possible "game over" idea

[jack1974]

I am starting to brainstorm the new/last robbery missions. I have divided into three categories:
- merchants: low money and no gems, but not risky
- nobles: high money and gems, but high security
- mercenaries/ex military: those are the toughest battles, a bit more money than merchants, but mostly for people who want XP

I am thinking if also to allow a game over in the mercenary events. For the other two, and even the catacombs, you can't have a game over (maybe in the final battle of catacombs).
But for example, I was planning to put some really bad stuff in this one, like a trap in which they fall on a pit with watch dogs or something, so even if they can turn invisible they would still have trouble to escape it, and so on.

I guess if I put a warning before starting the mission, it should be fine. Might still not do it, I want this one to be a more relaxed game ( I mean in Nightmare mode will still be hard to win, but no sudden game overs).

[Jaeger]

Is it one of those scenarios where certain decisions lead to a party's abrupt death or an end to their journey? I assume most players have a habit of saving often, it should be okay as long the game provides clues to avoid dangerous situations.

[jack1974]

No only if you lose the battle is game over, never because of a "wrong choice". But you could be unprepared for the battle...

[kadakithis]

Since you would need a warning maybe before hand and losing the battles normally means you use up resources but have to do it again, I dont really see the difference between a game over and having to redo the battle, since redoing the battle may cost resources it seems like the more punishing option, rather than reloading a save to do it over?

[jack1974]

Usually in the modern games you almost never save manually. I noticed that in many recent games, like Mad Max etc. The game automatically saves before a tough fight so even if you lose, it's never actually a "game over".
Also as you said I wanted to avoid "save scumming" (I think it's called like that) so people constantly reloading a save (like happened on SOTW) so having a game over probably seems the worst option.
Well I'll need to think about it more, maybe will enable it only in some plot-related battles but not during the robbery (which are semi-random scenes/battles).

[kadakithis]

Most of the modern games I play have both. It autosaves every time you go into a new area or before a fight, but if you need to quit the game suddenly for whatever reason, the save option is there for you to use.

[Troyen]

Most of the modern games I play have both. It autosaves every time you go into a new area or before a fight, but if you need to quit the game suddenly for whatever reason, the save option is there for you to use.

Also handy if you want to replay a particular sequence later for fun or to see a cutscene again.

[jack1974]

Yes I would need to modify Ren'Py a bit for this, since it displays the saves in "pages" (as you probably know already!). I mean I can do an autosave before each "checkpoint" but then would be hard to find it in the list. The save system would need a complete overhaul to be honest

[Troyen]

You can use the existing system and just have the last six checkpoints. A number of games only have a finite number of auto-save slots (though it's usually closer to 30 or 60 or 100).

[jack1974]

Yes but the problem is showing them. By default is saved in "slots and pages", so 1-1 = slot 1 page 1, 2-1 = page 2 slot 1 etc.
Doing that checkpoint, I should sort all saves based on the date. It's possible for sure but I never did it, and it sort of goes against the default Ren'Py behavior.
Probably easy to never have game overs at this point