Autosave only at convenient times - ADOM & Ultimate ADOM Forums

11-28-2015 10:38 AM

Elitist

Member

I think the current autosave function is fine. This just sounds like folks are mashing buttons in a turn based roguelike, which ain't a good habit to get into.

There are options to change intervals and they should be made clear for players.

I think time could be spent refining other elements that're more pressing than this.

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11-28-2015 11:06 AM

Shinae

Senior Member

Not everyone plays 1 turn at a time taking their time. Auto-saving on stairs etc is much better option imo. I haven't got my character killed because of it, but I notice it quite often when I'm running back to dwarftown to sell stuff / get item from my stash and running back to surface. Besides I think sometimes during the auto-save lag it takes extra keypresses and does all of them after the lag.

I don't think it hurts anyone making it save on stairs. It only has benefits for some people. It was my suggestion on steam originally anyways, but few people agreed they face it too. I don't remember having this issue on non-steam version tho, since I only ran into it in deluxe version.

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11-28-2015 12:40 PM

Esoteric Rogue Esoteric Rogue is offline

Member

Originally Posted by Elitist

I think the current autosave function is fine.

Wouldn't be an issue if autosave were seamless, but it's far from that. Feels like my computer locked up. I hit a key for a command and nothing happened. I hit it again, nothing. I pounded out the name of some Chaos Lord upon the keyboard, and eventually realize "oh, apparently it was auto-saving". So, I reduced the auto-save interval to 100 turns, which I allowed me to predict it fairly well. Because I want to predict annoyances, apparently. I like to give full attention to interruptions so that they don't distract me. (DOH! That loses the metagame.)

Helpful would be improving the autosave. Display the message ("Saving, please wait...") BEFORE it starts saving. Do not continue to buffer keystrokes: rather give the traditional error beep used as feedback indicating that you are typing when the system is not ready. Another nicety might be animated periods indicating work/progress.

Other considerations are to schedule such interruptions when players are already interrupted (such as during leveling up, for one), or during natural transitions such as changing wilderness/town/dungeon levels.

Originally Posted by Elitist

I think time could be spent refining other elements that're more pressing than this

Ah, this hits me. Those 2 specific suggestions were me shooting the breeze on Steam, but I consciously had not submit an RFE in part because I concur there are plenty of better things to do. But the game would be better for it, and prioritizing is the devs job, I guess.

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11-28-2015 01:58 PM

Elitist

Member

Originally Posted by Esoteric Rogue

Wouldn't be an issue if autosave were seamless, but it's far from that. Feels like my computer locked up. I hit a key for a command and nothing happened. I hit it again, nothing. I pounded out the name of some Chaos Lord upon the keyboard, and eventually realize "oh, apparently it was auto-saving". So, I reduced the auto-save interval to 100 turns, which I allowed me to predict it fairly well. Because I want to predict annoyances, apparently. I like to give full attention to interruptions so that they don't distract me. (DOH! That loses the metagame.)

Helpful would be improving the autosave. Display the message ("Saving, please wait...") BEFORE it starts saving. Do not continue to buffer keystrokes: rather give the traditional error beep used as feedback indicating that you are typing when the system is not ready. Another nicety might be animated periods indicating work/progress.

Other considerations are to schedule such interruptions when players are already interrupted (such as during leveling up, for one), or during natural transitions such as changing wilderness/town/dungeon levels.

Ah, this hits me. Those 2 specific suggestions were me shooting the breeze on Steam, but I consciously had not submit an RFE in part because I concur there are plenty of better things to do. But the game would be better for it, and prioritizing is the devs job, I guess.

I reckon I have the judgement to say that fixing NotEye's semi-consistent crashes surpasses messing with autosave. One might not be very good, but the other just doesn't work.

I, really don't have this issue with how it currently works. Granted, I have it on every 1200 turns and I take a second between every keystroke to take in my current situation. Is my perspective really this skewed? If so, I apologize, I am in the minority. I've never had an issue with saving queue-ing actions.

Honestly, the Steam release is bringing more and more negative surprises as the days go by.

