Less a manifesto, and more a notverymanlyfesto, as this is very much a tech-centric list. If you want thoughtful game theory, you’ve got the wrong nitpicker.
The PC is the best gaming platform in the world – but it could be better still. While it’s great that the PC doesn’t have to suffer quite the same degree of standardisation as its locked-down console brethren, we have nevertheless fallen into certain patterns of how we game. There are things we take for granted and thus expect, like WASD controls in FPSes and patches for bad bugs. There are others still we should be able to take for granted, but can’t because the same damn-fool oversights happen again and again. Even outside of the more obvious annoyances like referring to Xbox controls or including ridiculously draconian DRM (which are both more a question of money than of thoughtlessness), a ton of stuff that any gamer could have told the developer was a glaring screw-up keeps on turning up in otherwise great games. Here are just 10 of the worst offenders, 10 things that every single modern PC game should get right and has no excuse not to. Please do suggest others in comments below.
1. Alt-tab support.
Perhaps the single greatest, but so often neglected, Must-have there is. Just having rudimentary task-switching support in there isn’t enough (hello-o Valve games) – it needs to be fairly quickly and smooth, and included in the original release of the game, not in a patch down the line. This should be as big a priority as graphics or sound. Don’t care if it’s a massive pain to code in. Don’t care if you have to re-start the entire game from scratch to put it in. Alt-tab is absolutely integral to the way we all use our PCs. Half of us essentially live at our computers – we need to be able to task-switch to an IM window or an inbox or even another game in moments, not be locked into one program. Frankly – if your game doesn’t alt-tab, it’s not really a PC game.
Possibly deserving an entry of its own, but in the name of keeping this list to 10 I’ll include it here – all PC games should be able to play in a window. I’ve missed social events because someone’s instant messaged me about going to the pub, but not bothered to phone or text when I don’t get back to them right away because I’m off in a game. One day, the girl of my dreams will magically message me, and by the time I’ve exited the game she’ll have got bored of waiting and declared her love for my arch-nemesis (I don’t actually have an arch-nemesis, but I’m working on it). Then I will hunt down and kill the developer of whichever unwindowable game I was playing at the time. They will appreciate why. Window play is also necessary for 2D games whose resolutions can’t be changed – 800×600 pixels of pretty hand-drawn art look like roadkill in toontown when they’re stretched over a 1680×1050 panel.
2. Use standardised install and savegame folders
Everything goes in Program Files by default, please (and, just as importantly, there needs to be an option to install anywhere the player would rather). Don’t have your game install itself into the root of C:\ or an obscure sub-folder, and when you do put it in Program Files don’t stick it inside [Publisher name]\[Developer name] – just stick a folder directly in there under the game’s name. Gamers want to be able to find their game files easily, not have to Google for everyone involved in its creation just so they can work out what folder it’s in.
This is doubly true of savegames. We need to be able to back those suckers up in case of disaster or a Windows reinstall. Know where STALKER hides its savegames in Vista? C:\Users\all users\documents\stalker-shoc, that’s where. Here’s where games whose developers aren’t crazy stick their saves on my PC – C:\Users\Alec\Documents\My Games. In other words, the standard My Games folder inside (My) Documents, a two-click, standard process to reach. To find STALKER’s saves, I have to dig through five separate sub-folders, in something I’d never otherwise look at. Who are these mythical ‘All Users’? They’re not me, that’s who.
Even our beloved World of Goo fails at this. The game goes into Program Files\World of Goo. The savegame – and the savegame alone – goes into C:\ProgramData\2DBoy\WorldOfGoo. ProgramData? Worse, that’s actually a hidden folder by default. Gah!
3. Automatically set themselves to your desktop screen resolution
Don’t default to something horrid and archaic like 640×480. The vast majority of PC gamers use flatpanel monitors, and games running at anything other than their native resolution tend to look horrible. Save us the hassle of changing the setting ourselves, but most of all save the less tech-savvy from having to work out what a resolution even is in the first place, or just putting up with a blurry screen because they’ve no idea how to fix it. Clearly, still allow the resolution to be easily changed to whatever the gamer wants, however: the game needs to support every res the monitor does.
