Save Game Organisation

ScotGaymer

Hey folks.

Just joined here following a link in my/the Baldur'sGate.com thread on the BSN cos I was curious/nosey; and a thought occurred to me about one of the things that annoys me about BG and BG2 that i can't see if anyone else has brought up.

That is as evidenced by the Title, the organisation of save games/files.

Basically in the old game the save games are all sort of just dumped into the save folder without any organisation, and you can end up with a severely clutterred folder and save game screen in game.
It isn't as much of a problem with only one playthru unless you are a compulsive saver using multiple save slots, as well as auto and quick save slots; but after you start playing another playthru (I did 2 in BG1 and 3 in BG2) the screen gets really very clutterred up and it wouldn't be the first time I accidentally loaded the wrong game, or worse saved over the wrong file slot.

So I was wondering if some consideration can be given to this for BGEE so that save files are organised by character by default?

That's all really... Thanks.

stephanmartins

I second that. I for one love multiple playthroughs.

Ward

I only ever use three slots. One for autosave, one for quicksave and an extra one in case I do something wrong.

But if you're multiplaying (a beautiful thing I've never had the honour of doing before), then you need more.

Drugar

Agreed.

I've always enjoyed the way the more recent Bioware game have done this (They do something right? Oh yes!)
When you load/save a game, you're only seeing the savegames for your current or most recent character. When you want to load a game, you can click "switch character" and get a list of the characters you've played. Pick one, see list of seperate savegames.
It is probably a lot of work (considering the current interface, it is a radical change) but it would be a nice bonus if this were possible.

ScotGaymer

Yeah I mean, it wouldn't be the first time i'd accidentally saved over the wrong save file for another character when starting a new character. Fortunately I had a quick save from right before my manual save and was thus able to load that and re-save the manual save.
I know it's a bit pedantic but i wanted to hold onto my completed saves.

caruga

My rule for non-gameplay related things is: when in doubt, steal from Dragon Age.

ScotGaymer

I hope one of the Devs has seen this, and decided to go with it lol.

Elys

Oh yeah I agree. That would be nice.

I always prefixed each BG savegame name with the related character name. I also usually cycled between 3 savegames per character (not counting Autosave and Quicksave). All of this helped to mitigate a savegame catastrophe.

Cadros

I've never really had a problem with this, but if done I would like the character save selection screen to have the name and portrait there, not just the name like some games, just a personal preference though.

ChurchOfBoo

Why not make it a time-machine style thing. You could just play and then re-wind to any point that you had played up until then.

ScotGaymer

What do you mean time machine style? What?

ChurchOfBoo

Well, with time machine on a Mac, you can rewind your system or any individual file to any previous time and have everything restored. So basically if you got killed in BG, you could rewind to the beginning of the battle (or any point in the battle) or the beginning of the chapter, or the last time you were buying supplies etc. That would prevent you from having to continually save and organize save games (which can get tedious if you are a cautious player like me)

ScotGaymer

I see.

Don't know if they would be able to code that in a game tho?

Lunever

I would like to have a config option, that allows me to set the number of auto-save slots that will be kept.

ChurchOfBoo

Maybe something like an option to reload from the past 5, 10, 15 minutes of gameplay? I suppose the game would have to be incrementally saving all the time...