Add option for autosave delay in seconds and add backup file for autosave, please!

[Hanzu 10]

In singleplayer and multiplayer campaign missions autosave happens when you successfully complete some task or move to a certain point.

Very often all enemies nearby have been eliminated to trigger autosave, so why would autosave have to happen so instantly. Also in this game autosaves happen usually right before, during or right after some cutscenes. Playing cutscene and autosaving game simultaneously leads to weird bugs at least in campaign missions played on multiplayer side.

Because of this it would be highly useful to add an option where you could set delay in seconds (for example 0-30 seconds) for autosave.

This would also help when you want to collect equipment and do other preparations you would like to have done before autosave happens. Otherwise you have to do those preparations again everytime you get killed, bugged, crashed, autosavecorrupted or whatever.

An optional counter of delayed autosave seconds could be useful too prepare for save and stop all activity. If this would be only visible in the host side, at least he could do the countdown in voice comms, so other players could stop running around and causing desync.

---

Also every autosave should create a backup file of itself. For example called mpautosave.backup. If savegame would be corrupted or saved to a bad situation then, this backup file could be renamed to be use. Backup game progress should be always one save behing, meaning that it would not contain latest save but only the second latest where everything was still ok.

This would save a lot of frustration. When you would not always have to revert and start over some mission, because of bad save.

---

See my post for knowing what kind of autosave problems there can be still in V1.55

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=110112

---

If you agree this post, don't forget to answer something to this post, to keep it bumped to top part of the new messages.

Edited November 18, 2010 by Hanzu

[NeMeSiS 11]

IMO autosave delay is the responsibility of the mission maker.

EDIT: Also, i dont like that you put an argument in my mouth if i want to vote no.

[Hanzu 10]

IMO autosave delay is the responsibility of the mission maker.

EDIT: Also, i dont like that you put an argument in my mouth if i want to vote no.

IMO mission maker in this case is the same as the official game developers and I am pretty sure it is easier and faster for them to add autosave delay than correct 3 campaigns all with total of about 10 missions and all of them scripted to have about 10 autosave points. Isn't that about 300 autosave places or timings to correct...?

I consider it a bit too big of a job for the developers and even if they would take the responsibility and optimize autosave points to less bug creating situations and separate cutscene and autosave from each other properly, there would not be going back after all that work would have been done, but with autosave delay, you could always default if it looks the delay is not working for you.

I first added only 3 vote options with all starting with yes, because I didn't want anyone to vote no for this (no need to be democratic in suggestion forum). So if you have a better reason than 'whose responsibility it is' to resist this suggestion, then you can always vote no with ignoring the argument itself or just not voting at all to make this topic to have less publicity.

EDIT: I don't like that you would vote no on both just on the basis of whose responsibility mission design is. Instead I would like to hear a reason why would you also say no to autosave backup files. And I don't play singleplayer or I don't play multiplayer cooperative is not an answer I would accept to add any more poll options. Sorry but with the first and only answer like that, I feel like you didn't read my full post before answering or maybe I just could not explain the importance of the issue well enough. Well maybe for me as a cooperative gaming fanatic this is not optimal game for me. People here seem to be more intrested for example in bugfixes how realistic weapon sounds are than making this game to have more bugfixes for its campaign missions or functionality need to play singleplayer content smoothly on multiplayer cooperative.

Edited November 18, 2010 by Hanzu

[LeadCommando65 10]

This would also help when you want to collect equipment and do other preparations you would like to have done before autosave happens. Otherwise you have to do those preparations again everytime you get killed, bugged, crashed, autosavecorrupted or whatever.

Where is the problem by just saving manually after you have done these things? Arma is not the game where you can rely on autosaves. Since you can have mutiple saves it's easier to decide when to save: just press the "save" button when you are ready for it :rolleyes:

Another point is indeed that allowing a proper autosave is the mission maker responsibility (as said before). And if BIs mission makers didn't do their job correctly (as I assume from your starting post) then consider it a bug. Maybe they can fix this by adding a delay, but I think how they'll fix the problems you mentioned doesn't matter. I know it would be a synergy effect to add a new feature and solve a bug, but I don't really care how a bug is fixed if the fix doesn't influence any other part of the game. Considering this your point only consists of having a new feature implemented and the synergy effect that mission makers faults to set proper autosaves would be prevented.

Autosave backup could be nice, but I wouldn't rely on such a thing either. Because they gave you the possibilty to set your own save points whenever you want. So you are in charge to control the game. Think and play.

[Hanzu 10]

Where is the problem by just saving manually after you have done these things?

Good question. Since about 2003 we (me and about 10 other cooperative fanatics) have only played on hardest difficulty on every game. In this game it means Expert difficulty where manual saving is limited to one save per mission (this is one of those things that should have been written in ArmA2 manuals). After you save once manually, Save gadget goes greyed out. For missions like Manhattan that includes multiple tasks to complete through lots of bugs and instability issues, not to mention enemies that fight better in that difficulty, autosave is our only hope to get through missions with all tasks completed. Yes we are a bunch of perfectionists (or at least I am as a host), but with such an imperfectly working autosave is driving me nuts.

Autosave backup could be nice, but I wouldn't rely on such a thing either. Because they gave you the possibilty to set your own save points whenever you want. So you are in charge to control the game.

