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68-463: In some games, a player can only use warps to travel to locations they have visited before. Because of this, a player has to make the journey by normal route at least once, but are not required to travel the same paths again if they need to revisit earlier areas in the game. Finding warp zones might become a natural goal of a gaming session, being used as a checkpoint . Though it is unclear which video game first made use of teleportation areas or devices,

136-418: A game save , savegame , savefile , save point , or simply save ) is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game . From the earliest games in the 1970s onward, game platform hardware and memory improved, which led to bigger and more complex computer games, which, in turn, tended to take more and more time to play them from start to finish. This naturally led to

204-465: A "restore point," which is like a quick save but has no restrictions on reloading. Although likely derived from quick saves, restore points are functionally identical to save states, and can be used for many of the same purposes. Game designers often attempt to integrate the save points into the style of the game using skeuomorphism . Resident Evil represents save points with old fashioned typewriters (which require an ink ribbon item for each save),

272-427: A cavalier attitude toward killing off characters; players were expected to have little emotional connection to their characters, though many allowed players to save their characters' progress. Few single-player RPGs exhibit death that is truly permanent, as most allow the player to load a previously saved game and continue from the stored position. The subgenre of roguelike games is an exception, where permadeath

340-400: A checkpoint on "death", resurrection of their character by a magic item or spell, or being able to load and restore a saved game state to avoid the death situation. The mechanic is frequently associated with both tabletop and computer-based role-playing games , and is considered an essential element of the roguelike genre of video games. The implementation of permadeath can vary depending on

408-511: A dead character, the penalty is relatively minor compared to being forced to create a new character. Therefore, the primary change permadeath creates is to make a player's decisions more significant; without it there is less incentive for the player to consider in-game actions seriously. Those seeking to risk permanent death feel that the more severe consequences heighten the sense of involvement and achievement derived from their characters. The increased risk renders acts of heroism and bravery within

476-432: A more realistic world, but a majority of players preferred not to risk permadeath for their characters. As a result, while they occasionally announce games that feature permadeath, most either remove or never ship with it so as to increase the game's mass appeal. Proponents of permadeath claim the risk gives additional significance to their in-game actions. While games without it often impose an in-game penalty for restoring

544-504: A new character. These games typically have rules to stave off this permadeath, such as through resurrection spells, since this would allow players to remain committed to their character. Although permadeath mechanic is primarily used for role-playing and rogue-like video games, both platform games made in Flash , You Only Live Once (2009) and One Chance (2010), has together been frequently cited in video game literature as an example of

612-446: A player saves the game. For instance, IGI 2 allows only a handful of saves in each mission; Max Payne 2 imposes this restriction on the highest level of difficulty. Some video games only allow the game to be saved at predetermined points in the game, called save points. (Not to be confused with " checkpoints ".) Save points are employed either because the game is too complex to allow saving at any given point or to attempt to make

680-405: A savegame with a loss condition used in this way is usually referred to as a "save state". Game saving does not need to be manual. Some video games save the game in progress automatically, such as after the pass of a fixed amount of time, at certain predetermined points in the game as an extension to the save point concept, or when the player exits. Some games only permit "suspend saves" in which

748-429: A server, or some combination thereof. Similarly, passwords have generally been rare at arcades, with occasional exceptions, such as Gauntlet Legends . Permadeath Permadeath or permanent death is a game mechanic in both tabletop games and video games in which player characters who lose all of their health are considered dead and cannot be used anymore. Depending on the situation, this could require

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816-567: A short period but later eliminated that functionality after other players targeted them. Even World of Warcraft has a following of players who call it the "Hardcore Challenge". Players who join this challenge use an addon in their game to track their combat. If their character ever dies, the rule is they must delete their character. Proponents attribute a number of reasons why others oppose permadeath. Some attribute tainted perceptions to poor early implementations. They also believe that confusion exists between " player killing " and permadeath, when

884-497: A strong narrative element frequently avoid permadeath. Permadeath of individual characters can be a factor in party -based tactical role-playing games like the games from the Fire Emblem Series. In these games, the player generally manages a roster of characters and controls their actions in turn-based battles while building their attributes, skills, and specializations over time. If these characters fall in combat,

952-485: Is save state hacking , the practice of which uses a hex editor to modify the save states to alter gameplay conditions, usually in favor of the player. Save states are comparable to snapshots of a computer system's state or hibernation in computing, with save states being a limited form of snapshots. Save states have started to receive mainstream usage in the early 2010s with Nintendo's Virtual Console. Some Wii U and 3DS Virtual Console titles allow players to save

