Subset Games Forum

One of the fun elements of highly randomized games like roguelikes (or, say, dwarf fortress) is that you'll try your best, lose a number of times, but every now and then you get a really good run and you progress deep into the core of the game.
These are the kinds of runs that don't come along so often, and they are the kinds of runs people will want to pause and continue playing later.

Nothing is more frustrating than hitting your stride on your 10th attempt and then having to abandon it because you have to head out.

A simple save-on-exit and resume (no reloading) is part of virtually every major roguelike these days.
I don't see why they wouldn't include that.
Forcing the player to play the entire game in one go is a remnant of a time when video games were played in public arcades and has no business in modern games.

Contrary to all the hostile arguments "save-on-exit and resume" does not make the game any easier, or change it's essence in any way other than making it less obnoxious to play for people who have other responsibilities besides sitting in front of their screen whenever they please. People who have family or unflexible working hours for example.

definately +1 for save and resume.

reverend wrote:Well 'no save' makes this stand out in my mind as a game I won't be playing much. The reason I play roguelikes ist that I can fire them up for 5 minutes, do a couple of turns then exit and do something productive. Since it takes me about 10-20 minutes to play through one sector in this game I won't be playing it. If I had longer timeslots available, I wouldn't be playing a roguelike - those timeslots are saved for games that I can't break down into short chunks.

Just yesterday I had to abandon a perfectly good run because another issue came up and I had to quit. Kinda makes me not want to start again, since it simply isn't what I signed up and pledged for...

Also, I'm still waiting for a single reason against saving. So far I've read "you don't need it" - hell yes I do, obviously. And "it allows cheating" - so does having the gamestate in RAM, not to mention it's a singleplayer game. Guess I just don't see why people (ok, you) are so determined to keep quite a lot of other people from enjoying the game.

How bout time taken to implement unplanned saves will detract from the time that can be spent on additional content ?

What use is additional content if there are no players?

reverend wrote:What use is additional content if there are no players?

no players, don't make me laugh

VladePsyker wrote:How bout time taken to implement unplanned saves will detract from the time that can be spent on additional content ?

If that was the primary argument for making decisions making this game this would be an ascii game like most other roguelikes.
The fact that it isn't makes me carefully optimistic that the devs value accessibility a little higher than just getting the most content in there in as little time as possible.

kshh wrote:

VladePsyker wrote:How bout time taken to implement unplanned saves will detract from the time that can be spent on additional content ?

If that was the primary argument for making decisions making this game this would be an ascii game like most other roguelikes.
The fact that it isn't makes me carefully optimistic that the devs value accessibility a little higher than just getting the most content in there in as little time as possible.

I'm sure the devs will take a look at the number of people who are playing thier game and the hours spent playing vs the number of people who have commented in this thread and make the appropriate decision

I'm very disappointing that there isn't a save on exit option... While playing it I thought that they just hadn't programed it in yet, not that they weren't even planning on having one... I get that they think most games are 15-45 minutes, but that isn't the case for me. My games are normally much longer. And not having saves really limits what they or modders could do in the future. I was thinking it would be fun to have a gamemode with a lot more sectors so that you have more time to upgrade your ship. It could be modded it. But if the game takes 2-3 hours then with no save....

I play a lot of rougelike games and very few of them don't feature at least a save on exit. Even intended short games like Brogue listened to players and added a simple save on exit.

Please don't force people into your style of play and don't assume people have time to finish a game in one sitting. It is short sighted and frustrating for your player base.

+1 for save and resume.
+1 for registered to post this.

Ibasa wrote:+1 for save and resume.
+1 for registered to post this.

Ditto. I only registered to post this... I have about 10 hours into the beta so far and besides the text being blurry problem the whole not being able to save on exit is the only "issue" I've run into. Heck when I first started playing I didn't realize there was no save option so I ended up having to leave the game open all night just so I wouldn't lose my progress...

Also, I like having short games like this to play inbetween other games. Say I have 10-20 minutes till I start another round of DOTA 2 for instance. If I don't lose in that time frame then what am I supposed to do? I end up just keeping the game open (both of them) and that is really not the ideal way to do it.

Jeah me to. Save on exit is a must.