How Do you define classic gaming??

[DoctaMario]

Yeah that is true. I definitely don't miss the loading times when I'm playing a cart game. But with everything going CD and DVD, I'm actually kinda surprised Nintendo decided to pass the buck and stick with the cartridges and the memory limitations they have.

[Fuyudenki]

for a portable console, cartridges make a lot of sense.  There's no motor, no spin-up, no optical parts to break, everything's solid-state.  Solid state has two major advantages over optical or magnetic storage: it can run on very low power, especially if you're not writing anything to it.

As for loading times... take a look at the PS2 and the Wii some time.  The longest load times in Final Fantasy X are about 5 seconds, at a stretch, and can be reduced even more if you've got a hard drive.  A friend of mine fiddled with his, and even those load times are now nonexistent to him.  Or as he says, "It thinks it's a Wii."

Optical media does NOT equal long load times, if you've got a fast drive, some caching space, and clever programmers, and solid-state media can have load times which are just as long if the contents are significantly compressed.  My opinion is that nonportable consoles should go for optical media, for the sheer space, while portable ones should stick with solid-state for durability and overall low power consumption.

[Dannysaysnoo]

for a portable console, cartridges make a lot of sense.  There's no motor, no spin-up, no optical parts to break, everything's solid-state.  Solid state has two major advantages over optical or magnetic storage: it can run on very low power, especially if you're not writing anything to it.

As for loading times... take a look at the PS2 and the Wii some time.  The longest load times in Final Fantasy X are about 5 seconds, at a stretch, and can be reduced even more if you've got a hard drive.  A friend of mine fiddled with his, and even those load times are now nonexistent to him.  Or as he says, "It thinks it's a Wii."

Optical media does NOT equal long load times, if you've got a fast drive, some caching space, and clever programmers, and solid-state media can have load times which are just as long if the contents are significantly compressed.  My opinion is that nonportable consoles should go for optical media, for the sheer space, while portable ones should stick with solid-state for durability and overall low power consumption.

Speaking of which, why can no game seem to save that fast anymore? Remember Metroid Prime? that saved in about half a second!

[Tapewolf]

Speaking of which, why can no game seem to save that fast anymore? Remember Metroid Prime? that saved in about half a second!

Saving is usually fast, since you're just traversing the data structures making up the game world and recording them to disk.  Now, loading it in again, that's slow since you have to actually recreate the structures again.

U5:Lazarus, which was made using Dungeon Siege, took a long time to save the game, and about ten minutes to reload, this on a 1GHz K7 machine.  It was a truly massive game world, though.  Upgrading the memory from 256MB to 1GB cut the time to a more manageable 2 minutes (4 minutes for the first time, 2 each time thereafter).

[Dannysaysnoo]

Speaking of which, why can no game seem to save that fast anymore? Remember Metroid Prime? that saved in about half a second!

Saving is usually fast, since you're just traversing the data structures making up the game world and recording them to disk.  Now, loading it in again, that's slow since you have to actually recreate the structures again.

U5:Lazarus, which was made using Dungeon Siege, took a long time to save the game, and about ten minutes to reload, this on a 1GHz K7 machine.  It was a truly massive game world, though.  Upgrading the memory from 256MB to 1GB cut the time to a more manageable 2 minutes (4 minutes for the first time, 2 each time thereafter).

That, in my eyes and my generation, is an EPIC savetime. i need to get u5, can it run on a Windows machine?

[Tapewolf]

That, in my eyes and my generation, is an EPIC savetime. i need to get u5, can it run on a Windows machine?

Windows or MacOS, yes.  You need Dungeon Siege to run it, though.  You should be able to get that through Amazon.  Lazarus is here:   http://lazarus.planetdungeonsiege.gamespy.com/
(Note that it's about 650 megabytes - basically a total conversion of the original game)

When I made the rackmount ears for one of my tape decks, I got the dimensions slightly wrong when I drilled the holes.  I would play Lazarus until I died and needed to reload - at this point I would sit there filing away at the metal until the game was ready again. 

[Fuyudenki]

I was of the idea that saving would take longer than loading, since packing data is generally faster than unpacking, when encryption is not involved.

even when encryption is involved, it generally takes less time to decrypt and unpack, if your key's valid.(if your key isn't valid, then you might want to go raise a family while you wait.)