1020-404: Is a form of a saved game in emulators . A save state is generated when the emulator stores the contents of random-access memory of an emulated program to disk. Save states enable players to save their games even when the emulated game or system does not support the feature. For instance, save states may be used to circumvent saving restrictions or as a savescumming technique. An associated concept

1088-498: Is a high-value factor. While players can save their state and continue at a later time, the save file is generally erased or overwritten, preventing players from restarting at that same state. They work around this by backing up save files, but this tactic, called " save scumming ", is considered cheating. The use of the permadeath mechanic in roguelikes arose from the namesake of the genre, Rogue . The developers initially did not implement save capabilities, requiring players to finish

1156-424: Is a mechanism to distinguish players, such as user accounts . Leaving the decision of when to save up to the player increases the likelihood that a save will be made during a less than favourable game state. A quicksave shortly before an event which kills the player creates what is known as a death loop. Passwords are a form of saved game not stored on non-volatile memory . Instead, everything needed to reconstruct

1224-564: Is available after finishing the main story. Saved games have generally been rare at arcades, but have found some use, notably in the Konami e-Amusement system, Bandai Namco 's Bandai Namco Passport, or Banapassport system, or by the use of PlayStation cards, as in Dance Dance Revolution . These generally use either a magnetic card to store the data, a card that stores data through network (internet) connection or through

1292-445: Is deleted and the game must be restarted. The term "perma-death" would come to refer to the concept used for that purpose. It is possible to cheat the system by copying and reusing suspend save files in an act of what is considered to be a form of savescumming. "Checkpoints" are locations in a video game where a player character respawns after death. Characters generally respawn at the last checkpoint that they have reached. A respawn

1360-632: Is little support in multiplayer culture for permadeath. Summarizing academic Richard Bartle 's comments on player distaste for permadeath, Engadget characterized fans of MMORPGs as horrified by the concept. For games that charge an ongoing fee to play, permadeath may drive players away, creating a financial disincentive to permadeath. Diablo II , Diablo III , Diablo IV , Minecraft , Terraria , and Torchlight II are mainstream exceptions that include support for an optional "hardcore" mode that subjects characters to permadeath. Star Wars Galaxies had permadeath for Jedi characters for

1428-444: Is most often due to the death of the in-game character, but it can also be caused by the failure to meet an objective required to advance in the game. Checkpoints might be temporary, as they stop working when the player loses their last life, completes or quits the level, especially in platform games. Most modern games, however, save the game to memory at these points, known as auto-saving . Checkpoints might be visible or invisible to

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1496-404: Is to use a deterministic, seeded pseudorandom number generator , so that undesired random outcomes cannot be avoided simply by saving and reloading. In this situation, when the player reloads a saved game, 'random' events will occur identically every time – the only way to get a different outcome is to play differently. Savescumming is made an in-built feature in most game emulators. In this case,

1564-490: The Grand Theft Auto series used representations appropriate to the era of the setting: cassette tapes for the mid-1980s ( Grand Theft Auto: Vice City ), 3½-inch disks for the early-1990s ( Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas ), and compact discs for the late-1990s ( Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories ). Although save points are typically seen as boons, some games have traps which use this tendency to fool

1632-557: The Super Cassette Vision was the first-ever game to allow saving game progress on a video game console, using an AA battery on the game cassette. In modern consoles, which use disks for storing games, saved games are stored in other ways, such as by use of memory cards or internal hard drives on the game machine itself. The use of memory cards for saving game data dates back to SNK 's cartridge-based Neo Geo arcade system and home console in 1990. Depending on

1700-573: The golden age of arcade video games did not save the player's progress towards completing the game, but rather high scores , custom settings, and other features. The first game to save the player's score was Taito 's seminal 1978 shoot 'em up title Space Invaders . The relative complexity and inconvenience of storing game state information on early home computers (and the fact that early video game consoles had no non-volatile data storage ) meant that initially game saves were represented as " passwords " (often strings of characters that encoded

1768-424: The "default fiction of real life", improved player immersion from more frequent character changes, and reinforcement of high level achievement. Bartle also believes that in the absence of permanent death, game creators must continually create new content for top players, which discourages those not at the top from even bothering to advance. Those players who prefer not to play with permadeath are unwilling to accept

1836-484: The Xbox 360, many players are beginning to view those who load other people's files onto their systems as "cheaters". Some games such as Grand Theft Auto IV attempt to prevent the use of saved games made by other users. In contrast, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages actively encourages players that have completed the game to share their progress with others via a password swapping side quest that

