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Baranor
03-07-2008, 06:51 PM
We all do this. If you haven't, you are a better man that I am Gunga Din.

I was curious as to how much people do this. When I started playing the game, I "saved" the game every few steps and would restart if I didn't get an outcome that I liked (I.E. Getting cold immunity from crowning). Eventually I progressed through the game and didn't need to "save" nearly so often. With intermittent "saving," I achieved the Neutral Ultra Ending. It was wonderful and glorious and I partied for weeks on end, but soon I figured out that I felt my victory cheapened by the "saving". It became my goal to win the game without the dreaded "save". Working my way through, I would get frustrated at the slowdown between levels 25 and 50 generally rush headlong into an early death. Finally with a Bard of some sort for a challenge, I made it without "saving".

I now only "save" once I have completed major parts of the game in the case that my computer craps out or ADOM encounters a bug. (Multiple 30's level characters lost this way!)

How much do you do this? If you are brave enough to share.

P.S. If you don't know what "saving" is, it is copying your .svg file to another folder so that if you die in an untimely fashion, you can put your character back in the savedg folder. (Or other saving shenanigans that are not part of the ADOM game itself.)

BowenTheKotoc
03-07-2008, 06:54 PM
The only time I've "saved" was to move a game from one computer to another computer. I've never save-scummed (the popular term for what you are describing), but I've also never won a game. I'm ok with that. It's supposed to be hard.

theotherhiveking
03-07-2008, 06:59 PM
I did the same that Bowen.

I copied my save file to my fathers computer to play a little.

Baranor
03-07-2008, 07:14 PM
Wow, that's great you guys. I may have been less mature than you as I was 16 years old. That's my only defense. :( I will at least say that I think that saving is different from save-scumming. In my mind saving is making sure that if you die a horrible death you can go back to an old saved game. Save-scumming is saving and then repeatedly quitting until you pull the thing that you want. I did this earlier in my ADOM career when I as absolutely sick of waiting for an Amulet of Life-Saving or a Scroll of Danger! I also used this once to descend to the special level of the infinite dungeon at only level 16!

KazooKing
03-07-2008, 07:20 PM
Hmm.

No. Any sort of reverting to an old save game (be it because you died, didn't get an arti drop etc) is save scumming, and against the 'rules'. Generally, people don't do it. At least, the people that used to regularly posted on r.g.r.a didn't, although admittedly this was about 6 or 7 years ago when NZ ISPs still provided usenet access.

I did it for a little while myself, and I've gotta say, it ruined the game for me to a certain extent. I stopped enjoying it. Removing the threat of permadeath removed some of the excitement.

Also, please never post a save-scummed victory post unless you have it up in neons that you cheated :D

yisk
03-07-2008, 07:25 PM
Last year I finished the game without ultra ending with human barbarian (and save-scumming =)). After this I play without svg copying. ) But it is toooo terrible, when your orc beastfighter meets the ghost! I hate undeads in fair game. I remember many times when single ghoul paralyses and kills my strong berserker.

P.S. By the way! It would be good, if the JADE had more serious protection from save-scumming!

KazooKing
03-07-2008, 07:27 PM
That's why I stopped playing melee characters. Not enough 'outs' for tricky situations.

theotherhiveking
03-07-2008, 07:35 PM
Wow, that's great you guys. I may have been less mature than you as I was 16 years old. That's my only defense.

WHAT? I'm 15! no defense.

Baranor
03-07-2008, 08:13 PM
Ok, so then I was an immature 16 year-old and you are a sage and wise 15 year-old.

I'm honestly surprised that no one saves at all! Considering that I have played up to level 10 around 10,000 times. Save-scumming has allowed me to play parts of the game on a more regular basis that I would never get to play.

Travis Prue
03-07-2008, 08:52 PM
I've beaten the game by savescumming. I've been trying to beat it again without savescumming since (nearly 2 years <_<) and havent even been able to get the water orb xD.

sztosz
03-07-2008, 09:42 PM
As far as I remember, even when you save-scum win, ADOM get notice of it, it's written somwhere on the statistic screen. I stoped save-scuming becaoue it spoils the game.

