User-overridable save and automap blocker (MAPINFO)

[kevansevans]

It's perfectly fine to say "don't save at these points". It's not fine to say "you flat out can't save."

it's more of a guard rail to say "hey, you're not supposed to do this" but the engine is in your hands so you can override the engine to do it anyway.

My main worry is that adding this feature, despite going against everything Doom stands for, would open a can of worms I do not want to get opened.

GZDoom is an engine that is primarily meant to run Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Chex Quest and mods for these games and this will always be the focus of development.

GTA was actually one of the games where the save system didn't work right - the save point was at the wrong place, i.e. before the mission briefing

(not picking on you two specifically, you guys are just the ones within the last two pages)

I think the major worry against the addition of this feature is two fold.

1) It's not Doom enough.

Are you serious? When has this stopped the additions of several other features? 3D floors, 3D Model Support, GL lighting, Non-midi sound support, custom fonts, font color, cameras, plenty more that I'm sure others can name as well. If Hexen had never come out, the concept of polyobjects would be considered "Not doom enough" simply because the engine never supported those anywhere else. Which segues into my next point: What if one of the core id Tech games did offer an alternative save method? What then? This "Doom enough" argument is arbitrary bullshit at this point, gate keeping if you ask me.

2) I've had bad experiences with other games and I'm afraid that modders will also ruin their mods with it

Excuse me? When has this ever stopped any other feature from being added? When has the inevitable modder using a feature poorly meant a feature can't be added? This is literally a modding community where we share our creations to look for feedback, if the modder uses a feature poorly, you point that out that their mod could be better. People are allowed to make mistakes, and you are allowed to not like them, but you're essentially punishing people who can use this feature responsibly because of an inevitable "bad" use. Why aren't we removing ZScript, little Billy accidentally left a recursion loop in one of his actors! Let's remove custom music support too, because I've played plenty of mods where the developers choice of music is a cheese grater to my ears. How come we're not removing literally everything because people make terry traps?

The cvar compromise is the middle ground we need. Offer a one time message to anyone who opted into forcing quick saves that tries to quick save, per mod.

[Enjay]

This won't really solve the fundamental problem. In the larger indie market, GZDoom as an engine has some advantages newer more complex engines often do not: simplicity. For such games there may be cut scenes or other things that they feel should behave differently from the rather basic Doom model. What is a perfectly normal save model for Doom can be considered cheating in different genres.

If an indie game is shipping with everything that it needs to run, then surely it would be a simple matter for its dev to include a config file with essential settings (many already do that).

People playing the game as a stand-alone program would get the experience that the author intended and the only people who would get the incorrect setting would be people running the indie game data files with their own copy of GZDoom - and they should have better knowledge of the options.

[Gutawer]

Frankly I'm honestly confused as to why this has caused this much fuss. To me this seems like a pretty cut-and-dry case of giving more power to people with no technical disadvantage. It seems like the arguments against this feature boil into two categories - disliking it because of personal opinion, and disliking it because of some perceived "doom-ness" (or perhaps more accurately, "id Tech 1-ness") of this. I don't think it necessarily even matters what the feature is, because my arguments would be the same for anything. I fundamentally take issue with any features getting blocked from the engine because of personal opinion rather than some good technical reason.

I don't think it should be controversial to say that making mods/iwads for this engine (and indeed, any engine) is inherently a form of game design. And I also don't think it should be controversial to say that games themselves are a form of art. If you agree with that, then it logically follows that game design is an artistic process, and like any form of art, the quality of the end result of that process is a completely subjective measure that would vary from person to person. Because of this, it's fundamentally impossible to say that any given feature in a game is objectively bad or good. You can hold an opinion about whether a feature is good or not, but the moment these opinions seriously start to influence decision making about which features to include in the engine, that's gonna annoy me. By blocking a feature based on the principle of "I don't like it", you're fundamentally blocking a part of the artistic process that goes into making things for the engine. The mantra of "If you don't like it, don't play it" applies here. Nobody's forcing anyone who dislikes controlled saving to play a game/mod that utilises it. There are very real game design reasons why someone might want to do this and if you can't see that, frankly you're looking at game design through tunnel vision. But hey, even if you can't personally understand why someone might do something, it doesn't mean you should argue against blocking doing it entirely if it's ultimately harmless!

The other side to this, a feeling of "doom-ness" I think falls apart much easier without having to get into discussions about art, but the same idea of subjectivity fundamentally still applies. What Doom is as a game is something that varies from person to person, and frankly the only port that could ever claim to have doom-ness as a design goal is Chocolate Doom, for the key reason that it does nothing that Doom didn't have in '93. GZDoom has many things which already go against this, depending on where you draw the completely arbitrary line of what is Doom and what isn't. A person could totally argue that the default blurry textures or ability to use 3d floors (after all - no id Tech 1 game had either!) is against the spirit of Doom, and this'd be no more or less valid than disabling quicksaving being against the spirit of doom. This just feels like a last ditch effort to attempt to justify subjectivity in a lens that could maybe be interpreted as objective.

