Save button during missions

[LaMerch]

I'm seriously done playing this game until either the crashes are sorted or a functional saved button is incorporated. Every time my game crashes my forced to start all from over again.

What is the reason why there is no save button?

[Mike]

Time. The team is 3 strong, and making a reliable save function would add months of work per level to an already very long development cycle.

It was an early sacrifice we decided we had to make if we were to accomplish this ambitious project in any reasonable time - and it still took years.

[LaMerch]

Originally posted by Mike:

Time. The team is 3 strong, and making a reliable save function would add months of work per level to an already very long development cycle.

It was an early sacrifice we decided we had to make if we were to accomplish this ambitious project in any reasonable time - and it still took years.

This sacrifice ultimately sours my view of the game. I spent just over 30 minutes on a mission now and the game crashes. I have no inclination to restart the mission for the third time now. I have verified files and reinstalled. Its simply not reasonable to ask me to waste my free time to replay the same thing over gain.

[Mike]

Originally posted by ICUP:

Originally posted by Mike:

Time. The team is 3 strong, and making a reliable save function would add months of work per level to an already very long development cycle.

It was an early sacrifice we decided we had to make if we were to accomplish this ambitious project in any reasonable time - and it still took years.

This sacrifice ultimately sours my view of the game. I spent just over 30 minutes on a mission now and the game crashes. I have no inclination to restart the mission for the third time now. I have verified files and reinstalled. Its simply not reasonable to ask me to waste my free time to replay the same thing over gain.

That's fair enough.

Make sure you're sending in your crash reports when it happens - we have a system that can collate them and help us pinpoint issues. Would you mind posting your system specs?

[LaMerch]

Originally posted by Mike:

Originally posted by ICUP:

This sacrifice ultimately sours my view of the game. I spent just over 30 minutes on a mission now and the game crashes. I have no inclination to restart the mission for the third time now. I have verified files and reinstalled. Its simply not reasonable to ask me to waste my free time to replay the same thing over gain.

That's fair enough.

Make sure you're sending in your crash reports when it happens - we have a system that can collate them and help us pinpoint issues. Would you mind posting your system specs?

Have sent all my crash reports in thus far.

Specs


Processor AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor 3.20 GHz
Installed RAM 16,0 GB
6600XT
500GB NVME

[TheSHEEEP]

I have to agree with OP that the lack of save games, especially combined with longer missions, and doubly so on Hard (or more) just leads to the player having to repeat the first parts of the later missions again, and again, and again.

Take the Cold Blood mission, for example. It takes a long time and many, many retries to even figure out what you are supposed to do to begin with.
The mission keeps you in relative safety until you make a mistake - and then you restart. Coming further each time, etc.
Then those 10 frogs spawn all at once and just wreck your sh*t, suggesting you need to finish the mission/frog in the north before the third night.
But in order to do that, you have to repeat the first half an hour or hour of the mission again - a challenge you already overcame many times, so it just becomes boring and wastes the player's time.
At that point, the player is more likely to just be done with the game and never come back.

About the technical feasability - as a developer and programmer myself, I frankly do not understand the issue here.
Save the state of every entity on the map, save the state of the map (and AI if applicable), voilá you're done. Everything in a video game should have a saveable state from the get-go to avoid such issues.
You are already doing this outside of missions. I don't see what the difference between the hive and a mission is from a technical point of view, other than some more data to store.

At the very least, if fully dynamic entity restoration isn't possible or desired for whatever reason, basic checkpoints should be implemented so that players don't have to repeat parts of the mission they already mastered over and over and over again (even if it means some things are lost like pheromone positions, ants reset to start at the nest, etc).

[Taiki]

Having a save option would make it far less exciting.
You learn from failures and then prepare in the next attempt and then the deciding moment comes and is much more exciting and tense, cause you know you cant load if it doesnt work. Pros and cons.

Also had 0 crashes. Some of the crashes are not the developers fault at all. But yes frustrating if you have them. Or maybe only one single autosave for leaving the game or when crashing. And when the mission is over (won or lost), it is deleted.

[Ratqueen]

I enjoyed the demo, but the lack of a save function during missions is the ONE reason why I'm not bying this game... Since I see there's no plan on adding it, I'm sadly removing it from my wishlist.

[TheSHEEEP]

Originally posted by Taiki:

Having a save option would make it far less exciting.

Ah, yes.
The excitement of repeating the same 80% of a mission again, and again, and again until you figure out the last 20%.
It's not like the game features procedural or dynamic content so the first 80% could be made more interesting once you went through it.

