computer games forum

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).

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.

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

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?

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).

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.

kadakithis wrote: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.

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

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).

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