1904-456: The character is considered dead for the remainder of the game. It is possible to return to a previous save game state in these games before the death of the character, but require the player to invest more time in order to repeat the battle and continue, risking the loss of the same or other characters. Square 's 1986 fantasy shoot 'em up game King's Knight featured four characters, each of which had to clear their own level before rejoining

1972-413: The character save game is managed by the server. The use of saved games is very common in modern video games, particularly in role-playing video games , which are usually much too long to finish in a single session. In early video games , there was no need for saving games, since these games usually had no actual plot to develop and were generally very short in length. Classic arcade video games from

2040-452: The death of a character more impact. When developers added the ability to replay a failed level, games become more complex to compensate, and stronger narratives were added, which focused on progressing characters through a linear story without repeated restarts. Inspired by the dungeon crawls in the first wave of Dungeons & Dragons adventures, early role-playing video games on home computers often lacked much narrative content and had

2108-522: The desire to test their skill or understanding of the game's mechanics, or out of boredom with standard game design. When their actions have repercussions, they must make more strategic and tactical decisions. At the same time, games using permadeath may encourage players to rely on emotional, intuitive or other non-deductive decision-making as they attempt, with less information, to minimize the risk to characters which they have bonded with. Games using permadeath more closely simulate real life, though games with

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2176-421: The element has been traced back to MUDs , where it allowed connected rooms to not be "topologically correct" if necessary. A predecessor appears in the board game Cluedo (1949), where secret passages connect the rooms in the corner of the floorplan to each other. While developing his game Crystal Castles (1983), Franz Lanzinger watched people play Tempest and having to take long periods of time to get to

2244-412: The feature has developed over the years from being the only kind of save system per game to the more modern 'suspend game' feature among regular save points. For online games, the game's progress is maintained on the remote server. In some games, upon resuming the game from a save game, the software locks or marks the save game. Early examples include Moria and Diablo II 's "hardcore" mode where

2312-411: The frustration associated with permanent death. More hardcore implementations delete all progress made. In some games, permadeath is an optional mode or feature of higher difficulty levels. Extreme forms may further punish players, such as The Castle Doctrine , which has the option of permanently banning users from servers upon death. Players may prefer to play games with permadeath for the excitement,

2380-456: The game a particular feel or alter its difficulty. A video game may allow the user to save at any point of the game at any time. There are also modified versions of this. For example, in the GameCube game Eternal Darkness , the player can save at almost any time, but only if no enemies are in the room. To make gaming more engaging, some video games may impose a limit on the number of times

2448-417: The game again. If the outcome is red (or green), the player disregards this outcome by reloading their last savegame. This allows for an indefinite winning streak. Game programmers may defend against savescumming by various means, such as checking timestamps. For example, on multiuser Unix systems, NetHack uses setgid to prevent users from copying save files into the necessary directory. Another technique

2516-565: The game in one session. When they added a save feature, they found that players would repeatedly reload a save file to obtain the best results, which was contrary to the game design—they "wanted [realism]"—so they implemented code to delete the save file on reloading. This feature is retained in nearly all derivatives of Rogue and other games more loosely inspired by its gameplay. Implementations of permadeath may vary widely. Casual forms of permanent death may allow players to retain money or items while introducing repercussions for failure, reducing

2584-405: The game is automatically saved upon exiting and reloaded upon restarting. The aim of a suspend save is only to allow the gameplay to be temporarily interrupted; as such, suspend saves are erased when the player resumes the game. This concept was popularized by Rogue and the namesake genre , which are known for employing the mechanic such that if the player were to die in the game, their save file

2652-404: The game more challenging by forcing the player to rely on their skills instead of on the ability to retry indefinitely. Save points are easier to program and thus attractive from a development standpoint. Some games use a hybrid system where both save anywhere and save points are used. For example, Final Fantasy VII permits saving anywhere when the player is traveling on the world map, but once

2720-451: The game quicker" as well as act as a reward to allow to the player to access certain areas. Despite the linear simplicity of Super Mario Bros. , the game has been described as having a "surprising amount of depth and spatial complexity" in part due to secret warp zones found through the game. Portal is a critically acclaimed game that uses warps as its core gameplay mechanic. Saved game#Checkpoints A saved game (also called

2788-400: The game state is encoded in and displayed on-screen as a string of text, usually comprising random alphanumeric characters, and the player can then record or memorize it. The player may later resume play from that point by entering the same password. Passwords were widely used by home console games before the advent of non-volatile memory and later internal and external storage. A "save state"