With missions that can easily take an hour or more, meaning you'll waste at least 45 minutes (without learning a single thing, since you beat that part already) just to get to the part you want to get to in order to try out something else.

Unfortunately, most players do not have unlimited time, so wasting that time is the absolute worst thing a game can do, no matter how good it is otherwise.

[e.]

Originally posted by TheSHEEEP:

Originally posted by Taiki:

Having a save option would make it far less exciting.

Ah, yes.
The excitement of repeating the same 80% of a mission again, and again, and again until you figure out the last 20%.
It's not like the game features procedural or dynamic content so the first 80% could be made more interesting once you went through it.

With missions that can easily take an hour or more, meaning you'll waste at least 45 minutes (without learning a single thing, since you beat that part already) just to get to the part you want to get to in order to try out something else.

Unfortunately, most players do not have unlimited time, so wasting that time is the absolute worst thing a game can do, no matter how good it is otherwise.

The game... isnt even hard, you're clearly messing something up quite badly if you're supposedly wasting that much time

[suFist2K8d]

Originally posted by e.:

The game... isnt even hard

lol. I looked at how far you are in the game. Yeah you beat a couple levels on Impossible. Looks like Cold Blood beat your ass so hard you quit the game though, and you only got it on medium with no achievements.

We can talk about the difficulty, but if you:
* Haven't even played all the levels
* Haven't beaten all the levels
* Haven't grinded any of the real achievements
* barely scraped through on medium in 4.1

That tells me you don't know what you're talking about. You didn't quit because it was too easy, you quit playing it because you got your ass handed to you by 4.1.

[e.]

Originally posted by suFist2K8d:

Originally posted by e.:

The game... isnt even hard

lol. I looked at how far you are in the game. Yeah you beat a couple levels on Impossible. Looks like Cold Blood beat your ass so hard you quit the game though, and you only got it on medium with no achievements.

We can talk about the difficulty, but if you:
* Haven't even played all the levels
* Haven't beaten all the levels
* Haven't grinded any of the real achievements
* barely scraped through on medium in 4.1

That tells me you don't know what you're talking about. You didn't quit because it was too easy, you quit playing it because you got your ass handed to you by 4.1.

So, you're a snooper? I beat those before the achievements were out and frankly, I dont care about achievements, so suck a ♥♥♥♥, eh? For me, a game is more than getting achievements because I prefer to have a fun time, not a bad time.

[Ahzru'kahn]

Originally posted by Mike:

Time. The team is 3 strong, and making a reliable save function would add months of work per level to an already very long development cycle.

If you mates were to (painstakingly) make follow up to this game.. could you implement a save feature from the beginning possibly? This game brings me back to my Pikmin Gamecube days so while I see the no save per level is sorta annoying.. I also grew up with arcade games like that.. that's just how it was.. you never got to save in the middle... set that aside and the game seems to be quite enjoyable

if you guys do plan on making a 2nd one perhaps you could you could have when the day/night ends like they did in pikmin, you have to do a wrap-up of the days work and progress.. at that point it would save sort of finishing a level but not really.. I want to see this game flourish because I think the concept is hella cool with the realistic bugs


-side note - just sayin.. Borderlands 1 was great - but borderlands 2 was fantastic.. allot of the first games are when developers feel out what direction they wanna go with and then hone it in on the 2nd..

[Kassian]

Def gonna agree here, i havent touched the game in months bc it feels like a chore having to complete a whole mission without saving, i have a life, i cant just spend hours nonstop tryna get thru ONE mission. Ffrom the forum poosts ive seen it seems like MANY MANY players have been requesting this feature for SO LONG, but the devs just say "to much work" when TBH sooo many other games have mid-mission saving so not sure what the real issue is there, bc in the long run, adding one feature (and yeah i get that itd take time but, in the scheme of things whats a few months compared to the long time its taken to make the game yknow?) that is so common for games would really make the game more viable for many people, but idk

[The Destroyer]

Initially I thought the game also needed a save feature for the side campaigns but once I figured out those harder missions they weren't that bad. I actually learned to enjoy the "do or die" approach for the side campaigns and didn't mind the lack of saving. Reminds me of the "Hardcore" setting on many newer games.

However I do sympathize with anyone that is experiencing crashing constantly and losing their progress. I was one of the lucky ones and had no crashes when I played the side missions or went for an achievement. Some of the achievements took me a few days and I had to pray I didn't lose power.

[th01m3nn]

Come on it doesn't take hours to finish a mission. You should just plan your time and expect to be busy for an hour