Gulfd'An
03-07-2008, 09:58 PM
I sort of save scum if I don't have any identifying items and don't want to get stuck with cursed junk on every part of my body. Also I always have back ups for when I acidentily attack hotzenplotz or the shopkeeper at level 8.

adomer
03-07-2008, 10:08 PM
You're a cheating scum if you save; it ruins the spirit of the game...even if the game is going to crash.
Just my opinion

MeshGearFox
03-07-2008, 10:21 PM
I save scum on the world map (primarily in towns, though) and never during quests or in dungeons. It doesn't really ruin the game for me. ADOM's just, for me, way too long of a game to play legitly, and besides. The lack of permadeath never ruined, say, Ultima 5 for me. I also really, really don't care about high scores or bragging rights. The playing of the game is what's fun for me. Not the winning of it. Anyway.

Reasoning for Save-scumming Pattern:

1) Towns are safe areas. I also consider the wilderness to be a semi-safe area, I guess.
2) Not saving in dungeons means you still need to play well there to get out. It also means I can't get some AWESOME THING, make a perma-save, and keep going back to it. If I want to keep whatever I just got (or whatever quest I finished) I need to get out of the dungeon/quest area.
3) I'm not cheating my way out of hostile situations in this sense.

Baranor
03-07-2008, 10:26 PM
Thanks for staying positive! I think we should try to keep the insults to a minimum here. We all love this game, so lets keep our discussions on a positive level. After all this really is a game where there is only a competition between you and the game. So far as I know there are no ADOM World Championships!

As to save-scumming, I was about to quit playing the game forever because I was tired of taking hours and hours only to die because of a stupid mistake I made. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what mistake I made and it would take me many hours to get back to that same point and possibly make the same mistake again. Save-scumming allowed me to stay in the game and learn much more about the game. Once I won with that as a condition, I knew I hadn't really won. I know have won without using that ability and am very proud of that. My goal now is to do the ultra ending sans saving.

Dental_floss
03-07-2008, 10:28 PM
Save-scumming completely ruins the game. Beating ADOM without cheating is one my finest video game accomplishments, and it simply isn't as rewarding to cheat your way though it.

adomer
03-07-2008, 10:33 PM
Save-scumming completely ruins the game. Beating ADOM without cheating is one my finest video game accomplishments, and it simply isn't as rewarding to cheat your way though it.

Exactly, I only won once without cheating and it was my best video game accomplishment ever I must say.

Baranor
03-07-2008, 10:37 PM
My greatest video game accomplishment was finishing world 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. in 11 seconds. Followed closely by winning ADOM without saving! Sadly, then I inadvertently killed a cat on I think level 48 so I couldn't get the Cat Lord bonus.

adomer
03-07-2008, 10:37 PM
Thanks for staying positive! I think we should try to keep the insults to a minimum here. We all love this game, so lets keep our discussions on a positive level. After all this really is a game where there is only a competition between you and the game. So far as I know there are no ADOM World Championships!

As to save-scumming, I was about to quit playing the game forever because I was tired of taking hours and hours only to die because of a stupid mistake I made. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what mistake I made and it would take me many hours to get back to that same point and possibly make the same mistake again. Save-scumming allowed me to stay in the game and learn much more about the game. Once I won with that as a condition, I knew I hadn't really won. I know have won without using that ability and am very proud of that. My goal now is to do the ultra ending sans saving.

Believe me, I know what it's like to spend 15-20 hours on creating a character just to get petrified by a gorgon or blasted to death by Nuurag-Vaarn the Chaos Archmage. I just feel that people who "save their game" to avoid this type of problem aren't truly experiencing adom as it was meant to be experienced.

MeshGearFox
03-07-2008, 10:48 PM
Well, games are for entertainment. If I don't find losing the 15-20 hours I spent on a character entertaining, I don't really see why I should play like that, even if it IS cheating to do otherwise. Additionally, ADOM is somewhat less random than many roguelikes. Substantially so, really. Repeating the non-changing bits constantly can get a bit tedious.

Anyway, there were a few other rules I had for balance:

4) Cannot save scum to determine if armor/weapon is cursed or not.
5) Picking up a negative trait (Mutation, wererat, etc.) is not valid grounds to restart from a backup.

Dental_floss
03-07-2008, 11:11 PM
Additionally, ADOM is somewhat less random than many roguelikes. Substantially so, really. Repeating the non-changing bits constantly can get a bit tedious.