So frankly I cannot find a single reason why allowing this feature in harms anyone. To the people who dislike it, you simply don't have to play, or you can use the override switch on mods/games that don't allow you to do it. We pretty much always do this anyway - I'm not really a fan of slaughtermaps, for example, but you don't see me complaining about them, I just let people make and enjoy playing them because the existence of them isn't harmful to me. I see no reason why that doesn't apply to this.

[Rachael]

Another thing to consider: When features like this are outright denied, people get creative and find clever ways around them. Accepting this feature at least funnels this implementation to the correct channels where it can still be controlled by the end-user.

[Guest]

Possibly slightly offtopic, but somehow I think this would work better as a MAPINFO/Skill definition property than a MAPINFO/Map one. Now whether the mod author puts a "disablesaving" property on all new skills is an entirely different story, and lynching should be done when and if that happens. Of course override CVars should probably still be in place in the event someone does exactly that.

Honestly, I'm in support of disabling saving, mostly to enforce an ironman mode. Personally, I find that fun. It shouldn't be forced upon people by others, but it also shouldn't be a missing feature for those who wanna have more fun that way.

[Chris]

To me this seems like a pretty cut-and-dry case of giving more power to people

Which people, and at what cost? People who are unable to save when they want to certainly don't have more power, they have less. And the people that implement the feature into the engine have to maintain it indefinitely, so there's a cost:benefit ratio to consider.

I fundamentally take issue with any features getting blocked from the engine because of personal opinion rather than some good technical reason.

The way I see it, a save should be a snapshot of the game state. When you load a save, the game should be no more aware that anything is different from when the save was made (think save states, which almost every console emulator implements regardless of the game's own save system). This may not be the case in GZDoom, but that doesn't mean it can't strive to be. There is no technical reason to prevent capturing the game state as long as the game state is valid, and good technical and non-technical reasons to not prevent it (debugging, or needing to leave in a hurry).

And I also don't think it should be controversial to say that games themselves are a form of art. If you agree with that, then it logically follows that game design is an artistic process, and like any form of art, the quality of the end result of that process is a completely subjective measure that would vary from person to person. Because of this, it's fundamentally impossible to say that any given feature in a game is objectively bad or good.

Games are more than art, though. They're a collection of mechanics as well. It is very much possible to say whether a save system is mechanically good or bad, and arbitrarily not working is certainly towards the bad end of the spectrum.

The mantra of "If you don't like it, don't play it" applies here. Nobody's forcing anyone who dislikes controlled saving to play a game/mod that utilises it.

And you think it's fair that an otherwise good mod should be off-limits to people who simply don't want saving to be arbitrarily limited? Is it that big of a deal to prevent saving that you'd willingly prevent some users from enjoying it when it doesn't affect others who enjoy it regardless?

There are very real game design reasons why someone might want to do this and if you can't see that, frankly you're looking at game design through tunnel vision.

Similarly, if you think needing to limit saves is the only way to fix something in your game design, you may need to take a broader look at the issue you're facing and what it is you're trying to accomplish. I've played a number of games where saving is not arbitrarily limited, but still encouraged me to avoid using them more than necessary through good game design. Here's a relevant quote from Daggerfall's game manual:

"All adversity can be overcome, excepting only the character’s actual death. In fact, you will never see some of the most interesting aspects of the game unless you play through your mistakes.

If your character dies, gets locked in a dungeon, or some other truly catastrophic event takes place, by all means return to your last saved game and replay it. However, if you character is caught pickpocketing, if a quest goes wrong, or some other mundane mishap occurs, let it play out. You may be surprised by what happens next.”

The game makes it clear that it wants you to play through your mistakes and not save-scum. It encourages it by having content you'll only see if you make mistakes and keep playing rather than reloading (also adds replay value!). It doesn't hurt being a game where you're building your own characters story, and mistakes add to the flavor. It doesn't prevent you from doing it if you really want to, though. And in the event of a catastrophic event/character death/Game Over, what purpose is there in making the player go back farther than necessary to replay stuff they already did before taking another shot at the problem?

Daggerfall is also a good poster-child for not limiting saves. Daggerfall is a fundamentally good (if niche) game, but it was insanely buggy. You could get trapped in rooms, fall through the world, or the game would just randomly crash. If the game wanted to enforce its vision of playing through mistakes by limiting saves, it would be unplayable even for those of us that like it.

Possibly slightly offtopic, but somehow I think this would work better as a MAPINFO/Skill definition property than a MAPINFO/Map one.

