It's not that I don't want it. On the contrary...that would be awesome. It's just that I've been a long time survival horror fan and I'm used to this save system. It works for the genre. It really does. It may be ancient and annoying, but FM is all about classic survival horror, so I appreciate the authenticity. Thank you, kind sir. Looks like we're on the same page now. Unrelated: My shitty internet connection downloaded all (close to) 900 MB of FM in 3 hours. Holy shit. Goodnight folks...I'm off to play!
Yes it does, the idea of such system is to put player more pressure and making him think twice before making decisions eg: instead of not worrying about game saving, you have to go on certain places to save your progress, you may find enemies in your way or you may not, that's an old school save point system (we use the same exact system as in Resident Evil 1/Remake). That's how basically survival horror work, you make the player do things he doesn't feel comfortable, mostly breaking rules. Why on earth would we want the player to save at will? Removing player tension and making things easy for him will make fear dissipate. Again, key points of a good survival horror game. I understand you like to save a lot at will but saving in this game is a gameplay mechanic. I however understand if you don't like this mechanic, after all we cannot please everyone. Now, putting the game in background and crashing is a bug and will get patched for the first update.
I never said the floppy disk save system should be changed, I think it's a great mechanic. What I've been talking about this whole time is a feature that lets players quick-save and exit. Then, they can reload that quick-save ONE time and then that quick-save is deleted, meaning that this feature is only capable of letting a player suspend their game when they want to take a break. This means that dying still has all of the tension and the gameplay is completely untouched. It's 100% different from the floppy disk save system.
I then misunderstood you, my bad. But what I mean is that putting the game in background and losing your progress is a bug and should not happen. I'm currently fixing it and will be available for the first update very soon. As for now, try to do a fresh restart and avoid playing with others applications open, that could help minimize crashes if your application goes in background mode.
There seems to be a lot of talking at cross-purposes and people not quite grasping the specific concern in this thread. Like most of the people raising concerns over the save system, Zenmode wasn't asking for checkpoints or the ability to save anywhere during normal gameplay, he was asking for the simple ability to temporarily suspend and preserve the game state only when you shut down or switch away from the app, and resume it when you return. This may not be a "mobile game", but it is being played on mobile devices, and that cannot be handwaved away. As above, Zen was not asking for the ability to save at will, he was just asking that you find a way to allow players to switch away from the game and not lose their progress if the app has to restart, which is something you've actually just stated you're planning to address. The existing manual saving process with the floppy disks is absolutely fine, but it is poor practice to have a game on a mobile device that relies on tension through limited saving as you've stated is the intention, but which also causes you to lose all your progress the minute you have to take a phone call or check something in another app. Having to replay a (potentially large) chunk of the game because you were sent back to your last manual save not because you died or did something stupid but because the app simply shut down in the background when you switched away from it for a second doesn't build tension; it's just very, very irritating. As you've stated that you're addressing this, though, there's not much more to say; the game is definitely worth all the care and attention you can give it. As an aside, one of my favourite references was the very early nod to Alan Wake with the animated figure (complete with gun and flashlight pose) in the game's logo:
Sorry if this has been asked but I was having trouble wading through this thread. Can anyone let me know what the install size is? Thanks in advance!
Ya know, maybe this save controversy is good for the game. Maybe CNN will pick it up and more people will buy the game. Spoiler Really ��������ing tired of this save game talk. What an awful thread!) Decided to start over to better digest all that is on my phone screen. I absolutely LOVE the title theme music. I see that there's a space between New Game and Continue... New Game Plus, perhaps? Also, 1.3 gigs.
And don't forget, it's even better with headphones. There is a lot of, I don't know, "nuanced" sounds there that can sometimes be missed when using device speakers only. With the headphones in, all those subtle sounds that contribute to the atmosphere are much clearer and have a much more pronounced effect. But as a reluctant headphone user myself, I have to fully recommend using them here. It just makes the world of difference. It does also emphasise the work that went in and how much we need better speakers on these devices.
I acknowledged that you're working to address this issue in my previous post. That said, is it literally just unexpected background crashing you're looking at fixing/reducing/eliminating, or will you actually be adding the facility to resume the game from the exact place it left off/crashed if it happens to restart in the background for whatever reason (unexpected crash, forced shutdown by OS to free up resources, etc.)? They're not the same thing.
