Lack of mid-game saving is ruining Doom 64 for me

[jazzmaster9]

rileymartin said:

Background noise is not real Doom Music.

People said the same thing about the BTSX OST not being Doom Music, but it didn't stop the team from using it anyway.

[Jaxxoon R]

Real™ Doom™ Music™ is of course made up of none other than the best goofy crash cymbals and bass plucks.

[Maes]

mrthejoshmon said:

Well, I never really plan on playing it again so whatever.

And thus a Doom64 miser/griefer was born.

[MrGlide]

It's just how most 90's games where at the time, it would save in between levels or there would be manual spots where you had to go to. I play without saves on doom myself so it didn't really bother me.

[Blastfrog]

The passwords are good enough.

[hardcore_gamer]

I mean at least Doom 64 has any saving at all. PSX Doom has only that terrible password system that's highly annoying to use. It baffles me that it doesn't support memory cards.

[Maes]

As I explained before, even if it did it would probably need all 15 slots of a standard memory card, for just ONE fulI status save, or else use an arbitrary system of partial saves and mid-level checkpoints like other games. Can you imagine Doom with fixed checkpoints, and pre-cleared rooms when you "load" a game? Or worse, respawning enemies?

[Doominator2]

At least its not like Goldeneye 007 where if your playing on 00 agent and your you almost finish the level only to be instakilled by a silent enemy from behind.

[hardcore_gamer]

Doominator2 said:

At least its not like Goldeneye 007 where if your playing on 00 agent and your you almost finish the level only to be instakilled by a silent enemy from behind.

Speaking of Goldeneye, that shit has aged horribly. I just tried playing the first mission yesterday and I am stunned at how I could ever have played the damn thing. The graphics look like total arse and the controls are horrible.

[Use]

Maes said:

Well, you can't expect a mid-90s console system to offer complete, PC-like saves. The Playstation, which pioneered the use of removable memory cards for saving games...

Pretty sure the Sega CD had a memory card before the PSX, it went into the Genesis, in addition to it's own memory, but whatever.

Maes said:

I'm surprised that Hexen 64 attempted a complete save, but as it was mentioned, it took an entire memory pak (and it probably had a requirement for a large/multi-bank one). Plus the inpredictability of save game sizes would make it problematic....

The Saturn version of Hexen could do a complete save on an external memory card as well, never had any issues, it also didn't fill the whole thing either. Used a good chunk though, still an impressive feature.

hardcore_gamer said:

Speaking of Goldeneye, that shit has aged horribly. I just tried playing the first mission yesterday and I am stunned at how I could ever have played the damn thing. The graphics look like total arse and the controls are horrible.

Surprise! It always looked and played like ass.

[Jaxxoon R]

Yeah, I remember a dev saying they thought the character models were pretty rough even back then.

[deadwolves]

At least Doom 64 gave you infinite lives. Back in the SNES day, games like Super Probector would give you only limited continues. Hard mode was tough as shit

[Wild Dog]

Use3D said:

Pretty sure the Sega CD had a memory card before the PSX, it went into the Genesis, in addition to it's own memory, but whatever.

Yeah well but it was a big mess, not all the games supported that cart.
just like the Playstation wasn't the first console to use Cd Roms, but it was the first to do it right.
Back then used to be a huge fan of Sega (Nintendo were not selling consoles in my Country until the N64), but the Sega CD was the worst thing they could sell..

Jaxxoon R said:

Yeah, I remember a dev saying they thought the character models were pretty rough even back then.

Goldeneye had 4 player multiplayer...That was the only "great" thing about that game
Otherwise it was a shitty game. Without any excuse. Hell a few months later the Quake 64 was released and it is quite close to the PC version.

Quake 64 and Doom 64 are way better than Goldeneye .

[Maes]

Use3D said:

Pretty sure the Sega CD had a memory card before the PSX, it went into the Genesis, in addition to it's own memory, but whatever.

You mean this one? Pretty interesting piece of hardware, but it functioned by using battery-backed RAM. I think we could at least say that the Playstation was the first to use Flash RAM, then?

Use3D said:

The Saturn version of Hexen could do a complete save on an external memory card as well, never had any issues, it also didn't fill the whole thing either. Used a good chunk though, still an impressive feature.

Well, I doubt they would let a feature in without testing it first, but certainly they would have had to deal with the savegame's size unpredictability first, and surely they got cold feet in certain situations. Apparently they deemed it acceptable enough to let it into the final product, but keep in mind that even the original DOS doom's savegames could fail on occasion, if they exceeded a certain total size (actually, the game crashed). Truth be said, this seldom happened in official IWAD maps, as they were probably engineered/optimized also for this aspect.

[cybdmn]

Maes said:

You mean this one? Pretty interesting piece of hardware, but it functioned by using battery-backed RAM. I think we could at least say that the Playstation was the first to use Flash RAM, then?

