Braid Dev Says Auto-Save Warnings Waste Time and Money

[devotedsniper]

Surely once you've made an auto save system you would just use it for all your games (obviously some changes would need to be made for each (e.g. icons) or at least that's how I've been coding all my uni work making it modular so I can take parts of code and recycle them for example I can take my random number generator and transfer it into any of my c# projects link it up and it will work.

 

[Screamarie]

I don't know if this guy is right or not, I'm not a developer and I've heard some people on both sides say "yes he is" and "no he's not" so I'll just leave that be.

My problem with Blow is that he just seems so high on the horse that I can't really stand him. Maybe your way IS better Blow, but that doesn't mean YOUR better and it certainly doesn't mean Braid is better. Braid, at least to me, is a Mario clone with a face life and a Prince of Persia rewind button. Not saying it's bad, just that I don't think he ever did anything especially innovative or new.

And it's not that I don't think he shouldn't get to state his opinion, but...he's made ONE game. I think you have to make more than ONE game before you pretend you know better than the people who have been at it for many, many years. Sure, young fresh eyes can lead to new innovations, but when you point out a potential flaw you gotta do it with some humility.

 

[Artemicion]

Oh, you made one mildly successful indy game?

Tell me how you're a genius who will single handedly save the industry from AAA gaming.

This, so hard.

I wonder if this guy complains about the color of the sky and his preference of certain blues over other blues.

And how god could have saved development time if he just picked a single shade.

 

[MetalMagpie]

1. I like to know exactly when the game has saved. This is especially important in games that don't offer any sort of manual save (such as Assassin's Creed). When I want to stop playing, I wait until the next time I see the saving icon, then quit once it's done.

See, here's my problem with this point: The people who are worried about their saves to the point where they'd specifically want to be told when it's saving are the people who are going to shut-down their game and system properly, which means it's completely moot to let people know when the game is saving anyway.

It's not like the 360 is ALWAYS saving. Even in the case of a game that keeps saving your checkpoint (like wandering around the Citadel in Mass Effect), if your character has been standing still for 5 seconds (you know, the time it takes to get-up and walk across the room to shut-off the system in the most abrupt manner possible, to say nothing of holding the X-button down to selected "Shut Down" in the menu), then your game is long-since done saving, and the icon has long-since vanished. It's to the point where I would argue that even the people who are most likely to accidentally corrupt their saves by just randomly shutting down the system would be hard-pressed to make it line-up perfectly with the few seconds it takes to auto-save.

I was thinking mostly of games that use defined auto-save points and where there isn't an option to save manually. Assassin's Creed only saves on particular events (covering most of the things that counts as "achievements"), and there isn't a manual save. So you can go to all the trouble of travelling from one city to another (sneaking past/fighting off guards), quit without reaching a save point, and have to do the whole journey again when you next sit down to play. So whenever I wanted to finish playing Assassin's Creed, I waited until the next time I saw the save symbol, then switched off once it was finished.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge has a similar system. It's a linear game and it saves at pre-specified points (only identifiable by the fact that the save icon appears). There's no option to save manually, so you can end up having to repeat sections of gameplay if you quit at an arbitrary point. (Something that's happened to me more than once when I've needed to rush out!)

Or possibly these games could solve the problem by just including a manual save!

 

[Epona]

So the little spinning icon that appears at the top of the screen while auto saving (FF 13-2) is too much trouble?

 

[frizzlebyte]

On the subject of Mr Blow however, and I mean this in a neutral manner as much as possible, is he actually doing any new games that we know of? I guess I don't understand why people focus on his opinions so much, they rarely tend to be particularly profound or insightful.

Yeah, he's doing one called "The Witness". It's a little like Myst, if I'm not mistaken.

Anyway, I think one of the reasons that people listen to his opinions is that he tends to look at games from an artist's perspective, and seems to want to elevate games to a higher form, utilizing their specific strengths as a medium.

I also tend to think there's a bit of the "man of the week" thing going on. Kind of like Christopher Nolan and J.J. Abrams, if I had to have a reference.

 

[-|-]

It's too hard to warn people not to turn off their consoles while the game is saving? Wtf?

Personally I would expect most game developers to rotate auto-saves already simply because warning someone not to do something doesn't mean they won't do it. And don't people realize that if you turn off a disk drive mid-write, you might lose more than the just the file that is being saved.

 

[Zaik]

I don't think anyone is surprised to find out that console certification is wasteful or largely about enforcing nonsense rules to ensure trivial crap is in place just because.

I think the point was probably made the first time someone ever brought up that they had to wait a month on it to pass.

 

[Zealous]

Oh look, it's that one guy who made that one indie game complaining about something again. Alert the presses gentlemen, this man has something to say.

 

[xPixelatedx]

Wow a lot of you people really hate this guy. He pointed out a rather large problem and gave an awesome solution; one that could make console gaming a lot better. I've lost a lot on my xbox due to the brown outs California summers bring. What he's suggesting has nothing to do with indi games being better. He said there should be a system setup to make sure your saves are backed up... and this is bad!? Oh, I guess it is because he said it.

I'm going to guess that many of you don't want health-care, either.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Did anyone else find braid boring?

 

[Tharwen]

3 days for Jonathan Blow, cause he sucks at programming, it would take me about 2 hours to implement this.

But could you get it through a QA department in that time?

Honestly, I don't know why people are complaining about this. It's just a simple (and intuitive!) improvement to game save files.

 

[Shjade]

Things.

If you think I've defended anyone or suggested they know anything you've misread my posts thus far. All I've pointed out is that your own reasoning indicates Blow knows the least. If his detractors know more by comparison it is only due to his lacking, not their wealth of knowledge.

The goal was to point out to you that you are doing what you're poking the disagreeing faction of having done: making nonsensical arguments in disagreement with them. Hypocrisy is funny.

 

[DugMachine]

This guy needs to really relax. Braid wasn't that great anyways...

And no thank you. I like the little warnings for autosaves. Some games take forever and a day to autosave and i'd rather not turn off my console and totally screw myself over.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

3 days for Jonathan Blow, cause he sucks at programming, it would take me about 2 hours to implement this.

But could you get it through a QA department in that time?

Honestly, I don't know why people are complaining about this. It's just a simple (and intuitive!) improvement to game save files.

I didn't write that dude

Check again.

 

[Tharwen]

3 days for Jonathan Blow, cause he sucks at programming, it would take me about 2 hours to implement this.

But could you get it through a QA department in that time?

Honestly, I don't know why people are complaining about this. It's just a simple (and intuitive!) improvement to game save files.

I didn't write that dude

Check again.

Oh, whoops. I blame the new forum layout... somehow.

-Snip-

I was aiming for you

 

[Yuri Albuquerque]

... So much idiocy in this thread. Nobody read what actual developers had to say, it was only "I hate this guy, ergo he must be wrong".

Have you ever heard about ad hominem? That's what you're doing. And the worst way possible.

 

[Signa]

Considering how those messages need to be translated into like 5 different languages, I totally see where he's coming from. It sounds like it's way more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

Oh, you made one mildly successful indy game?

Tell me how you're a genius who will single handedly save the industry from AAA gaming.

Oh dude, that was just pure awesome. We should get together for the sex some time I appreciate your ever humors presence in the forum.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

It's been said that the person with the most to say on a matter knows the least about it

You're the one who's said the most by replying to many individuals in this thread.
What does that say?

Captcha: Good for nothing. Sums up my opinions on this.

I see what you did there and I like it.