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Author Topic: No autosave? Seriously?  (Read 6546 times)

smithney

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #15 on: October 04, 2022, 07:09:39 AM »

"You think you want autosave, but you really don't."
You think you want to compare Fractal to AAA sweatshops, but you really don't :^

Jokes aside, vanilla autosave would be neat, turning it off would be a matter of a toggle. It's just that every iteration comes with its pros and cons. Autosave on hyperspace jump seems like the best option. Not sure how well would it go together with Transverse Jump, though.
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Igncom1

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #16 on: October 04, 2022, 10:57:24 AM »

I 100% support the idea of an auto-save feature, let people turn it off it they really want to.

But the mere concept that a basic functionality of a game, that is common even in Microsoft Word and Excel these days, doesn't need to be there is totally absurd.

I shouldn't need a mod to remind me to manually save, that shouldn't need to exist at all.
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CptZoom

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #17 on: October 04, 2022, 04:49:07 PM »

Quote
I agree with OP on this issue. If you treat your new players as unpaid alpha testers, at least listen to their feedback. New players will always have expectations and make assumptions, based on the tropes of your genre, and if those assumptions get violated too often, the game is at fault, not the new players. Starsector has no autosaving whatsoever. What contemporary games do not have autosave?

To get an idea of what games are starsector-adjacent, we can use this site, which gives us:
RimWorld, Stellaris, PlanetSide 2, Mount And Blade, Factorio, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Skyrim
So, which of these games don't have an autosave feature? The original mount and blade I guess (not bannerlord). But the lack of it was hardly a feature. The way bannerlord does it would work well IMO.

Add an autosave timer, then trigger a save around that time, preferably at market exit/battle won/jumping, then put the campaign.autosave.zip in the save folder. Loading a save with an autosave newer than the manual save, gives a prompt with a choice of either option. Autosaving without interruption would be nice, but not necessary. This would seem like a good use of dev-time, IMO.

So if they're still only a 1-2 man team, then like Valheim, this isn't about "staying true to the game" but more about, greed means more money. They could find a skilled JAVA programmer or a group of programmers and fix a lot of these features, but why bother when you can let your community do all that work for you, while you rake in all that fat cash.

So with that in mind, maybe we just need to start a Go Fund Me or something, where we collect money and pay someone to develop an autosave feature, because at this point, I think that's the only way those of us who want it are going to get it.
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Yunru

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #18 on: October 04, 2022, 05:57:34 PM »

[messed up quote boxes]
Or... You could just use the mod that does exactly that, that people have already suggested and quit yer bitchin'.

It's not vanilla, oh no, such a shame.

cerberusti

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #19 on: October 05, 2022, 02:59:47 AM »

To be fair, sensibilities have changed over time, and autosave is something many will simply expect in 2022.

I do not personally find it a big deal (having developed a habit of hitting F5 regularly at appropriate times over the years), but not doing something about this before a steam release would be a bad idea, as a nontrivial number of people will likely assume it saves for you and not do so manually.

It is really more of a polish feature though, and may be somewhat annoying without some optimization of the save process.  Background saves are also likely enough work that there is incentive to have a complete game before doing this.

That is extra true if it is related to the memory leak, and a save routine like this is a very obvious place a reference to an object can persist too long and cause what is essentially a memory leak.  Running the base game with the only changes being to settings to disable the flash on kill and allow 240fps (which it works fine at), and pausing and tabbing out rather than closing it, I can get through most of a campaign before it must be restarted.  That is not bad at all, but if there is a 15 minute autosave and that contributes, it may come much sooner.

Compression is likely to be part of that as well.  It can be done in two different ways, either generating text and asking that it be compressed, or internally maintaining a compression table and using binary tokens (I tend to use a standard here, so you can get json with gzip decompression or similar, but custom formats are also common).  While the latter is much more efficient, it is also the kind of thing that programmers tend to like to do last if the specs are not very clear going in.

My guess is this is part of the full release, but we see better save handling after saved games start having an expectation of being compatible through releases.
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smithney

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #20 on: October 05, 2022, 07:30:21 AM »

Already got my sleeves dirty for the devs so I might just well go balls deep...

So if they're still only a 1-2 man team, then like Valheim, this isn't about "staying true to the game" but more about, greed means more money. They could find a skilled JAVA programmer or a group of programmers and fix a lot of these features, but why bother when you can let your community do all that work for you, while you rake in all that fat cash.

