Prev/Next Blog
by date

Nuclear Nightmare Progress - Save/Load Functionality

Name:	Nick Zafiris
Date Posted:	Jan 18, 2006
Rating:	Not Rated
Public:	YES
Comments:	YES
RSS Feed:	or Subscribe with .
Profile Page:	View profile page for Nick Zafiris

Blog post

Hey everyone, I'd like to give you a brief update on our game Nuclear Nightmare now that I have completed a feature that was bugging me for a while. The Save/Load functionality of the game which is a big portion of Milestone 1 is complete. We now have a framework in which we can start building the inventory system, artificial intelligence and other features around it. Also, the first level, the City is moving along pretty quick. It's about 60% complete. This brings us to about 55% for Milestone 1.

While the features comprising the Save Game functionality are nothing new and nothing special, I'd like to give you a brief description of them. I believe that they are comprehensive and hope to fulfill player expectations.

Auto Save Checkpoints
There are three different reasons why an Auto Save may occur. One of them is through checkpoints. There are numerous checkpoints placed throughout the game's locations. When the player goes through one of them, the game will automatically be saved in an Auto Save file and the checkpoint trigger is deleted. The Auto Save file is replaced each time a player goes through a checkpoint but a separate Auto Save file is used for each location. This means that if there are 5 locations, upon reaching the fifth location, there will be 5 separate Auto Save files.

The second reason an Auto Save may occur is when changing locations. When a player exits from a location, the game is saved automatically using that location's Auto Save file. Then upon entry to the new location, the game is automatically saved again but this time in the new location's separate Auto Save file.

The third reason an Auto Save may occur is after critical and major quests have been completed and is saved in the same way.

QuickSave
Players can Quick Save a game at any time by simply hitting the appropriate function key. Like Auto Save, there is a separate Quick Save file for each location and it gets overwritten each time the game is Quick Saved.

Players can load the most recent Quick Save file by simply hitting the appropriate Quick Load function key.

Manual Saving
Players can select to save a game at any time and giving them any name they wish.

---

Regardless of the save type, when a game gets saved, a screenshot is also saved and is displayed whenever a saved game is selected from the Save/Load menu along with the time and date of the save.

All types of saved games can be loaded by using the Load Game menu either from within the game or from the main menu. When a game is loaded, all items and enemies are at the exact same spot they were when the game was saved.

Lastly, players can delete a previously saved game from either the Save or Load menus.

Feel free to comment on the Save/Load functionality in our site's forum thread also.

Screenshot of the Save Menu with TGE's default GUI graphics.

Finally, I'd like to leave you with a more detailed view of our progress:

Nick
Nuclear Nightmare: Rise of the Fallen

Recent Blog Posts

List:	08/01/06 - Inventory System and New Site 01/18/06 - Nuclear Nightmare Progress - Save/Load Functionality 12/06/05 - Plan for Nick Zafiris 07/12/05 - Plan for Nick Zafiris 05/25/05 - Plan for Nick Zafiris 05/05/05 - Plan for Nick Zafiris 01/12/05 - Plan for Nick Zafiris

Submit your own resources!

Chris Labombard (Jan 18, 2006 at 11:55 GMT)

Rather then using an excel spreadsheet... why don't you use iTeamwork

It does what you're doing automatically, only it gives you the ability to let all your team members handle there own tasks.

Nick Zafiris (Jan 18, 2006 at 12:05 GMT)

Chris, I actually use a program called ToDoList for all my sub-features but iTeamwork sounds good. I'll have to give it a try, too bad it's web based only. Thanks.

Nick

Gareth Fouche (Jan 18, 2006 at 12:46 GMT)

Hehe, that list of ToDo tasks looks pretty similar to mine ;).

Well done man, keep it up. Lets get some awesome Torque RPGs out to market!

Stacey Mickens (Jan 18, 2006 at 14:12 GMT)

Well even tho your talking about the save feature the screen shot of the game look nice itself. And of course the save feature. :) Can't wait to see more progress.

Clint S. Brewer (Jan 18, 2006 at 18:49 GMT)

congratulations on getting the saveload finished, I know it's no small task

that todolist program is pretty nifty, thanks for the link. Anytime a programer can guess what hotkeys I want to use to do something multiple times in a row it makes me happy
Edited on Jan 18, 2006 18:49 GMT

Nick Zafiris (Jan 18, 2006 at 19:36 GMT)

Thanks everyone!

John McArthur (Jan 18, 2006 at 23:29 GMT)

Thats great you got load/save done! However, it seems like a LOT of autosaving going on. Is your game going to be that difficult for the player? Having many autosaves per map, per checkpoint, seems redundant. Usually games give the player one autosave to load from for the entire game, and thats fine. Why reload an autosave from 4 checkpoints ago instead of the default checkpoint for the map? If I, the player, need to go back that many checkpoints, then there should just be a 'restart map' button. Its easy, its clean...and its fast.

Whats my point? Be careful of time spent on features like this. Dont over complicate the situtation. How much more needed to be done to get all the different autosaves going on instead of just one autosave per game.

Good luck with the game,
John

Nick Zafiris (Jan 19, 2006 at 00:57 GMT)

John, maybe you misunderstood. There are not many autosaves per map, per checkpoint. There is only one autosave per map that gets overwritten on every checkpoint. So if there are 5 maps, by the time you finish the game there will be a maximum of 5 autosaves.

Quote:
Usually games give the player one autosave to load from for the entire game, and that's fine.

That's some good info. I'll see if I can condense the 5 autosaves to one for the whole game. It's not as easy as it sounds because each map has it's own objects and there is no need to carry them in your save file across all maps and it would get huge. I'll have to think about it. Thanks for your input...

Nick

John McArthur (Jan 20, 2006 at 20:07 GMT)

Your welcome. When I read about what you were doing, I was thinking of some RPGs that Ive played in the past, like Morrowind. The player crosses into different areas without knowing. I dont know how your game will work as far as players moving into other maps so you will know whats best for saving out data for a map. All of that saving can be going on in the background, but to the player, they only have 1 autosave to reload if they want to (whatever the last checkpoint they hit was, for example). Hope that makes a little more sense.

John

Nick Zafiris (Jan 21, 2006 at 12:32 GMT)

Ok, I understand what you're saying and it seems right. Maybe I can modify it so that it only displays the last autosave. Programmatically, I still have to have 5 autosaves (one for each mission) but I can probably make it only show the last one. Thanks...

Nick

Jesse P (Jul 27, 2008 at 18:01 GMT)

Hey have you made the code public yet for the save/load system? This looks exactly like what I want

You must be a member and be logged in to either append comments or rate this resource.