This is true, however this is also how people get very good at ADOM. The best players I believe can beat adom as often as 1/3rd of their games. A poster on another forum I read posted about 200 screenshots documenting a ULE game for example, and only had to play 2 characters to accomplish it. He saved the game 0 times and never asked for divine intervention IIRC.

Congnito
03-08-2008, 12:56 AM
i dono if i should be proud of this but i beat the game ultra ending (lawfull) with a high elven archer, no saving what so ever and to be honist it was AWSOME, was so exciting to take on andor draken with out cheating,
i cant belive i rember the luck i got, but i found amulet of life saving from the lesser chaos servants in front of khelevaster, was awsome cos i was gonna just talk with out bothering, seriously this is so sad but that was the start of my quest to take on the ultra ending,
then it was all luck from there,
the thing that gave me a massive boost was having seven legue boots and loads of arrows of humanoid slaying, cos it gave me the ability to kill the eternal guardian, leveled up big time from him cos he respawns ofc, (spoze in a sence that could be a exploit but it was proper hard)
then it was smoth sailing all the way,
ahh man the memorys, going to take on the emperor moloch for the scroll for the trident was a super buzz,

i rember being so tence cos i couldent rember how many corruptions u needed before going in to take on andor, cos one time i had the same thing with a dwaf barbarian, had loads of luck got down there after all the LONG!!!!!! ting to get all the parts to take him on and the trident slipped out of my hand when i got in the portal was SUCH A BLOODY let down, really, cos i got round 2 of my m8s who also BATTERD the game big time and we were all there burning some tea with rollups looking to finaly see the ending and the thing slipped out, dam shame,
but i got there in the end, man i cant belive it but it was bloody amazing,

man adom, best dam game on earth,
spoze it could be me but i have to say i had some good times.

MeshGearFox
03-08-2008, 01:11 AM
A poster on another forum I read posted about 200 screenshots documenting a ULE game for example, and only had to play 2 characters to accomplish it. He saved the game 0 times and never asked for divine intervention IIRC.

True. I think this also applies to Nethack to some extent, though. I was reading the @Play article on Angband and I believe they raised that point. I mean, what happens in Nethack, is more random than ADOM in the sense of when it happens, but there are certain strategies and bits of knowledge that that always apply, and certain guaranteed events.

I guess I'm a bit of a chronic experimenter. The thrill of discovery is far, far more important to me than the thrill of winning. Save scumming makes it easier for me to do that.

Anyway, additional rules I remember:

6) In general, all games end in saving or death. Whenever you go topside, you must save.
7) Optional rule: Equipping a cursed object mandates a save.
8) Very experimental/option rule: IDENTIFYing a cursed/negative object may also mandate a save.

Travis Prue
03-08-2008, 01:11 AM
My greatest video game accomplishment was finishing world 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. in 11 seconds.

I can do that too :P


A poster on another forum I read posted about 200 screenshots documenting a ULE game for example, and only had to play 2 characters to accomplish it. He saved the game 0 times and never asked for divine intervention IIRC.
Impressive :O

Dougy
03-08-2008, 01:25 AM
Save-scumming has is use - for example when you want to experiment with things. Do you really want to find out for the first time with a promising character? Just make sure you keep save-scummed and non-save-scummed characters quite separate.

It's quite easy for a reasonably good race/class combination to win the game by scumming the infinite dungeon. Get the "Treasure Hunter" skill and on a staircase go up-down-up-down-up-down... and so on. You'll have so much useful equipment. If you leave around level 15 or so you can go and complete a bunch of quests and equip yourself with many top-notch items.

Rusi
03-08-2008, 09:50 AM
I don't have anything againts save-scumming as long as those who do it don't come bragging to forums and high score lists how they beated game with top notch scores. After all the most important thing is enjoying the game. If you get turned on when you walk through Half-Life 2 god mode on, unlimited ammo etc and you enjoy it who am I or anyone else to say "That's wrong!". As long as you don't start to float and brag or ruin someone gaming experience with your cheating or cheated accomplishment nobody got right to blame them.

