Does anyone know when save game feature is coming?

[SharpeXB]

6 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Funny to find @SharpeXB on the other side for once.

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Well it was mine to begin with

 

[MAXsenna]

Well it was mine to begin with
 

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[goot66]

Everyone keeps saying building a save game feature is very complex given number of different permutations and combinations of events

why has for example F1 202X games or Madden games allowed for saves mid game ever since i can remember

same argument can be made there and those games do it fine............

[Gunfreak]

6 hours ago, goot66 said:

Everyone keeps saying building a save game feature is very complex given number of different permutations and combinations of events

why has for example F1 202X games or Madden games allowed for saves mid game ever since i can remember

same argument can be made there and those games do it fine............

Absolutely not. Both take place on small areas with limited number of units. Madden is very simple game. While in F1, it's the cars that are complex. But still few in numbers. 

Compare that to hundreds of complex aircraft. Over vast areas(destructable areas) that can fire hundreds of missiles and fire tens of thousands of bullets.  And that just some of the stuff a DCS save had to keep track of.

Some simple humans on a 100 meter field is nothing to that. Nor is 2 dozen cars on a small track.

[draconus]

Number of units has nothing to do with this. It only affects save time and file size. It's just object data state that's already in memory.

The implementation problem gets complex when you have scripts, tasks and other loops already running, esp. when it wasn't planned for earlier. Yes, it can be done - just takes will, time and money - like all coding.

[cfrag]

10 hours ago, goot66 said:

same argument can be made there and those games do it fine............

If an application was designed and built with a specific ability in mind, adding that ability later is often manageable.

If you are looking at a hodgepodge of inherited, aging (we're talking 1990's vintage here) organically evolved code that wasn't engineered with some state saving mechanism at all, adding a save feature is going to be hell. Any loop that is running, any event that is scheduled, any animation or sequence that is running must be stopped, saved, then read back into memory and set so it can resume correctly at the point that it was stopped. DCS can't even do that with the weather, much less units or (god forbit) player planes (plural, as it is multiplayer capable). Some of DCS's code is from last millennium. Saving an application state wasn't new territory then, but it is quite obvious that DCS was never designed with state saving in mind. This is going to be a tough nut to crack. Not impossible, but it is going to be painful.

[SharpeXB]

It’s a simple situation that if devs perceived this as something their customers wanted, it would happen. What’s puzzling is why that hasn’t happened until now. It’s not an outlandish feature, all other software and games do this. DCS is maybe different to a degree but it’s still just software. Yes it takes work to create but without this functionality the product is nearly useless. I certainly hope this arrives along with the Dynamic Campaign otherwise that will be rather unapproachable for many players.

I hope ED has come to the realization that the lack of this feature puts a bottleneck on the pace that players can consume the content they are trying to sell. Adding this would directly increase their sales. For myself I can’t justify buying any more modules or maps or campaigns because I’m stuck in maybe three different DLC campaigns which I can only proceed through when I rarely have the time for them. Any other game allows me to squeeze it into my life in short sessions. EDs own data shows them that 90% of their players are SP and most game sessions are about 20 minutes, just like every other game. I’m sure they’ve reached the logical conclusion here.

[BIGNEWY]

As mentioned already, the save feature is in progress, once it is ready we will let you all know

 

[draconus]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Yes it takes work to create but without this functionality the product is nearly useless.

You didn't think much about what you've said, did you? 15 years of DCS growing and success without the feature tells me it's just very minor inconvenience.

Edited July 24, 2024 by draconus

[SharpeXB]

30 minutes ago, draconus said:

You didn't think much about what you've said, did you? 15 years of DCS growing and success without the feature tells me it's just very minor inconvenience.

Well 15 years of growing in spite of lacking an important feature. Go figure how much this will increase the appeal of the game. Again it’s a direct bottleneck on the customers consuming its content. And I get the impression DCS struggles more than succeeds.

And DCS still sorely lacks an engaging and dynamic SP game despite that being 90% of the players. Hence the upcoming Dynamic Campaign. That game mode will be really pointless though without a save feature. I sorta assume these are arriving together. 

Edited July 24, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Gunfreak]

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Well 15 years of growing in spite of lacking an important feature. Go figure how much this will increase the appeal of the game. Again it’s a direct bottleneck on the customers consuming its content. And I get the impression DCS struggles more than succeeds.