So with that in mind, maybe we just need to start a Go Fund Me or something, where we collect money and pay someone to develop an autosave feature, because at this point, I think that's the only way those of us who want it are going to get it.
Indie developer doesn't include a feature I believe is basic. Must be because they're greedy.

Hey, I don't think developing a niche low-concept low-budget game title over 10+ years is a goldmine, but perhaps you're seeing something that I don't. I mean you have much better chances cashing in the same money by developing like 10 skinner box clones for mobile with about the same team size at a fraction of the time, but what do I know :^)
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #21 on: October 05, 2022, 08:36:00 AM »

Not infrequently, I see a toxic poster and wonder 'did this person even pay for the game they're being so awful about'?
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Thaago

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #22 on: October 05, 2022, 09:40:22 AM »

@CptZoom, please review the forum rules found here: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2668.0

It seems the entire point of your necro of this thread was to be sarcastic and toxic, so consider this an official warning.
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Cegorach

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #23 on: October 05, 2022, 10:07:26 AM »

The main issue with autosave, and why I wouldn't like it, is that saving takes a while. I don't really want the game to be interrupted at intervals.

The save time is something that could probably be addressed, but would probably require a new saving format/method (so dev time) and the save file would probably not be human readable anymore.

Dude. No, that's not a problem with autosave. If you don't like it you turn it off. No problem.

You do realise every game has customisable options.
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CptZoom

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #24 on: October 05, 2022, 12:11:01 PM »

@CptZoom, please review the forum rules found here: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2668.0

It seems the entire point of your necro of this thread was to be sarcastic and toxic, so consider this an official warning.


Not at all. I may be sarcastic, but I honestly want to discuss why there is no auto save feature in this game. I think there have been enough replies to show that calling this thread back from the dead wasn't unwarranted. I guess what I would like is some feedback on why such an essential feature in nearly every modern game is missing in this game, whether we can expect it to be added, and if not, maybe we need to get a modder to mod it into the game. Simple as that. If my response to other snarky comments was snarky, it was just tit for tat and not intended to go against the forum rules.
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cytokine

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #25 on: October 05, 2022, 12:37:35 PM »

Quote
March 14, 2022
Oops! :-[
I guess we won't be hearing from OP...
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Histidine

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #26 on: October 05, 2022, 06:12:11 PM »

Thing I just thought of: "autosave in 10 seconds, press ESC to cancel" with big message.

@CptZoom, please review the forum rules found here: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2668.0

It seems the entire point of your necro of this thread was to be sarcastic and toxic, so consider this an official warning.


Not at all. I may be sarcastic, but I honestly want to discuss why there is no auto save feature in this game. I think there have been enough replies to show that calling this thread back from the dead wasn't unwarranted. I guess what I would like is some feedback on why such an essential feature in nearly every modern game is missing in this game, whether we can expect it to be added, and if not, maybe we need to get a modder to mod it into the game. Simple as that. If my response to other snarky comments was snarky, it was just tit for tat and not intended to go against the forum rules.
Read your bump post back to yourself and then figure out which part of it was supposed to be an honest attempt to start a discussion or to solicit feedback.

"maybe we need to get a modder to mod it into the game"
JFC. Are you simply again refusing to read the very thread you chose to bump (all 1 page of it at the time) and all the subsequent replies on top of that, or is this deliberate trolling?
« Last Edit: October 05, 2022, 06:14:09 PM by Histidine »
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CptZoom

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #27 on: October 05, 2022, 07:32:28 PM »

Not trolling at all. I have legitimate questions, but feel free to continue to call me out for inane comments.
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BCS

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #28 on: October 05, 2022, 09:54:48 PM »

Not at all. I may be sarcastic, but I honestly want to discuss why there is no auto save feature in this game.

Because a) the game is intended to be played in Iron mode and b) who cares? Surely with a quicksave function no one would be lazy or entitled enough to whine that the game doesn't automate a single button press every half an hour?
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Igncom1

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Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« Reply #29 on: October 05, 2022, 10:56:19 PM »

and b) who cares?

I do.

It's ludicrous that the game lacks this basic functionality, and the people arguing against it are little more then contrarians who don't what the game to change.

"Lol you want to automate the game saving every half an hour?"

Yes, I'm busy having fun. Or was until my game ended and now I have to go back 3 hours. Might as well stop playing that that point.

Calling people lazy or entitled for wanting their programs to have basic functions is pure spite and easy to ignore the people who say it. Good for you mate you don't need an autosave, push on.
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