As I said, not with Expert Difficulty. The only workarounds to get more saves are either choose ESC and Suspend to get so called continuesave where game saves you to any location where you are when you quit the game alive. And you could also delete manualsave to make it not greyed out again, but that would feel like cheating.

Also there are no proper menu for choosing which save to load. In expert difficulty you can have 3 different savefiles for one mission. They are autosave, continuesave and manualsave (not with these exact filenames but you undestand my point). But I have no idea how these are priorized. Looks like the newest autosave will always override continuesave or manualsave, so no help if you would like to use either one as your second last save.

If the game would be more stable and less buggy and all tasks would trigger in every situation without endmission bugs, we might not need saves at all, but I don't believe campaign missions will ever get to that quality that saves would not be needed in Expert difficulty where you progress much slower than usual and because of that will soon run into problems with crashes or bugs preventing mission completion.

Think and play.

Play multiplayer cooperative with Expert difficulty and you need to think again. :) It is not that we are bad players, we have an average of 10 years experience on many other tactical shooters and it is not about the lack of strategy and tactics - it is about game having bugs, multiplayer protocol not beeing good enough for even 4 player cooperative (compared to many other games) and finally game campaign beeing so complex that any anomalities can happen justifying need of using saves. Well someone may think singleplayer campaigns here were not meant for multiplayer coopeative, but well the only reason bunch of us went buying ArmA 2 series games was cooperative and nothing else.

Edited November 19, 2010 by Hanzu

[LeadCommando65 10]

In this game it means Expert difficulty where manual saving is limited to one save per mission (this is one of those things that should have been written in ArmA2 manuals).

Ok, I understand your point, but why playing a difficulty that takes all the fun of your games? Aren't the difficulties customizable? Or use a mod like ace 2 that increases combat atmosphere (no crosshair, better ai etc.)? This way u could still have your saves and play a harder game. These aren't any solutions but suggestions. I don't know if it would work.

And about cheating: Why bother to cheat if the game forces you to do it because it's bugged?

As I said before, from my point of view, autosave delay doesn't make any sense cause I haven't experienced such problems yet. At least in SP I can say that while in MP games saving doesn't work at all for me (and my friends). But that's another story.

Well someone may think singleplayer campaigns here were not meant for multiplayer coopeative, but well the only reason bunch of us went buying ArmA 2 series games was cooperative and nothing else.

Yeah, that was one of the major points why I have bought this game and the campaign coop mode still doesn't work very well (as before: saving in MP is a problem for me).

[Hanzu 10]

Ok, I understand your point, but why playing a difficulty that takes all the fun of your games?

Hardest difficulty is the only thing motivating us. It takes away some fun when playing but gives it back doubled when a mission is completed.

Aren't the difficulties customizable?

Yes there are. But in Expert you can only customize 3 options others are locked. I enabled all these 4 options (Super AI, YOU WERE KILLED, Multiplayer score and VON ID Enabled). Only the first one makes game still more harder and the last 3 make it easier). But anyway it is not the Expert difficulty that ruins game here. It is the bugs and poor impletentation of singleplayer campaigns for multiplayer cooperative.

Or use a mod like ace 2 that increases combat atmosphere (no crosshair, better ai etc.)?

Using mods with original missions where they are not originally meant is just not for me. It feels like playing Super Mario with a trainer. Balance of originally designed mission difficulty is ruined when mods like ACE2 is used. I only accept use of such mods in custom missions or in player versus player sessions. Also using mods is in campaign is always a potential "more bugs to me"-effect.

And about cheating: Why bother to cheat if the game forces you to do it because it's bugged?

You mean why NOT to cheat. Well this is not the only game I have played and hosted that has multiple bugs and so far there have been workarounds for everything, but with corrupted savegames, progress is always irritatingly slow. I guess I will just need to get some more patience for this one and be ready to start over daily. Thanks for the suggenstions anyway!

I think the developers have done also some improvement for the multiplayer savegame feature, in case you have not tried it after V1.07 / V1.54. Here are also some tips for multiplayer savegame. Ofcouse only the host / server can use save game and clients don't even know when game is saved:

1) Back up your savegame folder somehere after each save game. Tell client players to stop moving and just ALT+TAB to windows to copy savegame folder to safe place.

2) Tell clients to stop moving in voice everytime autosave happens of before you save manually.

3) DVD host can save with Steam clients with no-problem, but I don't know if Steam host can use multiplayer saves at all.

4) If you continue savegame some other day and there are same players present, tell them to take same characters they took last time, just in case it is more compatible that way.

5) Sometimes gamesave is plaqued by bugs, clitches or is just not loading at all or gives an error message. In this case delete your save game folder and replace it with your latest backup folder.

Edited November 25, 2010 by Hanzu

[Zipper5 74]

Not the most balanced poll I've ever seen.

[Hanzu 10]

Not the most balanced poll I've ever seen.

Cut me some slack - it's my first poll. ;)

I don't see any rules or guidelines how polls should look like and I don't see too many polls in these forums anyway which may be indirect result of common attitude when poll is not about someone's favorite subject.

Not a good suggestion forum if it is like when you suggest something, you get slapped in a face right in the first reply.

But thanks for CIT anyway where I should have directed my suggestions as a feature ticket in the first place.