Save game?

[DrainoBraino]

With all the talk of easy difficulty and marathon games to get to the leaderboards, do you think TPA should allow you to save your game?

I will never be able to play a marathon game without saving, I just don't have that much free time. I can't leave the game paused for days.

 

[Korven]

Since pausing on android can cause a all kinds of problems I'm all for that option.

 

[Pod]

Since pausing on android can cause a all kinds of problems I'm all for that option.

I'd love this too. IOS can crash/run out of memory just because it went into sleep mode. Makes every extended pause a gamble

But I doubt theyd add it because of the potential for backing up saves and cheating your way to silly high scores.

Pod

 

[DrainoBraino]

But I doubt theyd add it because of the potential for backing up saves and cheating your way to silly high scores.

Pod

If there was a way to not allow save game backups, but I guess somebody would figure out how to do it. Cheaters always gotta ruin everything!

 

[vikingerik]

Yeah, any kind of save game can be copied and restored, no matter what the game program might do to stop it. At the most extreme level, imagine playing on a virtual machine. You could just snapshot and restore the entire VM and the game program would never know.

 

[LanceBoyle]

It could be something like on Wii Virtual Console games, in which leaving the game saves a snapshot of sorts, and when you boot that game again, it restores from where you were and essentially deletes it, avoiding any exploit potential.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

It has to store the saved game somewhere. It's just a matter of finding it and copying it back if you don't like the subsequent results.

 

[Deltaechoe]

I don't know about this, I went with TPA for the realism and having save games kind of ruins that

 

[Fungi]

I can't stop a game in the middle. I lose my groove.

 

[DarkAkatosh]

I brought this up a long time ago and everyone said it was an impossibility.

 

[DrainoBraino]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I don't know about this, I went with TPA for the realism and having save games kind of ruins that

Me too, but it's not very realistic to play over an hour when you're not even trying. I was playing Bride of Pinbot forever the other day and just had to let the balls drain so I could get to work. To reach the leaderboard for some tables, yo uhave to play for sometimes 6+ hours. I just can't do it in one sitting.

This is why I prefer the tables like Gorgar and Firepower, much shorter play times. Still can't reach the leaderboards tho.....

I brought this up a long time ago and everyone said it was an impossibility.

IT can't be impossible. You can save on other pinball games. Maybe if scores wont count on the leader board? I could handle that.

 

[LanceBoyle]

It has to store the saved game somewhere. It's just a matter of finding it and copying it back if you don't like the subsequent results.

In the case of Virtual Console stuff, the Operations Manual for the VC games say that copying or moving the file essentially deletes the "resume point".

 

[Espy]

I don't even pause mid-game as I feel it's kind of cheating. Very rarely I leave the ball in the launcher, but never pause. My logic is "you can't do it on a real machine, so why on TPA?"

I know it's pedantic, but that's how I play.

 

[Exo]

In the case of Virtual Console stuff, the Operations Manual for the VC games say that copying or moving the file essentially deletes the "resume point".

You can still copy and restore it with any savegame-manager. Storing sessions in a savefile would make highscore cheating extremely easy so in my opinion it's something that should only be allowed if it blocks the score from going onto the leaderboards.

 

[Espy]

You can still copy and restore it with any savegame-manager. Storing sessions in a savefile would make highscore cheating extremely easy so in my opinion it's something that should only be allowed if it blocks the score from going onto the leaderboards.

The way Zen does saving is that you can't simply reload endlessly, you can only pick off from it once and then your save is gone. So it's more of a long-term pause button than anything.

 

[Exo]

The fact that it gets deleted doesn't mean that you can't back up the save file before it gets deleted via loading.
Once it's gone you can simply replace it again and repeat the process to reload as often as you want.

 

[Espy]

The fact that it gets deleted doesn't mean that you can't back up the save file before it gets deleted via loading.
Once it's gone you can simply replace it again and repeat the process to reload as often as you want.

I'm sure Zen are more clever than to not think of that. Otherwise their scoreboards would be rife with cheaters.

 

[Exo]

I'm sure Zen are more clever than to not think of that. Otherwise their scoreboards would be rife with cheaters.

They aren't. It works. To be fair there really isn't anything a developer can do about this if they implement save files.

Example:
https://forum.zenstudios.com/showthread.php?3661-unlikely-scores-or-hacking

 

[brakel]

I think the most difficult thing to implement would be the ROM state and ball locations. The ROM emulation might not lend itself well to being put into an "unnatural" state.

 

[Deltaechoe]

Thanks for the replies, guys.


Me too, but it's not very realistic to play over an hour when you're not even trying. I was playing Bride of Pinbot forever the other day and just had to let the balls drain so I could get to work. To reach the leaderboard for some tables, yo uhave to play for sometimes 6+ hours. I just can't do it in one sitting.

This is why I prefer the tables like Gorgar and Firepower, much shorter play times. Still can't reach the leaderboards tho.....


IT can't be impossible. You can save on other pinball games. Maybe if scores wont count on the leader board? I could handle that.

First of all, this post is not meant as an attack at all. Don't want to start drama over what could be considered a somewhat controversial opinion.

Anyway, it sounds like you think everybody deserves to be on the leaderboards, I disagree with this. If it takes 6 hours to get onto the leaderboards then someone actually took the time to do that work to get a session going that lasts 6 hours. Leaderboards are meant for people who are willing to do what it takes to be better than everyone else and if that means rediculous marathon sessions, then so be it. I'm probably never going to make it onto the lifetime leaderboards because I don't feel like playing over 30 minutes per game, I'll get bored and drain the balls on purpose so I can go do something else. Sure I might put up a good score, but does stuff like that deserve to be on the leaderboards? I don't think so because I've made the conscious choice to not live up to the potential score that could have been earned. This puts top positions out of reach for the average gamer, but then again, they wouldn't be called leaderboards if everyone could get on them, then they would be called something like "the board of decently good games every once in awhile"

As far as the "impossible" comment, I think that was just to placate consumers as it shouldn't be too difficult to just take a snapshot of the current state of the engine and restore it later. The problem with this is a complete break of immersion, even more so than a pause menu which I opt to not use most of the time anyway. You generally can't save a game of pinball in real life anyway, unless you take the ball out and leave the machine on which most people don't do anyway.

The point here being, save games have the potential to make TPA far too easy by adding the possibility for "do overs", sessions of indeterminate length (maybe endless) and in additional to the difficulty change it also breaks pinball immersion.