I just cleared floor 5, just about, for the first time ever. I found a monster zoo, and had just about finished conquering that - probably 10% of the floor left to sweep afterwards. As I killed the last few monsters, the game suddenly CTD'd with no error. Praying that there was an autosave, I ran the game and looked - there was. However, to my dismay, the screenshot informed me that the last autosave was the last time I transitioned from floor 4 to floor 5 - THIS MADE ME MAD. I don't want to do an entire floor again with the same layout and the same monsters and the same items - I already did this. I may well just start over, losing dozens of hours, over this. It makes no sense for this to be the only triggering event for a save... Why is this in suggestions? This whole situation could have been avoided with autosaves - real ones, that happen every X minutes, preferably user-toggleable and user-configurable. This is a very basic, and very important feature that we need. Worth noting that I play on permadeath - IMO how any rogue-like should be played - so I imagine this issue may not effect the "normal" players. There should also be a button to save without quitting, even in permadeath, just to ensure progress is saved, not to allow "cheating" the system (if we cared to cheat the system we'd just play non-permadeath, anyway).
I agree with the idea. Regarding your random crash though, it should have generated a .dmp file (in the game folder). If so can you send it to contact@gaslampgames.com? Seeing as random crashes are not a feature it would help
Play on non-permadeath but impose permadeath rules on yourself. You get the satisfaction of a well deserved win plus the assurance of regular saves after key events. It's the only way I play, especially given Dredmor's history of 'stability'.
Do autosaves happen before or after you go down the stairs? If it's before, then the level will be randomly generated from scratch when you go down for the first time after reloading the autosave, if it makes you feel any better.
That's the reason why I save every 5-10 minutes nowadays. I can't trust the auto-save feature. Also, this game really needs a "Quit without saving" button.
There is one, you even get an achievement by doing it the first time or, you could just kill the game-process.
This is true, and really useful, if you figure that out. But to be honest I don't think most people playing with permadeath want to try pressing alt+F4 in the middle of a game, and I don't think that this was mentioned in any tutorials or in-game documentation either (I could be wrong there). A more obvious way to quicksave when you're playing with permadeath isn't too unreasonable to ask for imo. I'd prefer that to periodic auto-saves, but either one would be useful.
The real key to what I'm talking about here vs. non-permadeath is that you don't get the option to quick-load or load previous states. I looked when I was posting the OP - it did not. The only .dmp file was from July when the game came out (and was buggier). :/ Saves before, but I'd poked down the stairs a few times before the last autosave.
This is, indeed, a problem. Just crashed around lvl 5-6 and had the only autosave at the very beginning of level 2. Permadeath has me rerolling often enough without this!
I am so glad for that timed autosave. Thank you guys for adding that. I'm curious. This game has Permadeath and not Permadeath, and 3 difficulties. One could argue that Permadeath is the forth difficulty, couldn't they?
Well, permadeath doesn't make the game any more difficult in itself (since you have the same chances of dying either way) but I guess it's more a self-imposed challenge than anything , for DoD.
