This was not originally my idea, but I feel like it needs its own thread. The idea is quite simple in theory, but IDK how it would work in practice: when editing a story (The Edit STORY page, not a chapter,) have a check box, like the one for "Edit Silently" but backwards, which, if checked, deletes all current saved games for the story when you save it. Yes, I am aware this could annoy a lot of players, but it does allow authors to implement major rewrites of story variables, which otherwise would require users to go back to the beginning one by one, or, possibly, have broken saves that they don't know how to fix... What say all?
I'm bumping this to the top page again. The reason for this thread-o-mancy is this: I recently ran into another reason this might be nessecary: if you delete chapters in a game story for any reason, it can lead to a glitch where the saved game directs the users to a chapter that no longer exists, which redirects them to the error page, from which they cannot get back into the story to reset their saved game. Allowing the Owner(s) of the story to hard reset everyone's saves from the "Edit Story" page would be one way to cure this malady...
This should rather be considered as a bug. The chapter handling should try to reset the game itself before it comes to a 404 in game mode. Ideally redirecting to the introduction chapter and showing a note that the Save Game needed a reset. The owner probably won't see the error in most cases. It is likely that he occasionally resets the Save Game for testing purposes or don't test the specific chapter at all. (This doesn't mean, that the initial suggestion would be useless.)
Ok, so the added utility is MINOR, but it IS there. If the owner resets the saved games any time a chapter purge is done the chance of players encountering that bug on that story becomes zero. As I said, minor, but NOT nonexistent. EDIT: That said: I think your suggestion of having the save game redirect check for 404 then auto reset if encountered rather than redirect to the error page is worthy of its own thread as well.
What I wanted to say is, that there are good reasons to reset Save Games as an author like preventing dead ends because of changed variable behavior. (The reader would still be able to easily reset the Save Game, but they probably wouldn't see the need to do it and could wait for another answer chapter.) If the author changes variable behavior or deletes chapters, they could bear in mind that it would be a good idea to reset the Save Games, but it isn't sure that they will do it, leaving the risk of 404s. So, in my opinion, we should do both, allow deletion of Save Games, and fix the bug.
Agreed, glad we have achieved consensus. Do you want to start the thread for the bug fix suggestion or should I?
Well, i personally wouldn't go as far as to automatically delete a user's save game, and not even give an author that ability. I'd go ballistic if some game company decided to delete MY save game, even after a new patch makes it basically non functional. Now with "normal" games it's sometimes possible to continue the game with an old version. This is obviously not possible here on chyoa. Even if there are very many good reasons, why the deletion of a save game might be necessary to properly play a story because it has been edited / added to, and even if one could argue that the author can do with his story whatever he want, i still feel like the save game itself belongs to the user. I would prefer a solution, that makes sure that the users knows that he is playing on an outdated, possibly incompatible and / or buggy save, but still leaves the decision to delete it and restart to the user himself. Suggestion: Something like versioning, or a checkbox that authors can set in game mode stories, to indicate that from this moment on all save games of an earlier version are incompatible. Make it display an annoying and nagging information box on top of each chapter for the user, to make sure that it's persistent and can't be overlooked. Still, if he wishes, he could continue with his save game until he hits a brick wall and finally decides to reset.
I understand your position @Dingdongs , and would typically agree, but I fear you are, "Making the BEST the enemy of the GOOD." Yes, that would be the IDEAL solution, but it would also be exceedingly difficult to implement. Just mass deleting the saves is quick and easy for the site, minimum server load. Adding that "outdated save" dialogue to each chapter by contrast would EAT bandwidth. It's not that your suggestion is bad, its just, strictly from my layman's perspective, impractical...
Well, it would be indeed useful to at least know where you were before the savegame gets deleted. Hm...
