There are definitely technical reasons why saving mid-run is a lot more complicated. With Pacific Drive, right now when you save, it’ll save:
the state of your car - this will likely be done by looking each individual “equipment slot” the car has, assigning them a number, assigning each possible upgrade for that “slot” a number/letter, and storing its damage state (which is probably just a scale of 1-5 or whatever). So the game will store everything about your car in the format off “slot x, upgrade type y, damage z”, which can just be three values.
your quest state. The game won’t remember what quests you’ve done or how you’ve done them in the way that you remember it - it’ll just store that you’ve completed quest step 14a and that 14b is your active objective.
It makes for a fairly simple, small save file. Being able to save mid-run would add a lot of complexity because it’d need to save a complete map state, including:
the map layout
your position in the map
the enemies and hazards in the map - their positions, states, etc.
what’s happened already in the map
the loot in the map, and whether you’ve collected it or not
And so on. Not only does it massively increase the complexity, it would also increase the size of save files a lot and make saving and loading a lot more cumbersome. And that’s just a simplified breakdown; there are definitely other factors that can make it much, much more complicated.
There are definitely some games where “easy mode” save systems could be implemented without much changing on a technical level, but I don’t think Pacific Drive is one of them.
Makes a lot of sense, though I’d say that implementing a “save on exit, delete upon resuming” should be a higher priority than it usually is in games that like to restrict saving. Having to stop and do something else might mean a lot of wasted time, and I think that not being able to drop an anchor point to come back to would be a possible dealbreaker for some and really hamper enjoyment of the game for others.
There have been a good few games where I wanted to play them, but didn’t because I wasn’t sure I had the time to make real progress, or that I’d make real progress, but have to stop just before a save point, and lose it all. It can mean that an otherwise great game gets left on the shelf in favor or something that better respects my time.
There are definitely technical reasons why saving mid-run is a lot more complicated. With Pacific Drive, right now when you save, it’ll save:
It makes for a fairly simple, small save file. Being able to save mid-run would add a lot of complexity because it’d need to save a complete map state, including:
And so on. Not only does it massively increase the complexity, it would also increase the size of save files a lot and make saving and loading a lot more cumbersome. And that’s just a simplified breakdown; there are definitely other factors that can make it much, much more complicated.
There are definitely some games where “easy mode” save systems could be implemented without much changing on a technical level, but I don’t think Pacific Drive is one of them.
Difficult but very doable. I mean this is a solved problem and there are many solutions, very much a huge blunder to not do that from the start.
Makes a lot of sense, though I’d say that implementing a “save on exit, delete upon resuming” should be a higher priority than it usually is in games that like to restrict saving. Having to stop and do something else might mean a lot of wasted time, and I think that not being able to drop an anchor point to come back to would be a possible dealbreaker for some and really hamper enjoyment of the game for others.
There have been a good few games where I wanted to play them, but didn’t because I wasn’t sure I had the time to make real progress, or that I’d make real progress, but have to stop just before a save point, and lose it all. It can mean that an otherwise great game gets left on the shelf in favor or something that better respects my time.