If anything, I think it would be as a separate thing entirely, not tied to the map or skill level. If limited saving was a challenge I wanted to opt into, it should be separate from the skill level (I kinda think the same thing about fast monsters too, actually; it originally being tied to Nightmare meant I never played it because I find Nightmare as a whole to be a bit too much with the respawning, but just faster monsters alone, or on an easier skill level, would be more palettable).

[kevansevans]

Snip

Let me reiterate something:

When has the inevitable modder using a feature poorly meant a feature can't be added?

The whole opposition to this feature literally boils down to "I don't like it, it's icky, I hate games that do this." And that's okay. You're free to not like something. But the problem in here lies that you are essentially gatekeeping developers here from making something that they do enjoy! "No one is allowed to make things I don't like!" The arguments that do support the addition of these things are speaking from experience of games that they did strongly enjoy these restrictions, and we can argue whether or not that these are good mechanics until we are blue in the face, but arguing that for the sake of whether or not a feature should be added is severely missing the point. Because the point isn't whether or not it's a good mechanic, the point is just purely offering the option for people that do think they can make it a good mechanic. And like we said, you are allowed to dislike the use of this option, we are all humans with our own thoughts on what makes a good game good.

The incredible thing about this though, is people do have different ideas of their own on what makes something good, and there is nothing wrong with the developer wanting to utilize, what you guys are calling road blocks, to tell the player how the game is meant to be played, because, and here's a shocker, games come with rules, and the developer is tasked with writing these rules. Forcing the player into a different pattern of saving is just another type of rule being added to the game. Thankfully, GZDoom just offers a bunch of house rules the player can choose to follow, which is the point of the suggested CVAR toggle.

As a final note, let's put subjectivity to the side. Let's weigh the objective pros and cons here of adding this feature.

Pros of adding:

A subset of developers are happy they can utilize a mechanic to ensure the out-of-the-box-experience is given to the player.
Which means a wider variety of mods can be made easier, thus meaning they can mimic other games that people may want to make. Majora's Mask remade in the GZDoom engine would be cool.
A one time opt-in CVAR will be added to let players still quicksave.

Cons of adding:

A different subset of people are going to have a negative opinion of the mods that use this. God forbid someone has a negative opinion.
The same subset of people will have to begrudgingly enable this one time opt-in CVAR to give them back their precious quick saves.

[Kinsie]

I updated and improved the list:

Pros of adding:

• A subset of developers are given a new and exciting excuse to code buggy event handlers - "If you didn't want your save to crash on load, taking away hours of play time, you clearly shouldn't have saved there! "
• A wider variety of mods can be made easier by people who don't know how to say "This'll play better if you just let the game handle saving. Trust me!" because the honour system is dead and we have killed it.
• A one time opt-in CVAR will be added to let players have sane behaviour, and to allow mappers to detect them and actively render the game unwinnable because those babbys clearly need to git gud and we never learned from vid_renderer.
• Potentially adds precedent for pressuring Graf to add more features he's actively uncomfortable with adding that we all really 100% need, like the ability to change cheat codes and password-protected PK3s!

Cons of adding:

• People with actual jobs, families or other things that may demand their attention at any given time may react negatively to not just being able to put their game away to resume at a moments notice like every other Doom mod of the last 25 years. (Those babbys clearly need to git gud.)
• Players may end up unnecessarily lost for long periods of time because any mapper who disables the automap is most likely a mapper who enjoys creating huge, repetitively-textured mazes where everything looks the same.
• More engine cruft only used by one project for a lame gimmick to get in the way and make renovating parts of the engine more of a pain.
• Modders who hate being modders may get the incorrect impression that GZDoom is a generic engine for indie games (without those pesky licensing fees other engines tend to have, to boot!) and may continue to force square pegs into round holes instead of just friggin' using Godot already, further sapping Graf's will to live and potentially reducing the chances of future engine updates.

User was warned for this post (-mgmt)

[Arctangent]

Godot

Don't think you did your research there - doesn't seem like Godot supports UDMF. Or even knows it exists.

[Chris]

Snip

Let me reiterate something:

When has the inevitable modder using a feature poorly meant a feature can't be added?

The point is, such a feature is inherently poor. There is no way to not use it poorly. People who don't want to save can already not save, so adding the feature gains them nothing. Instead, adding it will just prevent people who want to save from doing so. It's a net loss in functionality.

But the problem in here lies that you are essentially gatekeeping developers here from making something that they do enjoy!

What's enjoyable in preventing people from saving the game when they want/need?

Forcing the player into a different pattern of saving is just another type of rule being added to the game.

