Lemma Soft Forums

I'm curious what people think about the ability to essentially save anytime anywhere in modern games (for example: Skyrim, Pokemon)

See, I'm planning a VNRPG type of game, and having the ability to save constantly seems to... defeat the RPG portion. Same with the ability to scroll backwards. Imagine being in a battle and all you have to do is scroll back if you make a mistake. In my view that makes it too easy and not fun, but for others, those features are a necessity.

I'm essentially trying to figure out the best method of dealing with this issue of saving for my work, but I also want to open the discussion up for saving in general.

For my work, I want to 100% prevent the ability to scroll backwards, even in the VN aspects. I won't have any paths that instantly kill you, the only deaths that can occur would be in the RPG battle elements. In terms of saving, I'd allow it almost always during the VN parts, but never during the RPG parts. I was also thinking of perhaps having an "easy mode" that allows scrolling backwards and quick saving, but I haven't given it too much consideration yet.

I'm curious what people think about this, and I would love some feedback about that and also on the whole "you can save anytime you want" thing that certain modern games are trending towards.

You will irritate a large number of people on principle, frustrate anyone who ever makes a mistake or whose mouse double-clicks instead of single-clicks or who forgets what was said and wants to double-check it, waste one of RenPy's best features, and gain nothing but a sense of control.

There are good reasons for disabling rollback during RPG segments - there generally aren't good ones for VN segments.

By modern design principles, a *single* quicksave slot should always be available in case you need to shut down the program rapidly - yes, even in the middle of a battle. Yes, this is exploitable by people who really really want to succeed, but if they're going to go to that much effort, what are you gaining from stopping them enjoying themselves?

If your battle segments are reasonably short you can get away with a pre-battle autosave and no in-battle quicksave.'

As for a discussion on game saves in general you might want to look at this discussion on a different forum as well.

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Hanako Games

When you say it will irritate people on principle, please elaborate on what principle it is that would irritate them.

It's not a sense of control, so much as wanting to enforce a flow in the game. Similar but slightly unrelated, a lot of games don't allow you to save everywhere, despite clearly having an ability to do so, in order to increase difficulty and dictate how the flow of the story should be. Final Fantasy games tend to do that, and I think it works well for them. I also think that the opposite works well for other kinds of games like Pokemon.

I thought about this in relation to other games like Mass Effect, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can rollback in that game despite having branching dialogue. I mean, in most games with dialogue scenes I've seen outside of VNs (especially in JRPGs), you can just sort of keep skipping cutscenes, and it's more or less your fault if you miss anything good in that.

I do understand though the necessity of rollback in case somebody accidentally double clicked, and that is a good point. I'm curious what you think of this idea then. Let's say we have the game follow something like this:

[VN aspect 1] [RPG aspect 1] [VN aspect 2]

Suppose rollback is allowed for VN aspect 1 and not in RPG aspect 1. Let's say after the battle type segment, we go to VN aspect 2. Rollback is allowed, but you can't go back to the RPG aspect, so in that sense you can rollback within the VN frame? Would that be a reasonable way to not break the game flow whilst still allowing the player enough control during those portions? Is Ren'Py capable of such a feat? I'd like to hear what people think of that.


I'd say you'd gain a game that can't be broken, but I do understand the necessity of having a single quicksave slot. I'll look into that in regards to Ren'Py's system.


I think the length would vary depending on the battle itself. I can imagine ones that take seconds and ones that take a whole lot longer, so I guess until I get to that point in development I can't really give any judgement on that beyond saying that I'd look into having a single quicksave slot.

Thank you for the feedback.

Fine by me certainly, and yes, it should be codable.

My current project is enforcing a lot of rollback breaks between sections because while I don't care about people changing their minds, it's disorienting to jump backwards through different types of interaction, so I don't want them doing it by accident. (Hard to explain exactly, but there are VN-like segments and un-VN-like segments.)

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Hanako Games

BTW, renpy.block_rollback() is the way to create a point that can't be rollbacked-through. (IIRC, there are some incredibly minor exceptions to this, like loading a changed game.)

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt

Yes I get you, and I do agree with this. I'm glad I asked, it gave me a lot of cool ideas on how to work with this. Thanks everybody!

I guess this can now become a general discussion about saving in general and what systems people like the best for games they play.

In srw game you can't roll back in middle of fight and only have one quick save but you can roll back when you enter VN mode.
(Only for VN mode.)