AGDInteractive - Sierra Adventure Game Remakes Forum

You guys have done a spectacular job overall, but I found myself very agitated when I had forgotten to save.

Autosave is a feature that could be easily implemented. Can I request it as a patched feature?

Awesome work guys!

there is already autosave in game, but hided

Any clues as to how I can find it?

ask yourself what wouldn't Jesus do

... you can start in your game directory, thats my hint

the only two saves i see in there are the one i saved (agssave.001) and the restart save (agssave.999)

also, I can't find any info in the readme or manual

are you purposefully being cryptic? An autosave feature is not necessarily something that should be hidden, IMHO

rescue? swapfile? easter egg? don't know, but I have it there as full-value autosave agssave.199, it's only hidden ingame

Agssave.199 is what we came to know as the quicksave. Beta testers could save a game with a quick keystroke and then send it off without having to sort through their saved games all the time. The quicksave keystroke is still enabled, but the quickload is disabled so as a feature it's not much use anymore.

There's currently no auto-save in the game. Not sure if it's gonna be implemented. There's not too many unexpected deaths a la King's Quest 1's "push rock from wrong side". Most of the time, you know when you're in danger of dying.

maybe I am pushing something, didn't know about it, however this savefile is quite updated whenever I play

You guys have done a good job from what I've seen but no autosave makes the game unplayable for me. Sorry guys

The deal-breaker for you with this game is the lack of an auto-save? Not a crappy camera, not a poorly implemented side quest, (none of which exist in QfG2), but what keeps you playing this game is your own laziness? Just save the damn game from time to time.

almightygrunt wrote:You guys have done a good job from what I've seen but no autosave makes the game unplayable for me. Sorry guys

You're kidding right?

That's a shame. May I ask for the details? Is it just the general principle of knowing that if you forgot to save, you'll lose all progress if something kills you, or did you pick a fight with a ghoul who decided to spam magical attacks on you and as that last boom spell started rolling towards your prone hero, you realized with horror that the last time you remembered to save was 2 game days and 3 hours of stat grinding ago?

Ah, the now forgotten motto of Sierra adventure games: "Save early. Save often (preferably in multiple save slots)".

Don't let the lack of an autosave steer you away. Personally, I'm happy there isn't an autosave; I like to wander the desert and fight, but if I'm unhappy with the results of a battle, I return to an earlier save to try it again. If there was an autosave, I'd get too reliant on it and wouldn't remember to make my own saves. This isn't like an action game where a potential death lurks around every corner. There's plenty of time to assess any situation, and more than enough to save and keep your Hero-flavored butt out of danger.

When I was a kid, I always used to watch my dad play Sierra games. The one thing he ingrained in my mind was to save often, and always make it a new save so you could go back in case you did something wrong. As I aged, I grew to be a bit riskier (and cockier), keeping a few save files but overwriting them time and time again so I wouldn't have to use the dreaded "Change Directory." A couple years ago, when replaying KQ6, I forgot to do something early on in the game and, thanks to my laziness, had to restart.

When I related the story to dad, he nearly smacked me in the back of the head for not listening to him.

Remember kids. Al Lowe says: Save early, save often!

The thing I would really like would be a higher number of save game slots . . . my initial plan was to save at least once a day for each play though.

Now I am done with all three character types - have once a day for my fighter, only about 6 saves for my mage, and 4 for my thief - but all my slots are full. It's been useful to jump to a certain day to explore more of the *extras*, but i would like at least one save a day for each character . . .

CGG wrote:The thing I would really like would be a higher number of save game slots . . . my initial plan was to save at least once a day for each play though.

Now I am done with all three character types - have once a day for my fighter, only about 6 saves for my mage, and 4 for my thief - but all my slots are full. It's been useful to jump to a certain day to explore more of the *extras*, but i would like at least one save a day for each character . . .

Move the old files to another folder with Windows, and you get to keep them and free up save slots.

CGG wrote:The thing I would really like would be a higher number of save game slots . . . my initial plan was to save at least once a day for each play though.

Now I am done with all three character types - have once a day for my fighter, only about 6 saves for my mage, and 4 for my thief - but all my slots are full. It's been useful to jump to a certain day to explore more of the *extras*, but i would like at least one save a day for each character . . .