No, it's telling the player how to use their free time. Saving captures the game state, and by loading the save the game is restored to that state. No game rules can be broken because no rules were broken to get it into that state in the game. If loading the save to put the game back into that same state is somehow counter to its vision, then it just shows how little consideration is given to other peoples' free time that they need to redo the same thing over and over just to get back to the where they fail. That's not the games' rules, that's how you want players to use their time while playing the game.

Here's a rant/ramble on the topic (more about the save stations and horror experience in Alien Isolation, but it's applicable to limited saves in general):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjegUcnqz1k&t=645

The take away being, that if you're trying to use game mechanics to enforce a particular experience, you're looking at it the wrong way. The people looking for the experience you want to provide will find it if the game is made well, regardless of the mechanical details. People who don't get into that kind of experience will not be pulled in by the mechanics trying to force it. When the mechanics become overbearing, it will even pull people out of the experience when they otherwise like it. Get the experience right, and make the mechanics as unintrusive and invisible as possible.

[kevansevans]

The point is, such a feature is inherently poor. There is no way to not use it poorly. People who don't want to save can already not save, so adding the feature gains them nothing.

What's enjoyable in preventing people from saving the game when they want/need?

You're associated your distaste in this as something that either A) You agree is a bad thing, or B) Everyone is in absolute denial in. And this isn't some particularly ground breaking thing to make an observation on, because I will agree that there are plenty of games that do have a poor saving system, but this approach completely disregards people who have found this mechanic to be perfectly okay with.

No, it's telling the player how to use their free time.

And you're a supposed authority on how I feel my time or anyone else's time is well spent? I get the logic that it feels like a massive waste of time not managing to make it to a save point, but like I said earlier, a feature being utilized poorly is not the end all be all of a mechanic's quality. A lot of games out there use this feature phenomenally, and some games that have to use save points due to the fact that there's technical reasons it can't do on the fly saves, will place save points very liberally or even offer an autosave mechanic to compensate for this. A lack of on the fly saving doesn't break a game or waste your time, poor utilization of the mechanic is what breaks a game and wastes your time. And the great thing about this place? You can tell people to fix it. Suggest that they should be more lenient with the saves. Or, you can just not play it instead.

If loading the save to put the game back into that same state is somehow counter to its vision, then it just shows how little consideration is given to other peoples' free time that they need to redo the same thing over and over just to get back to the where they fail.

The problem here is you're dead set that there aren't players out there that actually enjoy games that do this. And, plot twist, you're not that audience if you find that this style of saving is a waste of your time. Let me emphasize that: You're not that audience if you find that this style of saving is a waste of your time. Which is really what's frustrating about this whole discussion, because you're only reaffirming my argument above:

"I don't like it, it's icky, I hate games that do this." "No one is allowed to make things I don't like!"

The take away being, that if you're trying to use game mechanics to enforce a particular experience, you're looking at it the wrong way.

This is literally every god damn game in existence. They have to use mechanics to convey an experience. First person camera? A mechanic. Lack of reloading? A mechanic. Key hunt focused levels? A mechanic. Which all in themselves can have arguments on why they are some of the dumbest things that anyone could ever do in a game, but we don't consider them bad because some of the best games ever did them well. Which is kinda funny if you ask me, when a game does them well, they become the prime examples of how to do what may be considered an annoying thing.

The people looking for the experience you want to provide will find it if the game is made well, regardless of the mechanical details. People who don't get into that kind of experience will not be pulled in by the mechanics trying to force it. When the mechanics become overbearing, it will even pull people out of the experience when they otherwise like it. Get the experience right, and make the mechanics as unintrusive and invisible as possible.

The irony in this last statement is just flooring.

[Kinsie]

The problem here is you're dead set that there aren't players out there that actually enjoy games that do this. And, plot twist, you're not that audience if you find that this style of saving is a waste of your time. Let me emphasize that: You're not that audience if you find that this style of saving is a waste of your time.

You're basically saying that if someone has some life-related thing going on that might require them to put the game down at any minute, then they aren't worthy of your mods and don't deserve to play them. That's impressively shitty.

[RiboNucleic Asshat]

Has this thread simply become "Find the least charitable way possible to interpret the previous person's post"? Are you all children? Nothing good is going to come of this, just lock this thread already. And please, answer me this single question:

Do you not understand what pausing and having an override for disabling saves is, or are you intentionally ignoring those caveats because they nullify your arguments?

[Kinsie]

Do you not understand what pausing and having an override for disabling saves is, or are you intentionally ignoring those caveats because they nullify your arguments?

Depends on the situation. Sometimes it'd work out if you only have to duck away for ten minutes or so, but if you have to go somewhere else and/or do something for a prolonged period of time, pausing and leaving your computer on for hours doing nothing is a bad idea for a wide variety of reasons.

[RiboNucleic Asshat]

You addressed half of that sentence, what about the option for overriding save blocking?