Warp (video games) - Misplaced Pages Continue

2856-491: The game state) that players could write down and later input into the game when resuming. BYTE magazine stated in 1981, regarding the computer text adventure Zork I ' s save-game feature, that "while some cowards use it to retain their hard-earned position in the game before making some dangerous move", it was intended to let players play over many weeks. InfoWorld disagreed that year, stating that save games "allow users to experiment with different approaches to

2924-487: The game will not want to spend time playing through them again in the hope of reaching others to which they previously had access. Players may dislike the way that permadeath causes others to be more wary than they would in regular games, reducing the heroic atmosphere that games seek to provide. Ultimately this can reduce play to slow, repetitive, low-risk play, commonly called " grinding ". Most MMORPGs do not allow character creation at an arbitrary experience level , even if

2992-402: The game, a player will have the ability to save the game either at any arbitrary point (usually when the game has been paused), after a specific task has been completed (such as at the end of a level), or at designated areas within the game known as save points. The available ways to save a game affect gameplay, and can represent a practice of players or an explicit decision by designers to give

3060-497: The game. Author Luke Cuddy states that warps are used to keep the players entertained by "allowing them to jump to the next gameplay goal, straight into the action." However, he has also criticized them for robbing the player of the sensation of "being in" a virtual world, stating that "[b]y emphasizing destination over the places in between, warping encourages a 'quick visit, move-on-to-the-next-place' mentality that frames space as disposable." Warps discourage exploration and may weaken

3128-492: The game. For many years, sharing game saves among friends has been very common. From trading passwords to swapping memory cards, gamers have always been able to help each other out to unlock features in a game. With the growing popularity of the Internet, many people upload their game saves to help out their online friends. However, with the inclusion of a progress meter or " gamerscore " that tracks player progress in games for

3196-528: The games made this feature optional, as do franchises such as the Fire Emblem , Shenmue and .hack series. Video games may also take the saved games of other video games into account; for example, the character Rosalina becomes available on Mario Kart Wii if there is a Super Mario Galaxy save on the console. The save game of Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition can be imported to the Remix version of

3264-493: The gameworld significant; the player has risked a much larger investment of time. Without permadeath, such actions are "small actions". However, in an online game, permadeath generally means starting over from the beginning, isolating the player of the now-dead character from former comrades. Richard Bartle described advantages of permanent death: restriction of early adopters from permanently held positions of power, content reuse as players repeat early sections, its embodiment of

3332-465: The level of play they wanted to be at. This inspired Lanzinger to include warps in Crystal Castles , to let advanced players get to the more difficult stages early and to keep game time low for more income on a coin-op arcade game . The element was later popularized by Super Mario Bros. , in which secret areas referred to within the game as warp zones allowed players to skip forward through

3400-477: The loss of progress in the game (as might happen after a game over). Games designed this way encourage players to 'try things out', and on regretting a choice, continue from an earlier point on. Although the feature of save games often allows for gameplay to resume after a game over, a notable exception is in games where save games are deleted when it is game over. Several names are used to describe this feature, including " permadeath ", "iron man", and "hardcore", and

3468-426: The need to store in some way the progress, and how to handle the case where the player received a " game over ". More modern games with a heavier emphasis on storytelling are designed to allow the player many choices that impact the story in a profound way later on, and some game designers do not want to allow more than one save game so that the experience will always be "fresh". Game designers allow players to prevent

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3536-484: The other hand, a 2009 paper by Alison Gazzard from the University of Hertfordshire provides some advantages of warps. Gazzard points that warps can be used to create puzzles and Easter eggs , saying that warps allow the player to "move through spaces in a way not possible in the real world, and discover ‘magical’ ways of traveling through the gamespace." Gazzard points out that warps make "travel from different parts of

3604-442: The others. If one of them died, they were lost permanently. Permadeath in multiplayer video games is controversial. Due to player desires and the resulting market forces involved, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (such as World of Warcraft ) and other multiplayer-focused RPGs rarely implement it nowadays - despite permadeath being a key component of early virtual worlds such as MUD1 . Generally speaking, there

3672-439: The player enters a location (e.g. town, cavern or forest), saving is only possible at save points. Overusing saved games may be seen as unfair and in such a context is referred to as "savescumming". Savescumming makes losing a game impossible because whenever the player loses or is about to lose, a savegame is loaded, effectively turning back time to the situation before the loss. In a video game, this could for example be done when

