Save Game Feature

Game Development
1

Got a question about save game features.

Lets say I hypothetically get a game released by CoG, but due to the length of the story people going to want a save game feature. I end up with several questions.

  1. If the game is released under CoG on Steam/Android/iOS do they implement a save game feature (even if its a single save file like the original Pokemon games) or am I required to make that system?
  2. If I am required to make that system how do I do so?

What I am trying to avoid is having players having to restart their game every time they launch it.

I am aware that in an unreleased game (basic compiled etc) that saving is nigh inpossible.

2

For Beta testing purposes you could always make use of the save plugin developed by @CJW, it’s a pretty neat system and relatively easy to install. However, I don’t know how CoG might respond to actually releasing a game with this plugin since it makes use of javascript and tweaks to basic CS.

When it comes to a Choicescript based solution, what immediately springs to mind is a clever use of labels, *goto and duplicate variables. You basically create checkpoints throughout the game (at the end of chapters for example) and create a duplicate “save” variable at that point. For example, if you have a variable agility you might also make a variable save_agility. So when “saving” you’d do something along the lines of
*set save_agility agility
This makes sure that save_agility = agility and essentially captures what your progress was at the save point.

If a player wants to load a save, you just use *goto to take back to that checkpoint label. You’d also need to load and *set all your variables to their save counterparts e.g.
*set agility save_agility

As you can imagine, this can be more than a little tedious as you’d need to create a save counterpart for every variable, not just those associated with stats but also those associated with plot or checks of any kind.

I hope that made sense? If not, here’s a topic created by @Sashira that may do a better job of explaining.

EDIT:

That’s something you won’t really have to worry about since CoG always go back to the point you left at when you return from exiting a game. At least, that’s been my experience.

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3

Lets say that you would hypothetically get a game released by CoG it would be released under their Hosted Games label, which is their other label (the one that doesn’t involve them contacting you to write a game for them) and is very unlikely to be released on steam (for as far as I’m aware the only Hosted Games published title to pull that off until now is Tin Star, and that one is absolutely massive (well over a million words massive)).

There are actually quite a lot of ways to implement a save system in an unreleased game. Aaaaand @Left4Bed ninja’d me about CJW’s save plugin…

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