It's not a "resume" system he is looking at. Or adding auto save or save button and then exit. That would simply be no different to just adding an auto save and making the disk saving redundant. Which would change the mechanics a lot more than people seem to realise. It's a remedy to a crash unique to background that means it's "unpaused" and closes. The system itself is not changing, just a bug remedied. However, there is a pause/resume in the background already but that's not the same as an auto save, close app, remove from background. If you do that, you'll still be back to pc/disk save point. As it stands (with crashing in background bug quashed), on pressing the home button or minimising the app, it goes into pause mode. It stays in pause mode for as long as the iOS decides and assuming one is not using a lot of system resources, it'll stay that way for plenty long enough. If the system needs the resource, it will essentially unpause the game and close it down. That is iOS system wide and determined by Apple and not any developer. At that point, the app us closed and therefore one is back at last pc/disk save point prior to pausing. If you open a lot of apps with it in the background, it will close even after the bug fix because iOS is pretty stingy so get to a save point before you go on to play other games or open other apps. If you take phone calls, email, messages only, it'll be fine but if you go and play IB3 instead, well you won't. No different to a GTA game on iOS in that respect. I'm pretty sure I always had to find a safe house in those and I'm pretty sure any time they crashed or were closed without saving, I'd always end up back at the safe house and previous save point on reopening. So nothing new here really but I don't recall 20 odd pages complaining about it on any of the GTA threads though.
I know how the OS works in that regard; I already covered that myself. While the developer might be working to eliminate random background crashing, the issue is that the OS shutting down the game to free up resources isn't a "bug" to be fixed, it's simply how the operating system works. This would mean that switching away from the game and losing progress is actually not something the developer will be addressing, which was the impression being given. Your memory fails you. I just tested this with Vice City, which saves your exact position when you manually shut down the app without saving (or when it is shut down by the OS in the background) and allows you to resume from that precise spot when you return, so no, it's completely different. It's the exact opposite of this situation, in fact, and would be the reason why you didn't see people mentioning it as a problem.
How is the replayability of this game ? I'm actually on the fence about this, since I read somewhere that it is only 4-6 hours long.
The shake to escape enemies is ridiculous. And how do you shake? Left to right. Up and down? And no checkpoints? I can understand the save system, but your main influences all had checkpoints. Again, the shake to escape is badly done, imo. I'm done for the night with this one. That shake to escape thing put a bad taste in my mouth. Who thought that was a good idea? You shake the thing and then when the enemy is off of you your line of sight is totally screwed.
you really just didn't pay attention did ya? I'm not going to waste time explaining it again but he specifically mentioned the BACKGROUND element and not what you and the other guy are looking for. If you don't like the save system, fine, that's fair enough, the games not for you, move on and forget about it. The thread has already been derailed enough about it. It's amazing how much handholding people have got used to in modern games. Well, that one I don't recall because I haven't played that particular game in quite a while. I have played 3 very recently though and in my experience it functions in exactly the same way as this one. And I still don't recall that particular thread being derailed in such a way. If people want hand holding, there is plenty of games out there that'll do that for ye. This is not the game you are looking for in that case. If you're up for something more, it is, it's really as simple as that. Now please find another thread to derail and let those of us that are up for it not have to counter all these ridiculous "points". At this stage the save system is perfectly clear and adequately covered in the last almost 30 pages. The developer stance and vision for it has been made very clear. Enough already. The second episode is "in process" but at an advanced stage. There is no ETA on it as far as I know but I wouldn't expect it that soon. It is firmly "in place" I suppose is the best way to put it without spoiling anything and it's not dependant on this one performing well, it's coming anyway. On third episode, don't know anything yet. On integration, I believe they will be three standalone apps for various reasons but anything can change between now and then. Each one is intended to be independently playable without depending on the others, but obviously with an overarching integrated storyline, so I'd assume separate apps would be the best way to go in that sense.
LOL. this made my night! Some dude pirated the game and was like "why does a face keep popping up on my screen. It screams and than I die. That's EPIC! Good anti - pirate tactic tato