And DCS still sorely lacks an engaging and dynamic SP game despite that being 90% of the players. Hence the upcoming Dynamic Campaign. That game mode will be really pointless though without a save feature. I sorta assume these are arriving together. 

 

I've never heard anyone say. They don't play DCS because of lack of save feature.

The usual reasons are,

1. Expensive, both the module themselves and/or hardware equipment 

2. Overly complex 

3. Doesn't have the aircraft they want.

As well as various silly reasons like it's a Russian company, or they are evil in one way or another.

Never seen anyone say lack of save game feature is stopping them from playing DCS.

[SharpeXB]

10 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

Never seen anyone say lack of save game feature is stopping them from playing DCS.

Common sense should tell you this is an obstacle for anyone with a life outside of playing video games.

It’s not necessary to keep justifying the feature. It’s coming. 

Edited July 24, 2024 by SharpeXB

[SharpeXB]

32 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

The usual reasons are,

1. Expensive, both the module themselves and/or hardware equipment 

2. Overly complex 

But really what this means is they don’t feel the game is worth the cost or effort. If you spend all this money on gear or the time to learn these aircraft, what do you get to do with them in the game? Fly shallow quick missions over and over again? Play a DLC campaign you might only have time for once a week?
Right now it’s very hard to find something worthwhile to do that rewards all that effort. A really solid SP campaign is the only thing you can do in DCS that really makes use of all there is to do with these modules. And there has to be a game mode that you can do in the short sessions most anyone actually has for games and yet still have some purpose. If you ask me this is why flight sim games are so niche. People don’t feel the gameplay is worth the effort. It’s not that they’re difficult, there are plenty of difficult games. It’s not cause they require joysticks, plenty of popular games like racing have special controllers. All those other games will fit into someone’s life though. They don’t require hour plus long sessions online or lengthy games that can’t save your progress. No other game is like this. It’s very surprising how long it’s taken to come to this realization. 

Edited July 24, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Gunfreak]

17 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Common sense should tell you this is an obstacle for anyone with a life outside of playing video games.

It’s not necessary to keep justifying the feature. It’s coming. 

 

It's an obstacle for those that has already invented lots of time to get into the game. New DCS players have way too many other things to get into an learn. To even think about "does this game have a save feature " it's way way down on the list of important things for new players.

DCS will be better with a save feature, which is why they are adding it.

But you make it sound like.

1. It's super easy to add

2. It's incredibly important.

It's none of those things. It's one of many things that will improve DCS when it comes. But has very little effect on getting new players into DCS or keeping old players playing. It a quality of life feature.

[SharpeXB]

4 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

1. It's super easy to add

2. It's incredibly important.

None of us know how easy or not it is. From a customers perspective it seems like the easiest and most necessary thing for any game to do. You don’t see any other games out there without it. And compared to all the other things DCS does, yes it seems like the easiest thing to do which would have the most beneficial impact on the game. 

Edited July 24, 2024 by SharpeXB

[Gunfreak]

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

But really what this means is they don’t feel the game is worth the cost or effort. If you spend all this money on gear or the time to learn these aircraft, what do you get to do with them in the game? Fly shallow quick missions over and over again? Play a DLC campaign you might only have time for once a week?
Right now it’s very hard to find something worthwhile to do that rewards all that effort. A really solid SP campaign is the only thing you can do in DCS that really makes use of all there is to do with these modules. And there has to be a game mode that you can do in the short sessions most anyone actually has for games and yet still have some purpose. If you ask me this is why flight sim games are so niche. People don’t feel the gameplay is worth the effort. It’s not that they’re difficult, there are plenty of difficult games. It’s not cause they require joysticks, plenty of popular games like racing have special controllers. All those other games though will fit into someone life. They don’t require hour plus long sessions online or lengthy games that can’t save your progress. No other game is like this. It’s very surprising how long it’s taken to come to this realization. 

See my previous reply.

Nobody decides to play or not play DCS because of a save game feature.

If they think modules are to expensive, they simply don't play DCS.

If they think the game is too complex they simply won't play DCS. If they start to play DCS, then mabye after several months to several years they'll miss a saved game feature. But it won't stop them playing.

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

None of us know how easy or not it is. From a customers perspective it seems like the easiest and most necessary thing for any game to do. You don’t see any other games out there without it. 

We've already gone though several games that don't have it, including the majority of Flight sims.

It's obviously not the easiest or most necessary since DCS and other flight sims are doing fine without it.