Also, Flash memory just plain reads faster than it writes.

If your load times are slower than your save times, it would seem to me that you've damaged something severely.  Perhaps it was loading the game world itself along with the save game?  That would serve to slow it down in that manner.

I imagine a good way to reduce save time would be to keep a cache in RAM of current save data, and just dump that to the nonvolatile memory when the player decides to save.  Flash a "Do not remove memory card or turn off power" icon in the corner of the screen, and run happily along on your merry way.

Of course, this would make loading slower than saving.

[Tapewolf]

I was of the idea that saving would take longer than loading, since packing data is generally faster than unpacking, when encryption is not involved.

Dunno why you'd want to bother encrypting it.  If you need it to be tamperproof, something akin to a custom-modified MD5 hash would work just as well and be a lot quicker.  Compression is a good point, though.

Also, Flash memory just plain reads faster than it writes.

Depends if you're on a platform which uses it.  the PC doesn't, which is where I have all my experience from (barring earlier systems which just plain predated flash memory).
It's only fairly recently that it's become affordable.  Up until the late 90s it was very expensive stuff, so usually you just used battery-backed RAM instead.

If your load times are slower than your save times, it would seem to me that you've damaged something severely.  Perhaps it was loading the game world itself along with the save game?  That would serve to slow it down in that manner.

Well, yes.  If it didn't save and restore the state of the game world, it wouldn't be a savegame, would it? 

Generally an RPG has several layers to it - you'll have the fixed part of the map, and then you'll have the objects laid on top of it.  Maybe people as another layer, depends how the game works internally.
In a decent game like Ultima 6 or anything after it, objects will be found inside containers, inside people, heaped in piles on the ground or anywhere.  In one of my more psychopathic moments I killed a bunch of people, stuck their bodies inside each other in a chain of nested corpses with all my money hidden in the last one, and carried them around like a purse.  (When purchasing things, the game searches for the money and takes it.  This is pretty funky as it means you can pay for things with gold inside a magically-locked chest)

If the game is simple and doesn't allow this kind of flexibility, then yeah, you could cut a lot of corners, but in something like the Ultima series, System Shock, Deus Ex or Morrowind, the background layer is the only thing which can't be modified, and since virtually the entire game is made up of objects, saving them and reloading them perfectly is a nontrivial exercise. 

I imagine a good way to reduce save time would be to keep a cache in RAM of current save data, and just dump that to the nonvolatile memory when the player decides to save.

PCs don't have nonvolatile memory.  Even if they did, dumping a portion of memory like that directly to store is not going to work except in very particular circumstances, since the memory layout won't be the same each time - the very act of getting to that particular part of the game is going to leave the heap and allocation pools in a radically different state to when the game is resumed the following morning. 

[Fuyudenki]

Dunno why you'd want to bother encrypting it.  If you need it to be tamperproof, something akin to a custom-modified MD5 hash would work just as well and be a lot quicker.  Compression is a good point, though.

True, but you never know...

Also, Flash memory just plain reads faster than it writes.

Depends if you're on a platform which uses it.  the PC doesn't, which is where I have all my experience from (barring earlier systems which just plain predated flash memory).
It's only fairly recently that it's become affordable.  Up until the late 90s it was very expensive stuff, so usually you just used battery-backed RAM instead.

really?  Also, yes.  I think we all know, Gameboy cartridges with save slots had a battery keeping some volatile RAM alive to hold those saves.

Well, yes.  If it didn't save and restore the state of the game world, it wouldn't be a savegame, would it? 

There's that, but I meant loading the world from the disk.(or whatever the game's stored on.  Magnetic tape, anyone?)

Generally an RPG has several layers to it
-snip-(I'm trying to keep the post a manageable size.)

I'd forgotten about that.

Is THAT why you killed so many people in Morrowind?

PCs don't have nonvolatile memory.  Even if they did, dumping a portion of memory like that directly to store is not going to work except in very particular circumstances, since the memory layout won't be the same each time - the very act of getting to that particular part of the game is going to leave the heap and allocation pools in a radically different state to when the game is resumed the following morning. 

PCs have nonvolatile memory: the hard drive.  I was just trying to use a catch-all, because not everything has memory cards.