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11-28-2015 04:06 PM

Al-Khwarizmi Al-Khwarizmi is offline

Ancient Member

I do think autosave in its current form is quite annoying. Especially in the late game, even in my rather high-end i7 it takes around 5 seconds.

The worst thing is the fact that some input is accepted (and queued) during the autosave. It would be much better if no input at all were processed during the autosave. And the message that says the game is autosaving should be visible right when the process starts, I think right now it's only visible at the end.

Autosaving at stairs looks like good idea but, IMHO, only if the player is ascending/descending stairs AND a number of turns have passed during the last autosave. I wouldn't like to get autosaves every 20 or 30 turns if I'm doing a routine ascension through already-explored CoC levels, I'd spend more time waiting for the autosave than actually playing.

By the way, regarding "folks are mashing buttons in a turn based roguelike, which ain't a good habit to get into"... well, I have a bunch of wins over my belt and I mash buttons regularly. Would it be better to never do it? Probably. But I'm not going to think every turn in a rat tension room or a jackalwere encounter with a strong enough character.

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11-28-2015 07:31 PM

hapro

Senior Member

Just try to remember to not make blink dog scumming in the ID super annoying :)

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11-29-2015 12:41 AM

tkoyah

Junior Member

I like the idea of only auto-saving between levels and at other important moments (such as when advancing.) Those are the times the player will be waiting to see what comes next, and key-presses in the keyboard buffer don't come back to hurt people. :)

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11-29-2015 05:06 PM

anon123

Ancient Member

Originally Posted by Al-Khwarizmi

Autosaving at stairs looks like good idea but, IMHO, only if the player is ascending/descending stairs AND a number of turns have passed during the last autosave. I wouldn't like to get autosaves every 20 or 30 turns if I'm doing a routine ascension through already-explored CoC levels, I'd spend more time waiting for the autosave than actually playing.

Agreed completely, and the opposite case should also be considered - PCs that spend a lot of time on the same level, for example clearing greater vaults, grinding or collecting herbs. You'd have to add a "when using stairs or if more than X turns have passed since then" safeguard.

I think the current mechanic is fine, it just fails because autosaving delays become longer and longer as you progress. That's what should be fixed.

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11-29-2015 07:22 PM

ixi

Junior Member

Originally Posted by anon123

I think the current mechanic is fine, it just fails because autosaving delays become longer and longer as you progress. That's what should be fixed.

It doesn't sound simple to implement, but if could work the following way:

Game is paused.
All in-memory data was copied into another memory location (current level and PC information were stored but in RAM rather than written to HDD).
Game is resumed.
Current level / PC information information and other level from HDD are written so backup save file asynchronously while player plays the game.

Since all IO operations with HDD are performed in a separate thread asynchronously that must be working a lot faster than the current process. Time shouldn't increase as player progresses and more locations are added to save file.

Again, I'm not saying it's simple thing to implement but it is definitely possible. There shouldn't be a reason to stop player's game just for archiving unused levels into save file.

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11-30-2015 01:27 PM

Harwin

Ancient Member

Putting up a message, blocking all input before saving, and requiring a "(press enter)" (not just 'more' since that could be any key) to continue afterwards would help a bit.

It's never killed me yet, but I've definitely done one or two turns when I didn't intend to (especially because it's not obvious why my input didn't happen)

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12-23-2015 10:29 AM

dai

Member

Another vote here for doing something to sort out the autosave. I was just in the ToEF, no monsters in sight, and I just wanted to heal for a turn or two. Hit 5, still no monsters in sight. Hit 5 again, still no monsters in sight. Did that a further 3 or 4 times, then suddenly the autosave message appears, along with the ACW who blasts me a couple of times! Managed to escape to the stairs alive, but if that had killed me I would have been extremely angry - uninstalling ADOM angry.

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01-11-2016 06:09 AM

adom-admin adom-admin is offline

The Creator

Auto-saving from now on only will happen when changing levels (and if it needs to happen after leveling up please put up another RFE after you have tried the change). This now should improve things greatly.

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