“This game has an autosave feature. Whenever you see this symbol the game saves in the autosave slot.”
Ok, that’s neat. But what’s so important about the autosave feature that the warning screen has to go into the opening credits?
I am quite sure older games didn’t have this warning screen. When did this start and why?
It’s not a warning. They’re just pointing out a very important feature of the game, a feature that lets you stop worrying that you might have to replay the last 30 minutes.
I thought it’s so you don’t interrupt the save, causing a corrupted file. Or if the game pauses, you know why.
It’s basically the game going, “Don’t worry about saving. We got this. See?”
My guess is that it’s a combination of both reasons; some games specifically call out their little flashing autosave icon in the instructions and/or tutorial with a warning not to turn the thing off while it’s running.
Plus, if not for that, people wouldn’t realize that the game autosaves.
I lean towards the “game file may be corrupted and screw up everything” concept. Telling you it autosaves is one thing, but telling you to not turn it off is there so you don’t mess it up and lose your progress.
I think all games should have autosaves and voluntary/manual saves. Avoids a whole mess.
A couple reasons:
Obviously that’s not good for anything with a sophisticated SSD or spinning hard disk inside it, but modern filesystems are pretty good about recovering themselves to a working state-- the one exception is half-written files are likely to disappear. That’s not a big deal if the half-written file is an update to the user’s cute avatar hat, but it could be a huge problem if a video game keeps a single autosave that’s suddenly disappeared. That’s when you get angry calls from gamers who lost their 30-hours-worth of Crackdown state.
So the warning is basically: if you’re going to turn the console off by killing its power abruptly, at least don’t do it while the save is happening!
Modern consoles and games save by either exporting a portion of a SQL database, or writing a formatted file. Dumping raw data doesn’t work anymore because it’s basically impossible to keep all that data in one place, and the sheer quantity of data would be overwhelming. (A Skyrim save for example is probably at most 10% of the actual working data describing the world… much of the save process is just deciding what’s worth keeping and what should be thrown-out. There’s a rat corpse 17 miles away in a cave that’s already been looted-- is it really worth storing this on disk?) Since the save takes longer, the risk of power cutting it off is much higher.
I remember about 15 or so years ago when the first** Aliens vs Predator** game came out for the PC there was a huge outcry because it initially didn’t allow you to save except between levels (even if you had to do it manually most FPS games allowed you to save as often as & whenever you wanted). The creators of the game even said they specifically made it this way to make it more challenging. This was compounded by the fact that the game was already really difficult to begin with. People complained so much that they eventually released a patch but even then it still only allowed you a limited number of saves per level.
I also like to have “cues” that the program did not crash. A little “busy bee” icon, a prgoress bar, something.
I second that explanation. Several PS3 games I’ve seen had warnings about not switching off the console during disk access.
Also, at the risk of stating the obvious, the reason why you see it now and you didn’t used to in the olden days of computer gaming is that most big games these days are pretty much direct console ports, which didn’t used to be the case.
Reported for move.
Presumably, the game makes multiple, rotating autosaves, even if you can’t see them. So if one gets corrupted, it just loads a (slightly) older save.
I agree. I don’t mind forced-saves in some games (Brütal Legend was fine). And I don’t like when my only method of saving is several button presses (Menu>Save>Click slot>Yes). MyY kingdom for a Quick Save!
Buy WHY do they do this? It makes the save files much smaller. E.g., in Brütal Legend, it has to save: current location, abilities etc. unlocked, collectibles found. Life isn’t necessary since the game doesn’t have a life bar, enemies respawn so their positions aren’t needed to be save. Contrast with a game where you can save anywhere, it needs to know, e.g., current HP/MP/ammo, maximum HP/MP/ammo, each enemies’ death state and/or current HP, whether a fireball lobbed at you is currently midair, etc. Lots more data to account for.
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
There’s one example of this that is quite easy to spot: the state of a merchant’s wares. It’s an exploit, but if you have a ton of junk you want to sell, saving and loading each time they run out of money will reset their petty cash.
I just wish there was an easy way to tell exactly when we had the last autosave point.
If it were up to me, there’d be incremental saves that happened quite often throughout the gameplay. And you’d be able to pick how far back you wanted to go. If game designers think it necessary, they can limit you to go back to only certain checkpoints, where a full save is done.
I will admit that most games are getting pretty good at picking good autosave points, however. But there’s always that one game that makes it annoying.
Most that have autosave only also have a mandatory “Quit and Save” option. You might not start at the same spot, but your progress will be saved. The only way you could get past that is e.g. Ctrl+Alt+Del, and I believe some games like Diablo restrict that to prevent cheating.