If it was easy ED would have added it long ago.

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, Gunfreak said:

Nobody decides to play or not play DCS because of a save game feature.

How do you know that? All I know from EDs own communication is 90% of the players are SP and most of that is in short sessions. That sure points towards this being a needed feature. And look, here it comes. And a Dynamic Campaign would be totally unapproachable without this so with all the work that they’ve put into that I’m sure they want people actually playing it. 

[MAXsenna]

All of you have valid points. Probably not easy to implement. It's coming, one of the must requested features after all, up there with a certain requested feature Sharpy strongly oppose. In this case I believe he has a very strong point. Might not be important for getting new players to DCS, while I'm very sure would keep more of them here. I do believe though, that this features clobbers two birds with one stone. Save feature = perfect tracks. Now, many couldn't care less about a save feature, but imagine the possibilities learning tactics, case I, landings and what not, with just rewinding a few seconds. And for you Gunnyboy. Imagine all the cool videos you can make.

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[MadKreator]

I definitely fall into the category that would like to be able to save. Although most of my DCS time is just fooling around, not being able to save is a big reason that I have a giant list of campaigns I‘ve bought or downloaded and the farthest one along is on mission 6. I just don’t always have time in a single sitting. If I could go along for 30 or 40 minutes then save where I’m at, or if It would auto save and I could hop back to retry a part instead of an hour( or whatever it is) to get back to the same point, it would be magnificent. It will be crucial for the Dynamic Campaign I would think…. If the DC ever comes.. just kidding…maybe…

Edited July 25, 2024 by MadKreator

[Ironhand]

It’ll be nice to get this back. ED gave it to us once over a decade or two ago. But, then, it was removed. People were complaining that it was a cheat.

Edited July 26, 2024 by Ironhand

[SharpeXB]

26 minutes ago, Ironhand said:

People were complaining that it was a cheat.

Seriously?

Hey it’s up to you in SP to make the game as challenging on yourself as you like. There are some campaigns where I think the goal of completing a mission without a save point could be intended. The Maple Flag qualification course comes to mind. I liked the idea of having to do this fully challenging mission like nighttime AAR followed by a divert to an ILS landing then if you miss an item on the shutdown checklist you fail. Cool. I’m up for that sometimes. Or a campaign in another sim which was Dead-is-Dead, there was no restart, your whole career campaign ended if you died. 
But hey it’s up to you. There could be some creative leeway for the mission designer here, options like saving at waypoints or save as will or none. But you do have to keep your audience in mind. Not everyone is up for that.

Personally in gaming I like the idea of an enforced challenge. Being able to literally qsave your way through an entire mission is a letdown. Perhaps you get the option of choosing a save scheme before starting the mission. But that’s up to the creator. 

[Ironhand]

My preference would be the ability to save anytime you want but that’s me. “Saving” is a great learning tool as in “how could I have done that better?” The benefit would be that you restart with the same parameters each time. It also helps in testing for the same reason.

[cfrag]

17 hours ago, Ironhand said:

My preference would be the ability to save anytime you want but that’s me. “Saving” is a great learning tool

Indeed. Just think about setting your plane up for a good carrier approach and hit save. Then, publish this save (and similar setups) for other people as a starting point for their lessons. Since you can't setup a plane (e.g. avionics, radio, state of the carrier etc.) in Mission Editor, this can create incredibly valuable training missions. I believe that a good save game feature can exponentially increase the versatility of DCS as a training tool.

[draconus]

39 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Since you can't setup a plane (e.g. avionics, radio,

You can set these within ME and x:set command.

[Jayhawk1971]

Forgive me if I bump this thread to the top, but I too would like to emphasize the need for a save-game feature, at least until the AI has been improved to a point where your own wingmen are no longer the most dangerous aspect of a mission.

Yesterday I flew mission 8 of @Reflected's most excellent "Arctic Thunder" campaign (highly recommended if you love the Viper), and my own wingman crashed into me while RTB-ing, taking us both out.

Now, when it happened I already spent 1 hour and 50 minutes in that cockpit, with another 25 minutes to go. With a saved game file (even only one!) I could have re-flown the last part of the mission. I do not fancy to re-fly the whole thing again only to experience the last 25 minutes of RTB and landing.

So I'm definitely a proponent of a save game feature to make very long SP missions more manageable. Those who don't like this don't have to use it.

Edited December 18, 2024 by Jayhawk1971