Just finish with one character type and move ALL the savegames to a new folder. (Note: do NOT move just some and keep others! It creates... issues.)

I do like the old system where you can choose the save folder though. I separated my saves by character type and then into subfolders so I never had to remove old savegames.

Autosaves are like a pact that we developers make with the player. It's a thing you do that says, "Hey, there are pitfalls in the game that you might not be prepared for, but I'm not going to waste your time. Here's most of your progress back."

I have died in several unexpected ways. Accidentally using the lockpick on myself. Accidentally clicking too many times on a door to raise my lockpick skill and dying of exhaustion. Being unable to figure out how to run from a fight with a Terrorsaurus thing that I obviously couldn't win. In the first two cases especially, I was completely unaware of any danger.

I played a lot of Sierra games, and while this one is a very well done remake of a beloved game, I can't bring myself to keep playing the "save, save, save, save, die, reload" game when it's clearly a repetitive task that the computer could handle easily.

Some of these are design choices. Should you really die from trying to pick your own nose? What if you just refused to hand out points when the player is exhausted instead of killing them? There's something to be said for being faithful, but we all know Sierra made a lot of really horrible design choices in their games.

I hope there's no hurt feelings, just to say that I wish there was an autosave so that I could enjoy this classic with more modern conveniences.

Actually, nosepicking is a valid way to grind your lockpicking stats. You just have to be skilled enough at it to begin with, or yes, you'll die.

Have you played the original? The ways of dying that you've described are identical to risks in the original game that is also sans autosave. The only thing that is different is the combat system, but the game makes it pretty clear that the desert is a dangerous place, so if you're not sure what to expect, obviously saving is a good idea.

Personally, I don't often use the autosave feature on the games that do have it. I find I usually like to save the game myself either a little sooner or a little later than the autosave kicks in, or I prefer to have a save file that won't be automatically overwritten in that spot.

You're entitled to your opinion, but I think it's very sad that you'll let what is really a small matter of personal convenience stop you from enjoying a really wonderful and well done game that actually is better than the original series in many ways.

Yes, even an auto-save feature won't protect you against deaths like dying of exhaustion or nose-picking with low lock-picking skill. In QFG3, the autosave feature saved the game only before battles, before events where danger/risk of death was involved, or before events of importance to the plot. But even those can be few and far between and you can still die from mundane actions like running out of Health and Stamina resulting in loss of progress.

As with anything involving computers and avoiding lost data, you need to remember to save regularly and the onus is on you as the player to do so.

Indeed, if there WAS an auto-save feature implemented it would only be triggered at important points where it was easy to die. In the first two cases you mentioned, that simply wasn't the case. (and in the last one...both the combat tutorial in the guild hall and the manual state you can run by pressing escape) And the surgeon general death message was too good to leave out.

I think an auto-save isn´t failsafe either, which might cause a situation to result in a dead end. For example:

1) Player enters break-in house. Autosave created.
2) Player gets loot and a guard is about to enter, but the player wastes a little bit too much time messing with the box of money. The guard is about to enter in 0,5 seconds.
3) Player tries to cover his tracks, but aims wrong and with the wrong cursor. Accidentally clicks the lock pick on himself. Autosave created, then death message appears.
4) Player restores autosave, meaning he's alive again at the point where the guard is about to enter in 0,5 seconds. Since the player figured himself untouchable by being able to revert his death, he neglected his manual saves and has lost a lot of progress now his autosave is no longer usable.

For short, adding an autosave and then enabling it for each way to die could open a new can of worms.

almightygrunt wrote:Some of these are design choices. Should you really die from trying to pick your own nose? What if you just refused to hand out points when the player is exhausted instead of killing them? There's something to be said for being faithful, but we all know Sierra made a lot of really horrible design choices in their games.

I hope there's no hurt feelings, just to say that I wish there was an autosave so that I could enjoy this classic with more modern conveniences.

Well, death by exhaustion is a core mechanic in the whole series, it's unlikely they'll change it.

OTOH, an HP/SP/MP bar onscreen at all times (like 4 and 5) would have been a nice touch, though I understand that trying to keep a continuity with 1 VGA and 3, that wasn't all that likely.