing like a little friendly competition .

[miceless]

Perhaps Ironman could involve automatic saving, so that no matter what you do it always gets recorded. That way, noone could cheat anywhere. Those kinds of games could be used for competitions.

 

Dungeon Siege comes to mind here...

[Puasonen]

It would almost work but there are people who loads immediatly when they get killed by alien reaction fire on their own turn. What I'm saying here is that the autosave should save immediatly when someone gets killed to prevent cheating..

[miceless]

Yes, exactly, there is no save function at all, because it is always done automatically.

 

If someone wants to leave, then they just exit. When they want to carry on they just click "Continue Game" or soemthing. You could have ten slots for Ironman games, and when you start a new game you choose a slot. That way, you are always able to load your game.

[Guest Jim69]

Screw autosave, I like saving at specific points maybe 2 review l8r and take different actions. If u really want autosave then I would vote 4 the save function to be there as well 4 those of us who branch out at different points.

 

Edit: However I do like the idea of an autosave at certain points, just leave the save option there.

Edited August 6, 2003 by Jim69

[miceless]

The idea for the autosave is to have an ironman version of the game where people cant cheat. The normal games would have fully functional load/save options.

[Guest Jim69]

Right, it takes approx 3-6 seconds 2 save in most games, imagine this every time someone is shot or the end of each turn. Annoying. A fixed number of saves has been proven 2 work in quite a few games, whereas I have not yet seen a game where u can only autosave. Stick with what we know works.

[miceless]

Like i said, try Dungeon Siege. THe reason it takes so long is that it has to save everything. If you continously save then all you have to is update.

 

Anyway, thats a coding issue, and may or may not apply.

[Guest Jim69]

Still gonna take a while which is unecessary IMO, tho it ultimatly ain't up 2 me. I'll leave it 2 the majority 2 decide which they would prefer in the Ironman mode, autosave or a set amount of saves. I've said what I think, now I'll shut up 4 a while as all my convo's end up being like a wedding ring

[Historian]

Ok, this propably has been mentioned before, but how about making the higher difficulties a bit tricky.

What if, when you choose a difficulty higher than easy then your saves are handicapped in battle.

For example:

Easy : Unlimited Saves in Battle

Experienced : 6 Saves per Battle

Veteran : 4 Saves per Battle

Genius : 2 Saves per Battle

Superhuman : No Save

 

Of course that means that the relative difficulty should drop a bit on the rest of the game, but since losing precious soldiers is a high enough cost (except if you want to replay the whole mission)

[j'ordos]

http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?sh...t=0entry34283. Probably some more threads around but that's the first I found Edited December 6, 2003 by j'ordos

[SupSuper]

the game should have a "save on quit" feature so that the player wouldn't lose his game because he had run out of saves

but yes, nice feature, SoF2 had that same system, i believe.

[Gradea]

the limited saves should be a totaly diffrent option then difficulty. im sorry but i hate having to chose between fighting actual decint AI and challenging creatures and having enough saves so i can leave my computer once in a while. Infact im quite fond of the games that let you set each aspect of dificulty (funding, alien resorces, alien AI, number of aliens per mission, number of ships apearing per month and all) individualy. you can never have too much custimization.

[Breunor]

Merged these topics to keep ideas together.

[Syntax Error]

Good idea Breunor!

 

I would like an autosaving at the beginning of each mission and at each end of month with the reports in two special lines in the Save/Load menu, if something goes wrong we have these saves to load.

[Whitewashed]

I never save in battles, only before. If I loose to many well trained soldiers I'll load and replay the whole mission.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

I'm with you!

 

And BTW, this topic is now moved!