As for what I meant, I meant that, for example, in a game like Metroid, the game could keep an Object which records what you've explored, which bosses you've killed, what items you've got, your energy/missile/powerbomb/whatever stores, and when you save, just write that to the save file.  Basically, we're building the savefile as we go, instead of just when we're called to save.  We only write it when we save, though.

[DoctaMario]

This is all well and good, but Classic Gaming=Chess by Candlelight FTW. 

[Tapewolf]

really?  Also, yes.  I think we all know, Gameboy cartridges with save slots had a battery keeping some volatile RAM alive to hold those saves.

You might... I never had one.  I did a lot of work with Psion SSD's though 

PCs have nonvolatile memory: the hard drive.  I was just trying to use a catch-all, because not everything has memory cards.

Ah, I assumed you meant flash or e2prom.

Is THAT why you killed so many people in Morrowind?

No, because you couldn't carry the corpses around.  If you could, I most certainly would have done...

[Dannysaysnoo]

You never had a gameboy, tapewolf? i feel very sorry for you...

[GabrielsThoughts]

a PC computer that barely has anough memory to operate windows 3.1, A early 90's  CRT monitor with solitare burned into the screen, and full versions of Cosmi, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein 3d, Jazz Jackrabbit and comander Keen one through six...the original versions

[Goatmon]

Classic gaming, for me, is anything that involves multiple friends shouting and laughing and screaming obscenities at one another while having mindless fun. 

These days, nothing beats a good round of melee.

[DoctaMario]

Classic gaming, for me, is anything that involves multiple friends shouting and laughing and screaming obscenities at one another while having mindless fun. 

These days, nothing beats a good round of melee.

I used to have nights like that with my friends once upon a time. An N64, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and one of those THQ wrestling games coupled with enough pizza and Mountain Dew to kill a horse, and you've got a pretty accurate description. Man, those were some of the best nights....

[DarkAudit]

Sinistar.

[superluser]

Sinistar.

BEWARE!  I LIVE!

[DarkAudit]

Sinistar.

BEWARE!  I LIVE!

Win.

[superluser]

Did you see the Phoenix Wrong bit where they had Manfred von Karma (I think) yelling ``RUN RUN RUN [ROAAAR]''?

[Joe3210]

Ultima I-VIII were pretty classic.

[Tapewolf]

Ultima I-VIII were pretty classic.

I'm not so sure about 1-3,and Pagan was rather pedestrian compared to its predecessor, but the others were pretty groundbreaking.  U4 was I believe, the first game which tried to change its player into a better person.  Indeed, it may still be the only game which tries to do that.

I was going to nominate System Shock which I just finished replaying, but I think I might go for Monty On The Run over that, since it's just as entertaining for me today as it was 22 years ago.

[Joe3210]

Ultima I-VIII were pretty classic.

I'm not so sure about 1-3,and Pagan was rather pedestrian compared to its predecessor, but the others were pretty groundbreaking.  U4 was I believe, the first game which tried to change its player into a better person.  Indeed, it may still be the only game which tries to do that.

I was going to nominate System Shock which I just finished replaying, but I think I might go for Monty On The Run over that, since it's just as entertaining for me today as it was 22 years ago.

Well, I really can't say anything about the first three since I have yet played them.  The fourth one was good for the reason you stated.  Pagan was a total waste of time, but it was a fun game to play with.  The sixth one was my favorite and I haven't played the ninth one yet.

[Vidar]

Commander Keen

Pong, Pacman, Asteroids, Missle command, etc.

[superluser]

The sixth one was my favorite

A lot of people agree with that.  Specifically, I do.

[Tapewolf]

The sixth one was my favorite

A lot of people agree with that.  Specifically, I do.

Yeah, it was my first one.  It was radically different to anything I'd come across before, and remains the only game I've ever put together a 3rd-party editing toolkit for.

I do have a particular fondness for Pagan in that it was the first game that had so many bugs that I got the idea of making a walkthrough that exploited them.  I rather liked it for its own sake as well, although I did miss U7 and SI to begin with.  If I had played them in sequence, I might not have been so impressed.

U9 has similar charms.  If it didn't have bugs like being able to climb mountains using bottles or crossing the uncrossable ocean on a bridge made from loaves of bread, it would be a far less entertaining game.

[The Lurking Dragon]

Sheesh. All this talk of classic gaming and no one has mentioned Tetris yet?! 
Also - Civilization is for me a classic game.