Saving

[Webbstre]

Another post on this forum made me realize something. Even though you can save at any time and anywhere in Torchlight 1, that never seems to make me feel like I should stop playing at any time. In games with save points or way points and such, you get to the next marker and feel like it is time to stop playing and turn it off. With TL1 it is ALWAYS "Just one more floor" or "Just until I fill up my inventory" until it is the middle of the night and you realize you have work in the morning.

So... although I don't know what the plan is for how the game will save in TL2, what with multiplayer and all, which way do you all think is better? I personally hate that feeling of being in the middle of a dungeon and having to leave it halfway done because real life is calling, but I don't know how the same thing could be done when you have multiple people in a game.

[wolfmane]

Auto saves ftw. Nothing like getting munched three quarters or nine tenths of the way through and having to redo the entire thing. Makes me want to punch a baby.

I personally hate that feeling of being in the middle of a dungeon and having to leave it halfway done because real life is calling

The point too is that you do have that ability. Often when I'm in LoL I need to make sure I have blocks of time open otherwise I'm going to be late or make others late because I will not, for the life of me, abandon a team game while it's going unless it's absolutely necessary and even then I feel guilty for bailing out (they also heavily penalize nowadays for leaving). Personally I'd rather have RL impact the game than the other way around even if it is a little annoying that you come back to half a level cleared.

[vulcanmold]

Walk your own road, let other people say theirselves

[eahmet]

I'd like to have auto-saves with frequent checkpoints because it's annoying to exit to main menu and get in back again. I do this because my video card driver stops responding sometimes and if I didn't save anywhere by doing above procedure I start from the beginning of the floor I was on. Sometimes I forget to save and when the crash happens it's very annoying. I need to reboot my pc. Lara Croft - Guardian of Light does this auto-save in checkpoints thing very good.

I think in multi-player players should decide when to leave altogether or if somebody leaves maybe s/he'll have to do catch-up without the companions next time s/he plays.

[Sekkurel]

Auto-Save. No.
Ability to save at a certain spot while not in combat and when you return to be exactly as when you left ( you being in the same spot and all mobs the same ). Fk yeah

[amb2010]

I don't really see a need for an auto-save feature especially for the example of why it would be good that was given. If you can stop and save at any point in Torchlight and still have the "just another floor" syndrome, why would the game forcing you to save make you have that feeling any less? An auto-save feature as a means to help with an addiction to torchlight isn't very effective

Also I thought the save system in torchlight worked well for the kind of game it was. You could get on, run a few dungeons floors and then if needed you could just stop and come back to it or keep going and it would still probably work with the multiplayer with a few adjustments.

[eahmet]

The auto-save feature could be optional and can be turned on and off from game options since not everybody likes it for sure. It wouldn't do any harm if it were in the game, right?

EDIT: I'd settle for a normal save feature like the one first Diablo had.

[Heavy]

Even though you can save at any time and anywhere in Torchlight 1, that never seems to make me feel like I should stop playing at any time....With TL1 it is ALWAYS "Just one more floor" or "Just until I fill up my inventory" until it is the middle of the night and you realize you have work in the morning.

My experience is that any game sufficiently engaging to make you desire to play it in the first place is going to screw with your sense of time passage. I can't count the number of times I've sat down at 7PM to play for an hour or so only to look up from the screen at the clock after finishing several quests and find it's 3 AM.

It's for that reason that I would favor an optional "Full-Autosave" setting which, when activated, would allow the user to enter a time for the game session to end. The timer would start either when a new game was started or an old one was loaded, and then just sit quietly, invisibly in the background reading the CMOS clock until the appointed time arrived. The game would then pause, a dialog box would appear noting the time and thanking the player for being thoughtful and mature, whereupon the game would autosave and exit to the desktop immediately thereafter.

So... although I don't know what the plan is for how the game will save in TL2, what with multiplayer and all, which way do you all think is better?

