this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
227 points (100.0% liked)

Gaming

30527 readers
110 users here now

From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!

Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.

See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I wish all games would just let you save whenever you want to! Why is using checkpoints and auto saves so common?

At least add a quit and save option if you want to avoid save scumming.

These days I just want to be able to squeeze in some gaming whenever I can even if it's just quick sessions. That's annoyingly hard in games that won't let you save.

I wonder what the reason for this is?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The only reason is hardware limitation. I imagine it's more difficult to load at any point in the game in a massive game due to how much is stored in your memory.

Let's say you're playing a game and there's 6 NPCs outside and they're doing their own thing.

If the game has a traditional save system, when you exit the save location it's normal for these entities to rest let their position. Maybe at best their properties (maybe they were wet because of rain) are saved.

But it's much easier to just not save any of this info and reload everything from scratch and only save your progress and location.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some games seem to manage it quite well though? But yeah, they probably had to pit a lot more energy into implementing it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think some custom game engines have creative solutions for handling instant saving and loading. For example System Shock has save and load without any delay. But it is a fairily simplistic game at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ironically Bethesda games track tons of stuff on the world state and still let you save pretty much anywhere.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That is one thing they got right I guess.