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Oh, The Difference A Save Makes!

During the beginning of my development process, I was wondering how I was going to handle saving. What seemed like an automatic process (save points, inns, etc) got more complicated the more I delved into it. I didn't want to go full old school with save denial (saving only at save points, etc), as that is a rather old mechanic that has its limitations. I don't mind old mechanics, but I wanted to see where I could improve it a little.

In the end, I decided that the idea didn't really need any radical new improvements, but just some tweaking and care. So here's what I got. Normally, saving is restricted to save points and inns. From a developer and player standpoint, this is easier to curate spots where the player can generally escape from, and they're less likely to box themselves into a corner and save themselves into oblivion, i.e., an unwinnable situation that wasn't accounted for by either party.

It is a LITTLE archaic but it is fine. There are not enough people out there complaining about the concept of save points for me to worry about it (and if Fallout 4's Survival mode is anything to go off, some people actually miss them quite a bit)

However, one must be flexible, as life can be unexpected and the player will appreciate a way to save their progress and dipset out of the game in a bind. For this I have Quicksave.



You can quicksave anywhere from the menu, but only one slot at a time. It's useful in sticky situations, but it's not exploitable. Which is fine, as that's not the point of saving.

Regular save points are here, and they come in three flavors;



Red save points are standard save points, found in dungeons and such.
Green save points are restore save points that completely restore party HP/TP. Often, but not always, found before a boss.
Blue save points save, restore, and warp you back to the beginning of a dungeon. Handy!

So that's saving for ya!

Posts

Pages: 1
If you're using colour to differentiate between the save points, you gotta make it more distinct than it is now. I can barely tell the difference between them, and this is when they're sitting on a totally flat white background.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
2 and 3 look identical to me. Then again I just got off a rough shift.

Cool stuff though, man!
They're much, much more distinct in game. I can still fiddle with the saturation tho!
The problem isn't one that can be solved by saturation, your save points are going to be hell to a majority of color blind players. There really should be an additional physical distinction on your save points: Never rely on colors alone to communicate to the player.
That's a good point. I'll whip up an additional distinction!
Pages: 1