3DO had Flash RAM built-in afair, and then there where the Panasonic Panasonic FZ-EM256, but that wasn't accessible directly from the game. You had to copy gamesaves from/to the internal memory with an memory manager.

[Mattfrie1]

hardcore_gamer said:

I mean at least Doom 64 has any saving at all. PSX Doom has only that terrible password system that's highly annoying to use. It baffles me that it doesn't support memory cards.

You have to remember that PSX Doom was released right after the launch of the system. The developers possibly weren't that familiar with coding efficient sized saves on the memory card (I don't believe any other Williams Entertainment game released at that time used the memory card either).

Also perhaps they were trying to make the game compatible with those who didn't buy a memory card right away at launch, so they could still progress through the game without plunking down the extra $20 or so it would have cost them for a new memory card. Several other 1st gen PSX titles (3D Lemmings comes to mind) had something similar. They had memory card support, but also offered a password system for those that didn't have a memory card yet.

[EdwunclerIII]

In regards to traps, After the first time it's pretty much on you to avoid them. If I died on a trap I would just remember to avoid it the next time.

hardcore_gamer said:

I mean at least Doom 64 has any saving at all.

Thank god I have a memory card in my controller at all times. lol

[ickda]

You all talking fps on the N64, and not one person mentioned turok. Played one and two, and they had check points you could go into, sure it could be a slog to get to one, consider there were only 2 per level, But they had them, and if you did not mind some back tracking, once you got to one, you could save when ever you wanted. 

Edited January 28, 2020 by ickda
miss spelled a word

[Summer Deep]

I think that both Hexen and Descent on the PSX supported mid-level saves onto the memory card.

[fbjim]

On 7/5/2016 at 10:37 AM, Maes said:

As I explained before, even if it did it would probably need all 15 slots of a standard memory card, for just ONE fulI status save, or else use an arbitrary system of partial saves and mid-level checkpoints like other games. Can you imagine Doom with fixed checkpoints, and pre-cleared rooms when you "load" a game? Or worse, respawning enemies?

Incredibly hot take: I would prefer modern Doom wads to support a checkpoint system, because those are preferable to unlimited quicksave.

 

Doom should have had either checkpoints or explicit save points which were part of the level design. The preponderance of unlimited quicksave came (and still comes) from an era where designers don't consider the save system to be part of the game design, which is a big mistake. 

 

Every game should have save-on-quit though. 

Edited January 28, 2020 by fbjim

[warman2012]

On 7/5/2016 at 1:34 PM, hardcore_gamer said:

Speaking of Goldeneye, that shit has aged horribly. I just tried playing the first mission yesterday and I am stunned at how I could ever have played the damn thing. The graphics look like total arse and the controls are horrible.

Ok, this statement is pretty dumb. (yes, I know I can say dumb things) The controls I could agree with you, but graphics? Really? You're playing a late 90's 3d game. What did you expect? 1440p ultra HD goodness?

[warman2012]

Why is it that so many people here are acting all 'high and mighty' over a mechanic like saving on Doom 64? So people would like the option to save or have better controls. Why is that so bad? Saving does not alter the gameplay at all.

 

I grew up with D64 during it's heyday, so I can understand the frustration of not being able to save when you would like. There's one map with a mandatory spike trap that's hard to get around and saving would have been a BIG help back then.

 

It's strange really. Talk about anything difficult and wanting easier changes; people here call that person out for not conforming to the supposed high skill levels of players around here. Ask for some elements of the new games (i.e 2016 or Eternal) to be left out or stay like the originals, those same 'high-skill' players have no problem calling out purists for not accepting change. What is this weird standard for change?

 

 

Edited January 29, 2020 by warman2012

[jazzmaster9]

24 minutes ago, warman2012 said:

It's strange really. Talk about anything difficult and wanting easier changes; people here call that person out for not conforming to the supposed high skill levels of players around here. Ask for some elements of the new games (i.e 2016 or Eternal) to be left out or stay like the originals, those same 'high-skill' players have no problem calling out purists for not accepting change. What is this weird standard for change?

 

 

even targeting non Doom 2016/Eternal topics now? 

 

Those new mechanics work well with Doom 2016 because the game was designed with those in mind, Doom 64 was not designed for PC controls and mid saving.

 

But i guess all of this is  Doom 2016's fault again...

[fbjim]

8 hours ago, warman2012 said:

Why is it that so many people here are acting all 'high and mighty' over a mechanic like saving on Doom 64? So people would like the option to save or have better controls. Why is that so bad? Saving does not alter the gameplay at all.

 

I grew up with D64 during it's heyday, so I can understand the frustration of not being able to save when you would like. There's one map with a mandatory spike trap that's hard to get around and saving would have been a BIG help back then.