3740-563: The player has already achieved that level with a now-dead character, providing a powerful disincentive for permadeath. Permadeath guilds may exist in multiplayer games without this feature. Players voluntarily delete their characters based on the honor system. Permadeath can be used as a mechanic in tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons . In these games, players create their own characters and level through campaigns, but these characters can be permanently killed in more difficult encounters, which would force players to recreate

3808-411: The player loses a battle/race, misses the best performance grading for a level (such as an S-rank ) or runs into an unwinnable situation by losing anyone or anything needed to continue and win. For example, in a game that features a casino, the player could save the game and then bet all their in-game money on black at a roulette table. If the outcome is black, their money is doubled and the player saves

3876-403: The player must find and expend an ink ribbon for each save. In some games, save games or save points are part of the plot. In Chrono Cross , save points are called Records of Fate, managed by an entity called FATE, an antagonist that uses the save points to control people. In Anonymous;Code , the protagonist Pollon Takaoka has a unique ability to save and load save games, which is central to

3944-421: The player to create a new character to continue, or completely restart the game potentially losing nearly all progress made. Other terms include persona death and player death . Some video games offer a hardcore mode that features this mechanic, rather than making it part of the core game. Permadeath contrasts with games that allow the player to continue in some manner, such as their character respawning at

4012-415: The player would lose all of their checkpoints. Quick-saving and quick-loading allow the player to save or load the game with a single keystroke. These terms are used to differentiate between the traditional saving mechanism where the player is required to invoke a menu or dialog box, issue save the order, specify a title for the game being saved and, if applicable, confirm whether an old saved game file with

4080-449: The player's knowledge of spatial relationships. Ernest Adams critiques possible unexpected behavior by warp zones: "Teleporters can further complicate matters by not always working the same way, teleporting the player to one place the first time they are used, but to somewhere else the second time, and so on. They can also be one-way or two-way, teleporting players somewhere with no way to get back, or allowing them to teleport again." On

4148-554: The player. In Chrono Trigger , attempting to use a fake save point in Magus's castle can actually bring the party into battle. Some games employ limits to saving in order to prevent players from using them as a primary means of succeeding in the game. In Tomb Raider save points are consumed upon use, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest charges two banana coins to use a save point more than once, and in Resident Evil

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4216-399: The player. Visible checkpoints might give a player a sense of security when activated, but in turn sacrifice some immersion , as checkpoints are intrinsically "gamey" and might even need an explanation of how they work. Invisible checkpoints do not break immersion but make players unsure of where they will respawn. Usually, if a player does get a game over, then their progress will be lost, and

4284-482: The plot and the main game mechanic. Another way saved games interact with each other is through passing along data to sequels. A famous example of this is the first three installments of the Wizardry series. To play the second and third installments, players needed to import the characters they'd used in the previous installment, which retained all experience and equipment gained in that installment. Later versions of

4352-444: The risk of the large penalties associated with it. The penalty often means a great deal of time spent to regain lost levels, power, influence, or emotional investment that the previous character possessed. This increased investment of time can dissuade non-hardcore players. Depending on the design of the game, this may involve playing through content that the player has already experienced. Players no longer interested in those aspects of

4420-428: The same situation". Home computers in the early 1980s had the advantage of using external media for saving, with compact cassettes and floppy disks , before finally using internal hard drives . For later cartridge -based console games , such as The Legend of Zelda and Kirby's Adventure , saved games were stored in battery-backed random-access memory on the game cartridge itself. Pop and Chips (1985) for

4488-452: The same title should be overwritten. The term "quick save" may be used in video games that lack the traditional saving mechanism altogether. The advantage of quick saving is its low burden: The player only has to press a button and, if applicable, wait a few seconds. The disadvantage is the automatic loss of the previous quick-saved game. Games that only offer quick saving may be impossible to play by two different players (or more) unless there

4556-466: The two do not need to be used together. Proponents also believe that players initially exposed to games without permadeath consider new games from that point of view. Those players are attributed as eventually "maturing", to a level of accepting permadeath, but only for other players' characters. The majority of MMORPG players are unwilling to accept the penalty of losing their characters. MMORPGs have experimented with permadeath in an attempt to simulate

4624-480: The type of game. Permadeath was common in the golden age of arcade video games . Most arcade games (such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man ) feature permanent death as a mechanic by default because they lack the technical ability to save the game state. Early home gaming mimicked this gameplay, including a simulation of entering coins to continue playing. As home computers and game consoles became more popular, games evolved to have less abstract protagonists, giving

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