I would like to see some kind of "wizard/explore" mode implemented in JADE which you can use to save/load as many times as you want but those scores wouldn't be recorded as it's only used for exploring and learning. I think this was the biggest feature I missed when I started playing ADOM and drove me doing save-scumming. Stopped doing this after I noticed my characters started constantly survive to level 10 and further. Thou now I have been stuck in level range 20-30 for many many many many years *rolls eyes* Oh well I hope I can complete the game before JADE is out.

Dougy
03-08-2008, 10:45 AM
Right, why should we decide how other people should or shouldn't enjoy the game?

warheart
03-08-2008, 11:55 AM
I would like to see some kind of "wizard/explore" mode implemented in JADE which you can use to save/load as many times as you want but those scores wouldn't be recorded as it's only used for exploring and learning. I think this was the biggest feature I missed when I started playing ADOM and drove me doing save-scumming. Stopped doing this after I noticed my characters started constantly survive to level 10 and further. Thou now I have been stuck in level range 20-30 for many many many many years *rolls eyes* Oh well I hope I can complete the game before JADE is out.


I kinda agree with you there, it's a good idea imo.

I must admit I've save scummed many times, but I don't think that should be considered as cheating or even as an offense for "legal" players. I did it because I've never really known much about ADOM, never finished it, and just wanted to see some places I would have never reached without save scumming. Believe it or not (I know I'm noob :o) I had never seen the library for example, and save scumming allowed me to do it. I find it fine to save scum as long as people don't brag about scores and such.

Macros
03-08-2008, 12:09 PM
When I started playing Adom, I used to savescumm a lot(and that was really hardcore save scumming, I usually ended up with over 600 saves). I won about four or five times, but quickly I got bored. What fun from game you can have if your character is immortal?

When I decided to start playing without save scumming, beginning was very hard. I usually died in SMC or somewhere in UD. Sometimes I was able to get to HMV, and getting to dwarf town was great achievement. But after some time, things got a bit easier; I've learned how to avoid certain dangerous situations, and that allowed my characters to live longer. Since that time I've managed to win Adom about 30 times(with 3 ultra endings), and believe me, playing without save scumming is much more exciting, and playing without save scumming is best way to learn how to play. You need to learn from previous mistakes, also playing without save scumm forces you to play more carefully, and develop your own strategies how to survive. Beginnings might be hard(or even very hard), but imo playing without save scumming gives much more pleasure, excitement and satisfaction.

Epythic
03-08-2008, 07:01 PM
I don't savescum, but I always make backups of my savegames (to protect me against crashes), and I write important facts to a file. For example, if I need to remember where the next neutral altar is, I can just do:


$ cat charname.log|grep "neutral altar"

Quite handy.

ZeroTheBird
03-09-2008, 12:01 AM
when i discovered how to "save" i constantly used it. mainly for wishes.
but it feels cheap to generate a artifact for each level you go down.
so now i only "save" after important events. i have not managed to win the game without the "save".

Shardphoenix
03-09-2008, 02:05 AM
BTW, character seems to be more lucky before the first save...

MeshGearFox
03-09-2008, 05:43 AM
"If you get turned on when you walk through Half-Life 2 god mode on, unlimited ammo etc and you enjoy it who am I or anyone else to say "That's wrong!". As long as you don't start to float and brag or ruin someone gaming experience with your cheating or cheated accomplishment nobody got right to blame them."

Ah, now here's the difference! Want to god mode through Half-Life 2 in single player? That's fine. You might even have a legit reason. Maybe not full god mode, but you're using infinite ammo because the game is sort of slow cause your computer is out of day, so you need to do this to make it playable. Maybe you just like to explore the levels. Maybe you've already beat it legitly and just want to go through the levels. Maybe you just want to blow stuff up. Totally fine.

Now, let's say you're cheating in HL2... online. In that case you'll probably get lynched and deserve.

Save-scumming in ADOM, winning, and posting your score online somewhere is like cheating in an online game, in that sense.

mike3
03-10-2008, 12:29 AM
I don't use this technique any more for playing a "real" game as I consider it, like most, a cheat, except for getting around technical issues like power outages, computer crashes, or game bugs (Some people may consider this a "cheat" as well but I do not since those things are not part of the game's intended rules.). I sometimes may also use it for experimentation/game research purposes. But for a "real" session where I want to try and actually _win_ the thing, then I don't use it (except in the case of those technical issues I mentioned), so the win, if any (I haven't gotten a real win yet, by the way) is legitimate.