I've never seen a multiplayer which allowed saving at all. I suppose they must exist someplace. Saving or not, a timer option like the one described above could be selected at the lobby screen by players whose time was limited, so that they would be gently removed from play automatically when their preset exit time arrived. If the player selecting the timer option is manning the game server, the whole team might receive a subtle 5-minute warning or countdown superimposed somewhere on screen.

[Torqqed]

With TL1 it is ALWAYS "Just one more floor" or "Just until I fill up my inventory" until it is the middle of the night and you realize you have work in the morning........ I personally hate that feeling of being in the middle of a dungeon and having to leave it halfway done because real life is calling...

I understand this and its happened multitple times. I just hope that when they do have a "save" system that the first part that you have cleared will hopefully respawn fully by the time you get to it again. ie You leave the home more mobs move in, immediately.

[FalconHeart]

I just want to bring this old thread back to the front since there isn't an answer yet on how the game saves. Maybe the devs will see this and post a short info.

I like the way T1 saved your game, allowing you to hop back in at the exact same spot where you left, while enemies still respawned in the earlier levels. With T2 going multiplayer, it obviously won't work that way anymore, so my current guess is that the game will save the same way that D2 did, saving your game progress only, having you return to your last waypoint to continue death-clicking monsters. I'm totally fine with that, but as a singleplayer only gamer I still have the hope that maybe the game will save like T1 did if you are playing singleplayer and not lan/internet. Even if you eventually take your singleplayer character into multiplayer, this should be no problem. The extra data then only needs to be removed from the save file (or added again if you return to singleplayer).

However, I am also aware that a D2-like save system will probably increase the mod stability of T2.

[Rusty]

-Snip-

After watching the videos from PAX this last week, there were a lot of waypoints activated, so I am guessing you are correct. The save feature will most likely be different.

[Arkham]

I've never seen a multiplayer which allowed saving at all. I suppose they must exist someplace.

The first Starcraft had a feature like this, actually.

[cakes]

i prefer the "save anywhere, pick-up where you left off" approach. althought, i can see how this wont work for multiplayer, exactlly.

i never played TL1, but in D2 the game auto-saved every 5 minutes and would auto-save when you exited the game. in PSO, the game would only auto-save when you where online and then the only other way to save would be when you hit quit and exited back to the main menu (or got DC'ed). in PSzero, you could actually save anywhere without exiting (although it would only save character progress and not any ongoing quest/dungeon progress).

i am hoping in TL2, character progress (ya know: levels, items, etc) can be saved ANYTIME (without having to exit the game), but whenever you load up your save, it will start you at the nearest checkpoint/town/etc. dungeon/quest progress should only be saved after they are completed.

[gold163]

Well the reason why those methods worked for PSO and PSZ was because progress in those games is mission-based. I do think that your suggestion (which is similar to how PSO games handled it) would probably work, but dungeons in Torchlight are a big part of the game, with quests being continuous and persistent. I don't want to lose all quest/dungeon progress is what I'm saying, but if I have to restart at a checkpoint it would get boring to enter a dungeon and everything's dead already.

[Jerich]

Saving right where you left off works for a single player game, but don't work at all for multi-player.

I am pretty sure the goal for TL 2 was to have a persistent map saved for single player (Like D2), but to have the world reroll each time you create a new multiplayer game. Since I have never played single player, I don't know if you start in town like D2 or can actually save mid level like TL 1. In multiplayer, though, I believe I started in town each time I logged in.

Will TL 2 still be real life friendly? Every dungeon I played could be done in small chunks of time. I don't think you will be stuck for two hours to complete a dungeon only to have to go walk the dog and lose your progress. Waypoints are many and areas are pretty short.

I think the biggest time commitment for TL 2 will be if you want to be a completionist and completely clear out the entire overworld in a multiplayer setting. Since it is a large area and rerolls every time you start a new game, you will want to do it all in one sitting. Each big zone may take over an hour to completely clear.

[Seer]

I don't think you will be stuck for two hours to complete a dungeon

While that is a bit long, us crazies could make a mod dungeon that felt like true epic adventure on its own that lasted that long