Saving/Game Over

[winkio]

In-place saving?
Save points?
Autosave?
When you load a save, do you load to the exact position, or the start of the zone, or the world map?

Personally, I'm in favor of the following system:
When you start a new game, you pick a save file.  Then, you can only save at save points placed at strategically safe locations, so you don't end up saving in a place that you can't get out of without dying.  Loaded saves return you to the save points, but gameovers restart you in the last map you were in with full hp/sp/mp, but a loss of gold/exp.

[AliveDrive]

Yes that.

Have you seen my SaTel? It's save and teleportation.

You can save, use a tent, or teleport to another save point you have previously activated.

Just an idea.

[WhiteRose]

I agree with winkio's suggestion. I think that upon death the party should lose a portion of their gold, but not experience. Maybe we should also implement a banking system, where the players could deposit their gold and have it protected from being lost due to death.

[AliveDrive]

Yes,

We shouldn't take XP, but gold seems like a fair penalty.

And a bank would be an appropriate counter-measure that a smart player could take to prevent loss.

Go on dungeon raid, make bank, deposit in bank, rinse, repeat.

[Starrodkirby86]

That's fine. Experience is counter-intuitive and frustrating, and it also reminds me of the silliness with grinding when it comes to MMORPG's like Maple Story. The whole gold half-cut works wonders with every RPG, along with a bank system. The most recent RPG I've played that comes to my mind with this all is Earthbound, but there's a legion of RPG's that incorporate this too.

I think save points would be best, especially at really good areas. We can't make it seem random or just always obviously placed right before the heels of a boss, can we? I would imagine the better save points being right after some extremely tough ordeal that the player wouldn't want to face again (Not for the sake of laziness, mind you).

Anyway, la ~

[AliveDrive]

Borderlands comes to mind....

"Eh...What do you MEAN I just lost $702,674,032!?! Are you insane? I could build a cybernetics machine, and transport my consciousness into a bulletproof cyborg suit for that kind of money!"

Also, why not simply place them at the entrance of dungeons and other select places. It says to the player, "PLAYER, you are entering a dungeon, save your game you damn fool."

Ha...

[winkio]

So AliveDrive, do you want to script this?  Not the actual save points, but the modifications to gameover (menu with continue or load from last save) and maps (save entry position, etc.).

[AliveDrive]

I honestly have no idea how to script...

My scripting is limited to minor edits of pre-existing scripts....

Like changing New Game to Play Now! or something...like I said...MINOR edits.

However, the event system is fairly easy to set up, requiring only 1 switch per additional event (for the warp feature).

[winkio]

Great time to start learning...

[AliveDrive]

On a scale of 1-5, how difficult would this be.

Also, from your current impression of my abilities, do you think I could pull it off?

I'm willing to give it a try, no harm in that.

[winkio]

On a scale of 1-5 with 1 being easy, this is a 1.  You could definitely do it, it would probably be around 100 lines of code, which is very, very short.  I'll post up an intro to scripting topic to give you some background, and then I'll post here to tell you how to get started on this. 

[AliveDrive]

Sounds like a plan.

I'm currently also trying to event a dual MP system, but I would imagine this to be easier done in code.

Maybe after I get a little experience I can work on that. I have no idea how complex it might be though.

[winkio]

k ill post it up later tonight.

[G_G]

I've got it. New users can't post until they have 10 posts. :V

[AliveDrive]

What does that have to do with Saving/Game Over?

@winkio http://forum.chaos-project.com/index.php/topic,9124.new.html?

[winkio]

So, what you need to do for this script:

Make a new Scene_Gameover: borrow from the old Scene_Gameover and any scene that uses a menu (like Scene_File) to accomplish this. 

To decrease gold:

$game_party.gold

is the party's gold.  To divide the gold by 2, simply use:

$game_party.gain_gold($game_party.gold / -2)

To reset the map:

$game_map.setup($game_temp.player_new_map_id)
$game_temp.player_transferring = true

To go back to the map:

$scene = Scene_Map.new

To recover the party:

$game_party.actors.each {|a| a.recover_all}

To go to the Load menu:

$scene = Scene_Load.new

Let me know if you need anything else.

[AliveDrive]

I are done.

[winkio]

no, we want the continue option to decrease the gold and reload the current map, and we want a load option to load old saves.

EDIT: also, it would be good if you warned the player how much gold they would lose before they selected continue.

[AliveDrive]

Ohhhh...

I was unclear on that. I'm on it.

[winkio]

alright, looks great.  We may need to make some modifications later, but it's good for now