Ironman/Permadeath save system

[niconosave]

there's a problem in morrowind (and most non tabletop rpgs) and that's the save system, going up to NPCs and spamming taunts or admiration then reloading saves until one can brute-force one's way through the games systems breaks the game a little, I tried to find out if this can be done with modding but it seems that lua script can save load and delete saves, but what it can't do is stop the player from saving.

could that be added to the the API? or maybe even to openmw, on the launcher configuration? or maybe I just missed something.

[Chris]

I don't see why such a thing is needed. If you don't want to reload after failure, then don't. You're not forced to reload after failing something, nor are you forced to keep playing after you die. And if you decide you want to later on, then you shouldn't be prevented from doing so.

Preventing the player from making saves sounds like a bad idea all around, since you'll want to be able to save as needed if you need to leave the game (adult responsibilities can be a pain), and you'll want backup saves in case of a bug, crash, power outage, or anything else that unexpectedly prevents continued play. Even if you're playing dead-is-dead, you'll want saves to go back to before the problem started. The more saves you have, the more likely you'll be able to go back to before the problem started with a minimal amount of redoing what you already did.

[niconosave]

I don't see why such a thing is needed. If you don't want to reload after failure, then don't. You're not forced to reload after failing something, nor are you forced to keep playing after you die. And if you decide you want to later on, then you shouldn't be prevented from doing so.

Preventing the player from making saves sounds like a bad idea all around, since you'll want to be able to save as needed if you need to leave the game (adult responsibilities can be a pain), and you'll want backup saves in case of a bug, crash, power outage, or anything else that unexpectedly prevents continued play. Even if you're playing dead-is-dead, you'll want saves to go back to before the problem started. The more saves you have, the more likely you'll be able to go back to before the problem started with a minimal amount of redoing what you already did.

if that's reason enough not to implement something, then why does the openmw API have method for deleting save games? just delete them yourself manually! XD, I have done the autodidact permadeath thing, but sooner or later something happens and I come up with some excuse to alt+F4 out of the game to try and cheat, that's the reason I want the functionality. There're plenty of games out there that offer permadeath and plenty of communities that play them for the explicit reason that they have that.
And besides it doesn't have to be full permadeath, you could have just a maximum of one or three saves, that do not get deleted when you die but instead force you to not spam save every two minutes and take a damn risk, or have it to only save when you rest, and best of all, you can have some characters be permadeath and others not be, so when I'm playing with the one it blocks me from saving but not with the other, or just change the save button for save & quit.
and besides, what is your loss if I wanna play with that? with the functionality there is right now I could make a mod with lua that just deletes all saves for one character and then saves with the one "official permadeath" save, I just thought it'd look very bad if the mod went deleting saves behind the players back as oppose to doing the polite thing and inform them before they try, that's all. It'd look like a hack-job without it.

Preventing the player from making saves sounds like a bad idea all around, since you'll want to be able to save as needed if you need to leave the game (adult responsibilities can be a pain), and you'll want backup saves in case of a bug, crash, power outage, or anything else that unexpectedly prevents continued play.

this is nonsense, permadeath games do have saves, they have one save per character, you can quit the game and come back later, and the game would save, it'd save constantly in case the lights go out, and you can also just alt+tab and go copy the file for backup. but all of those little hoops make it harder to cheese one's way through the game, and they make the threat of failure that much more thrilling. otherwise I just have 100 relations with all merchants in town.

[psi29a]

if that's reason enough not to implement something, then why does the openmw API have method for deleting save games? just delete them yourself manually!

Nothing preventing you from making a Ironman Morrowind Mod? Don't let your dreams be dreams.

[niconosave]

if that's reason enough not to implement something, then why does the openmw API have method for deleting save games? just delete them yourself manually!

Nothing preventing you from making a Ironman Morrowind Mod? Don't let your dreams be dreams.

there's only one thing missing, and that's stopping the player from saving. It'd look real bad is the player made a bunch of saves, then quit the game and then next time goes to load them and finds out they're not there anymore, because the ironman script deleted them, but it never told the player! it's just a hacky bad look.

[psi29a]

One would think that people would actually read what "Ironman Morrowind Mod" does then? I mean, it shouldn't be a surprise.

[niconosave]

One would think that people would actually read what "Ironman Morrowind Mod" does then? I mean, it shouldn't be a surprise.

I have downloaded hundreds of mods, I skimmed most of their descriptions, and skimmed one or two readmes, If I downloaded a mod called "Ironman morrowind" I'd expect it to change the save button to "save & exit" like most games of that kind, or gray the button out.
And what you point out just explains the general idea to the player, it doesn't make it obvious everything that the mod does, specially if it does it behind the players back, I have downloaded a few survival mods and spent some time running around wondering if the thing was working properly, if something that happened was intended or a bug, or just failing to find some feature or item that was mentioned in the description.
it's a weird thing to allow me to save the game only to delete it later, even if I added some textbox, it'd look like some hacky ducktaped improvised job. if openmw does have the functionality to edit and delete saves, what would that be used for if not for something like this? some sort of autosave maybe, most things that come to mind would in some way mess with how you save the game.

[psi29a]

There is something to be said that we allow deleting of saves, but not the ability to prevent saving.

I'd ask for a Lua feature request over here: https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw/-/issues

"Saving has been disabled by this mod: Ironman Morrowind Mod"



Tricky part would be save on exit, we'd have to hook into menu and trigger this before the teardown.