Dougy
03-10-2008, 04:17 AM
BTW, character seems to be more lucky before the first save...

I wonder if that's true...

Silfir
03-13-2008, 10:47 AM
I stopped savescumming after I had the same character die approximately ten times in a row, without making noticable progress. I realized that the constant reloading had me running into a wall, refusing to learn, unable to improve. Much later on I realized that you could ask Thrundarr about "quest". I let that character die, and stopped savescumming. Never looked back, won ten times since.

Mad Minstrel
03-13-2008, 02:03 PM
I used to save-scum when I installed ADOM for the first time many years ago. I never won ADOM this way. When I learned more about roguelikes and that it's not how you are supposed to play this game, I stopped save-scumming and never did it again. Now save-scumming is like playing with cheat codes for me, it's cheap and takes away all the fun. Permadeath is the essence of roguelikes. Though if a character is very lucky I make a backup of the save file in case of crash. I don't consider it save-scumming, but even in this case I rarely use the backup, as playing with a character who "died" because of a crash is less enjoyable for me for some reason.

Baranor
03-13-2008, 06:34 PM
I would totally agree. Generally since you are not used to saving you have progressed much farther than your back-uped file is. You have to complete a lot of the same stuff, and it really takes away from the game.

heavensblade23
03-13-2008, 10:21 PM
I don't agree with save-scumming in general but unfortunately ADOM has crash bugs that can make you lose a promising character. I wouldn't feel any guilt for restoring from a save in the event of a crash.

I feel the same way about the patch. I'm not really sure having a jackal hit like a freight-train was an intended part of the game.

puuro
03-13-2008, 11:17 PM
The only time I remember to have save-scummed was when I tested does it work. I seem to belong to a minority. save-scumming is evil. you writhing masses of primal chaos!

heavensblade23
03-14-2008, 12:40 AM
This is true, however this is also how people get very good at ADOM. The best players I believe can beat adom as often as 1/3rd of their games. A poster on another forum I read posted about 200 screenshots documenting a ULE game for example, and only had to play 2 characters to accomplish it. He saved the game 0 times and never asked for divine intervention IIRC.

Some people are just naturally talented at roguelikes. A guy on another forum managed an ultra ending within two weeks of downloading the game for the first time. I'm guessing these people just have an extremely efficient mental filing system where they can quickly absorb all the little tips and tricks that keep a character alive just from reading spoilers. I know a lot of my deaths in roguelikes are because I forgot some trick I could have used to save myself or prepare myself beforehand. I didn't use the E word in Nethack until I had been playing over a year.

Starhawk
03-14-2008, 04:12 AM
I save-scummed to finish the game, just so that I could see the end of ADOM before the release of JADE.

I didn't brag and didn't make a victory post, because it doesn't count and I know it.

I'm still trying to beat ADOM the proper way....

Grey
03-14-2008, 05:30 AM
When you get there, it'll feel awesome. Your first real victory is an amazing feeling. The whole build-up will have you on edge, worrying about losing your character as you drop the orbs into the anomalies and start your descent. Going for an ultra is even more nerve-wracking - as you enter the Chaos Gate you can't help but worry you've forgotten something, and when you finally go through the cool ChAoS sequence you're ready to piss yourself with excitement.

Ah, I love this game :)

ElectricalFire
05-11-2008, 02:42 AM
I've never save scummed in any roguelike. That being said, I've yet to beat one! To me the fun is in that I could die.

Smite
05-11-2008, 02:56 PM
I use to save scum but I found that is leads to too many compromises.

'Oh I'll just save my game and then see if I can kill the Banshee before she screams. Oh well it didn't work - I'll just write that off as a test and go and get some bees wax, wedding rings etc....'

Or maybe you get a corruptio0n you don't like and revert to a save file hoping for a different one.

Don't get me wrong - for the ADOM novice, save scumming can be a great way to learn the ropes and a few tricks here and there. But, once you know how it works it is more rewarding to stop using it. Anyway, I only you save files now as backups. ADOM rarely crashes under Vista but when it does I like to be able to have my character safe - Even then sometimes it just doesn't feel right using a character that has had some form of intervention to 'resurrect' him/her.