How to save?

[Rapture_Tourist]

Can I save everywhere and at any time? Especially on consoles in history, you often had lazy save points placed somewhere. And please let us have undefined amounts of save files to create.

And saving before doing some experimental things in Bioshock could be quite necessary.

@RuneMaster70: Sorry, we seem to have had the same question :(.

[RuneMaster70]

That's cool ;) Haven't seem to have gotten an answer yet, either. I'm going to out on a limb and say that when we actually do get it, it will be relieving, yet very unspectacular.

[Freddo]

I would be quite surprised if we can't save anywhere anytime.

[jackinthebox]

i wonder how the saving-system would look like without quicksaving... after all you run around freely, it's no linear shooter with level-like concept...

[Bartekk]

I pay 50$ for the game and I just want to have some fun and not get frustrated just because someone placed auto-save here and here and not over here and I have to replay the whole section (ekhm... FarCry). If I want to save after killing every single enemy, I want to be able to.

[RuneMaster70]

Autosaves make sense for a linear shooter (e.g. Halo). But, when you can experiment with different AI and gameplay situations like in BioShock, IMO the save anywhere feature is a must.

[Da Bubs]

Autosaves make sense for a linear shooter (e.g. Halo). But, when you can experiment with different AI and gameplay situations like in BioShock, IMO the save anywhere feature is a must.

true, very true.

I am going to take a guess and say that it is going to be like Oblivion's system.

[a rabid chicken]

You can save anywhere, anytime. This has been said in one of the community Q and A's. I don't know how many of you people are from TTLG, but you should check out http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/cultofrapture.html and http://www.bioshock-online.com/ for lots of BioShock information. I hope this helps.

[daprdan]

I would like to see a "Save Tree".
A fractal list of saves each one initiated by a plasmid.Try a cloak plasmid for a while,acheive a goal,then go back and try a speed plasmid and have a different branch of the fractal save tree. Main branching points could be initiated by the major ugrades,or the specialties one chooses.
Probably take a wack of memory though.

[v.dog]

I don't know about the Bx engine, but in HL2 you can have multiple saves, it's just a matter of binding the keys.
EG:bind ins save save_1
bind del load save_1
bind home save save_2
bind end load save_2
bind pgup save save_3
bind pgdn load save_3That plus the quick saves allows you to mix it up, you can save before and several times during a battle, so if at any point is doesn't go your way, just load the point where it did. You could even re-load the whole battle to try something completely different just for kicks.

[ckline]

You can save anywhere you want.

-Chris Kline, Irrational Games

[Maniac]

Ohhh THANK you.

-Maniac

[somecut8]

You can save anywhere you want.

-Chris Kline, Irrational Games

Sweet, but I also hope there is either an auto-save system or Checkpoint/save by chapter system to prevent any regret from saving at the wrong spot. What I mean by this is that if the user is allowed to save whenever and wherever, he may accidently save in a spot in which he cannot get out of. The player might accidently save when he has little health but is about to have an epic battle with inumerable opponents, thus unable to beat that part. Or the player might accidently save at a spot where there is some glitch that prevents some trigger or staged event from occuring, thus preventing the user from continuing and causing him to start over.

An auto-save system would be nice because that would allow the user to load a save file from several minutes before the accidental save. But what would be best is a chapter save in which the user could go back to any chapter and start playing from there. This would minimize any accidental saves and/or glitches with triggers that were supposed to happen.

[Raveness]

Autosaves are in, why wouldn't they be: http://69.64.70.103/forums/showpost.php?p=7947&postcount=2

Load times in Bioshock are reasonably short (20-40 seconds, depending on whether or not you are re-visiting an area you went to before, due to autosaves).

The reasons you've given for autosaves are obvious, but I actually hope they can be toggled off, either in an option or via console, to reduce operations done at loadzones so the transitions are smoother between decks.

[Redraf]

Personally, my preference would be a Dead Rising like save system with save spots more plentiful. This prevents cheapness in saving right before a puzzle to allow you to restart halfway through instead of restarting if you fail. I like an unlimited number of save because that way I can make different characters and play them all differently. However, I feel like having more than 2-3 save spots for every character will lead to cheapness.

How will the mission system work on this game. Will you be able to return to a prior mission like in Halo (if so, what stats would be used, the stats you had going into the mission, or your stats at the end? Will missions be done for a character once beaten the first time, and the only way to play them again is loading a past save or starting a new save?

I like to be able to redo missions I've completed, but to do so I would prefer to start where I left off, and I'd also prefer that what I do in the past missions has no effect on my character, so I can play the missions differently, but I can't go back and change thing I don't like. I like a missions based on chapters like in Gears of War, so I like things separated as plot twists happen..

[Redraf]

Thnks, I didn't even notice this thread. I've edited my post to make it look less first post-y.

[whitefroguy]

Personally, my preference would be a Dead Rising like save system with save spots more plentiful. This prevents cheapness in saving right before a puzzle to allow you to restart halfway through instead of restarting if you fail.

well if you've gotten to the very end of dead rising and the save point saves you with one bar of health and you have a mile of tunnel to nav then you f*cked with a rusty spike

something nice to see would be a quicksave feature that saves one or 2 prior quick saves so you can go back a step or two if you pressed the wrong save feature which i have done in almost every pc game i have ever owned F7 noo..... i hit F5 f*ck!!! or the reverse

[Ectoplasm]

A good save system, IMO, has 3 components:
1. Autosaves. Occur at particular points in game without player input.
2. Quicksaves. Half-Life has it best - two alternating quicksaves, so if you hit quicksave by accident just before something nasty chomps you down, you can reload from an earlier quicksave.
3. Static saves - determined by player and not automatically overwritten.

In order to prevent constant save-reloads, the game should minimize the 'you die if you miss this one shot/jump' scenarios. And a little dynamism to allow for mistake recovery (difficulty setting taken into account). I.E. spawn that extra medkit if the player came out a bit too battered from a previous encounter - or make his next adversary a little less deadly so there is a way to make up lost ground.