 

It's strange really. Talk about anything difficult and wanting easier changes; people here call that person out for not conforming to the supposed high skill levels of players around here. Ask for some elements of the new games (i.e 2016 or Eternal) to be left out or stay like the originals, those same 'high-skill' players have no problem calling out purists for not accepting change. What is this weird standard for change?

 

 

It's not about difficulty, it's about good game design. It's not that "save anywhere is bad", it's "the save system should be considered a game mechanic, unlike the Settings menu or something", and doing the latter is too often. And "Saving does not alter the gameplay at all" is completely wrong, and that's the whole point- unless you think playing Contra with emulator save states doesn't make it easier. 

 

I remember being part of a Dishonored thread on a forum, and we had to repeatedly tell people "stop quicksaving and quickloading every time you get spotted because of your precious Ghost bonus, and fight your way out of a bad situation instead" because people had so ingrained qs/ql into themselves that they were doing that, and shockingly they weren't having any fun. And guess what, when people stopped using quicksave and just played the game out when they got spotted, they started enjoying themselves more! But QS/QL (and pacifist/ghost being the default run for 'immersive sims') is so ingrained into people that a serious number of gamers were fucking their own enjoyment up by quickloading their way out of anything interesting. 

 

This is a good article about how saves can be specifically part of the game mechanics, and A:I's save system which included stuff like forcing you to choose between bee-lining toward the objective or taking a potentially dangeous detour to the checkpoint was really, really

good. https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/235104/Game_Design_Deep_Dive_The_save_system_of_Alien_Isolation.php

Edited January 29, 2020 by fbjim

[ickda]

On 1/29/2020 at 9:28 AM, fbjim said:

It's not about difficulty, it's about good game design. It's not that "save anywhere is bad", it's "the save system should be considered a game mechanic, unlike the Settings menu or something", and doing the latter is too often. And "Saving does not alter the gameplay at all" is completely wrong, and that's the whole point- unless you think playing Contra with emulator save states doesn't make it easier. 

 

I remember being part of a Dishonored thread on a forum, and we had to repeatedly tell people "stop quicksaving and quickloading every time you get spotted because of your precious Ghost bonus, and fight your way out of a bad situation instead" because people had so ingrained qs/ql into themselves that they were doing that, and shockingly they weren't having any fun. And guess what, when people stopped using quicksave and just played the game out when they got spotted, they started enjoying themselves more! But QS/QL (and pacifist/ghost being the default run for 'immersive sims') is so ingrained into people that a serious number of gamers were fucking their own enjoyment up by quickloading their way out of anything interesting. 

 

This is a good article about how saves can be specifically part of the game mechanics, and A:I's save system which included stuff like forcing you to choose between bee-lining toward the objective or taking a potentially dangeous detour to the checkpoint was really, really

good. https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/235104/Game_Design_Deep_Dive_The_save_system_of_Alien_Isolation.php

You do have a point, but that game {doom n64} is hard core, While I dont advocate save scumming, is it so bad to want to save after a hard section of the map?

[Nevander]

On 1/29/2020 at 1:05 AM, warman2012 said:

There's one map with a mandatory spike trap that's hard to get around and saving would have been a BIG help back then.

If you are referring to the blue key dart trap in Dark Citadel, I'm pretty sure they intended for you to use the invulnerability sphere outside to get it safely. You have just enough time to get in and get out.

 

Really the lack of saving in Doom 64 isn't that big of a deal. Most of the levels are short, and if you manage resources well you shouldn't ever run out of ammo or come close to dying. Hell, you can usually clear levels only taking damage from hitscanners.

 

The frame rate and ticrate of the N64 version also contribute to making things easier (ironically). The rest just comes down to memorizing the levels, spawn points and secrets.

Edited January 30, 2020 by Nevander

[Boaby Kenobi]

On 7/4/2016 at 6:15 PM, hardcore_gamer said:

Anyone else feels the lack of mid-game saves ruins the game's fun?

 

No, I think it adds to the tension when you can only save at the end of a level. Unless of course you didn't have the N64 memory cart, which a lot of people didn't at the time, so you would use the codes generated by the game. I think it makes the game scarier, knowing you can die at any point and will have to begin the level again.

[idbeholdME]

If you savescum/exploit quicksaving, you have only yourself to blame. People seem to be missing this part a lot. Want to play without saves? You still can even if you have the option of saving at any time.

 

Nothing is lost if you allow manual saving.  The same can't be said when you don't allow saving. You are removing options from players which is always a bad thing.

[Super Mighty G]

Savescumming rubs people the wrong way because you did something that made it easier for you while they did it the """right""" way. It's a single player game. Play how you want to play. Just don't play on a hard skill level then complain it's too hard. Only villains do that. 

[ickda]

Even when I save, I try to not save a lot, I like to save after a hard section, even if that option was limeted, and I could only save at the have way point, then that would be cool, I dont need to save 20 times, one or two times, depending on level. >_>