Dying in hub maps

[Nash]

Earlier I was playing Hexen - Death Kings of the Dark Citadel.

Anyway, I reached the Catacombs. It's that map where you start in an ice cave-thingy.

Anyway I got a bit further then I died.

What surprised me is that when I press "Use", I am brought back to the start of the map without all my items and weapons! Is this supposed to happen?

For user-made wads, there's the "autosave" feature but I really think it should work like this:

When the player dies...

A) Autosave exists? Load autosave.

B) Autosave doesn't exist? Load a previously saved game.

C) Autosave and normal saves don't exist? Restore player to the state when he entered the map.

So what I propose is that when the player dies in that map with no saves, the game would store in memory (or at least a temporary file on the hard disk) of the player's items, health, inventory, etc...

[HobbsTiger1]

Here is the way ZDooms handling of reloading your game after death works.

If Savegame is present (whether it be autosave or not): Loads most recent savegame.
If no savegames present: Starts you back at beginning of level, with no items.

[Nash]

If no savegames present: Starts you back at beginning of level, with no items.

AKA "Pistol starts" would be okay for regular maps, but NOT for hub maps.

Although there's a meaning to the advise "SAVE OFTEN" there are times where one would simply forget to save or something.

So much important information needs to be restored when the player dies in hub maps - global/world variables, inventory items, weapons and ammo, actor states and positions, etc. I'm not even sure what will happen if the player dies, brought back to life with a pistol start, and attempts to backtrack to an earlier map (since it is a hub after all).

[HobbsTiger1]

Seeing as I've never died in Hexen, I don't know exactly what happens in that instance (what is kept, such as global variables), but I assume its handled like Doom.

[Belial]

Setup option: Quake style map restarts/Doom style map restarts.

Feature suggestion?

[Graf Zahl]

If no savegames present: Starts you back at beginning of level, with no items.

AKA "Pistol starts" would be okay for regular maps, but NOT for hub maps.

Guess why there's autosaves. Since it always reloads the last save and each time the levels change an autosave is being done this should work as you want.

Without autosave the game doesn't have the information to completely restore the game to a meaningful state, hence you get a 'pistol start'.

[Nash]

But autosaves can be turned off by the user so there's a chance that info isn't saved when a level changes...

What I propose is a temporary save-file just like autosave, that ignores the autosave cvar, and it only works for that particular session. This file will always be overwritten. This file will be deleted when ZDoom quits.

Or better yet, store the information in memory.

[Enjay]

What I propose is a temporary save-file just like autosave, that ignores the autosave cvar, and it only works for that particular session.

So I essentially get an autosave even if I don't want one?

[Belial]

The funny thing is, autosaves tend to not work when using different iwads often (I think that's the reason, I might be wrong of course). I developed a habit for checking the console for 'game saved' messages, just in case the game didn't notice a level transition. .63a to be exact.

Happened a lot of times.

[Nash]

So I essentially get an autosave even if I don't want one?

Unlike regular autosaves, this temporary file is hidden, meaning it won't appear in your save games list in ZDoom, and will not create multiple copies like regular ZDoom autosaves, so it will be overwritten all the time. It will also be deleted when ZDoom quits.

Another solution, as I said before, is to just store all this into memory.

[HobbsTiger1]

The best way I know of to fix your problem Nash, is to go into your .ini file and change this

Code: Select all

disableautosave=1

to this:

Code: Select all

disableautosave=0

IIRC we also have configurable amounts of autosaves so you might want to set that too. Or, you can manually save often. But I don't think your suggestion, however good it may be, will be implemented.