I don't see the magnitude of difference between the two things. A) Delete all saves on command of author B) Check the save and display message if necessary A1)How to determine if a save still needs deletion (or hasn't been deleted already and is in fact a new save that no longer needs to be deleted) B1)How to determine if a save is too old and needs to display a message? => The solution to both problems is probably pretty similar. Some kind of versioning, timestamp, etc. A2) Delete the save B2) Display a message instead. Server bandwidth: Can't really be that much, considering its only a few extra bytes of text really: "Hi. Sadly your save game is too old and incompatible with the changes made to the story. Please reset your game, blablub". Let that be a generous 512 bytes (and if using caching it wouldn't have to be sent each time the text is requested!) then you could still display it 2000 times before the sum is even 1 Megabyte. And after all, Nemo, how much work it is to implement a suggestion and how possible it is depends on the site administration and not on you or me.
Deleting the saves is a one time command action: The server receives the comand, finds all save files for the story, and erases them. Your proposal, by contrast: The server receives the command, finds all save files for the story, accesses them, adds the "outdated" timestamp, re-saves them. It then waits for them to be accessed again, and displays a message which takes a tiny, but non-zero, amount of bandwidth. I think the difference is now clear. I am not debating here: I'm trying to establish the facts of the issue. If you see your proposal as more efficient somehow, I would love to hear the implementation method that would make it so.
I assumed that the saves were stored on the client as cookies and did indeed not think about another possibility. In case they are stored on the server, it agree that it would not be very difficult to delete them. Still i don't think that just deleting saves without some kind of user interaction is the right thing to do. Some sort of explanation, i.e. message displayed in one form or another is the least that would i expect as a user. If one was to be implemented without the other, i can imagine that you would just trade complaints about one topic with complaints about another one. I.e."game is buggy, wtf!",only to discover that the save is no longer compatible vs. "my save is gone, wtf!". I believe that is actually what we do here on the forum. We write and read, consider each other points and reply something to add to a topic and what other people have written. From my understanding that can be considered a debate ;-)
The Save Games are stored on the server. So you can't cheat that way Maybe the story could have a "renew savegames"-timestamp. Then all savegames would need a timestamp "created at". When reading a savegame, both could be compared. If "created" is older than "renew", the savegame is deprecated and should be renewed. A renewed (reset) savegame would get a new timestamp.
There is two ways, that I know of, to hold a discussion. One is debate: debate is verbal gladiatorial combat, you are trying to wreck your opponent and convince everyone watching that they are 100% WRONG. The other is Daialectic: in a Daialectic you are playing a three, (or more) sided game of chess: all the people involved in the discussion as various colours along the edges of a three-dimensional board VS the multi-headed black hydra of lies, disinformation, and misunderstanding in the middle. In a Daialectic unless EVERYONE wins, everyone looses: and to me that's a much better game to be playing.
In a related note: I think that @dingsdongs is right, there would absolutely HAVE to be some note of some sort or we would just get a rash of people asking WTF happened to thier save... However, I belive @gene.sis has found a more elegant solution than either of us.
What about this? You go in edit story and click on the "out of date saves button" Then every one with a saved game that will visit the game will get a pop-up or message saying : **Due to recent updates your save is now longer compatible with the current game. Continuing without reseting your save can lead to bugs and continuity breaks. ** RESET CONTINUE that way everyone is warned and choose by themselves between bugs or resets. Edit: just noticed Dingdongs had proposed the same thing earlier, but I agree wholeheartedly.
I know this could be considered necro-posting. But since this is a thread about a problem which has not been resolved even now(3 years later), I would like to suggest something. Instead of deleting save games or adding a note of old save. You could just correct the save. I know this might sound like a very bad suggestion but here me out. The save game already have information about previous chapters that is why you can press previous chapter(10 times as far as I know) to have the value of variables(commonly known as score) revert back to the value they had in that chapter. When you press 'start game' site could calculate the value according to the chapter you have visited so if author have changed variables 'start game' will calculate the new value without a reset.
That's a good solution, though it wasn't possible back then as the save game structure was different. Basically going back until there is an actual chapter and if that doesn't work, resetting the save game.
I was not suggesting that readers do this as they do not know what is changed. I was suggesting that this site does the corrections by calculating new values based on the chapter visited.