4. Support widescreen resolutions.
Widescreen isn’t the future – it’s the present. Just look at the consoles for proof of that, or at the top hits for ‘monitor’ on Amazon. And expecting us to edit an ini file or type in command lines doesn’t count as widescreen support.
5. Uninstall in seconds.
Don’t have it laboriously check every single damn file before it has the grace to remove ‘em – just wipe the folder, pull the main hooks out of the registry and be done with it. I uninstalled the FIFA 09 demo today, and it all but locked up my PC for ten minutes while it did its ridiculous, disc-churning thing. Then I uninstalled the King’s Bounty: The Legend demo, and it was gone in the blink of an eye. That’s the way to do it. When I want someone to leave my house, I just want them gone – I don’t want them hanging around on the doorstep making tedious chit-chat for half an hour. Tied into this is installing neatly in the first place to ensure removal is simple – the game should all end up in one place, not explode tiny bits of itself all over the hard drive.
6. Don’t require the CD/DVD in the drive to play.
Again, we’re talking about a PC, a device with hundreds of gigabytes of storage. A game needing to look at a plastic disc entirely external to the game install folder whenever it runs is openly ludicrous. I know it’s for copy protection’s sake (and even so is of debatable effectiveness in this day and age), but the annoyance to legit customers surely outweighs a few extra lost sales before the inevitable no CD crack turns up anyway. Requiring PC gamers to scrabble through a vast pile of discs just to play the game they’ve already installed is contrary to the nature of the platform, and lures people towards less than legal solutions that may ultimately push them further towards piracy. And you wouldn’t want that, would you publishers?
7. Keep the quicksave and quickload keys far apart.
Accidents happen, whether it’s sausage-fingered gamer stereotypes or just furious keyboard-slapping in rage at another defeat. Hitting quicksave when you’re reaching for quickload is the worst thing in the world, including being licked to death by a pack of hobos. If you set quicksave and quickload to F5 and F6, you are not fit to be developing PC games. F6 and F9 are fine – that’s enough space to blame quicksaving just as you get killed on the player being stupid, not on developer thoughtlessness.
8. Escape means menu/pause
The button’s actually called ‘Escape’, for heaven’s sake. Why on Earth would a game ever bind a request to leave or pause the action to anything else? This needs to be standardised. No-one wants to be miserably jabbing at random buttons one-by-one because the phone’s ringing but they’ve got no idea what brings up the pause menu.
And, because I want to keep this list PC-centric rather than generalist to all games, I’ll mention cutscenes here rather than as a separate point. Pressing Escape during a cinematic means I want to end that cinematic. Literally, I want to escape this movie you are making me watch. Please respect that button’s purpose. Please respect your players – and if you make any of your cutscenes unskippable, you don’t.
9. Auto-backup quicksaves
Again, accidents happen. Excited gamers hit quicksave when they think they’re out of danger but a giganto-beast is just about to feast on their ankles. Files get corrupted. And then you’re screwed, with no option than to rewind potentially hours of progress. So whenever the player hits quicksave, the game should keep a copy of the last one in case of disaster. The last two, ideally. It’s just common sense, and surely an incredibly simple process.
10. Patches should fix, not break
If your patch renders savegames from previous versions of the game inoperable, it’s just not ready for release. If people have to restart a game from the very beginning because of this, they will hate and distrust you for it. If there’s honestly no way around this, because the under-the-hood changes really are that absolute, then the patch needs to say as much in giant red letters when it’s run: “INSTALLING THIS WILL BREAK YOUR SAVES. OK?” A footnote in the readme file is not enough. Better yet, the lead designer should show up at the door of anyone installing the patch with a box of chocolates and an apologetic hug.
Stepping away from savegames, if your patch introduces new problems then it’s hardly a patch, is it? Test it to death before you let it into the wild – remember that Eve update which deleted critical Windows files? Such a thing cannot be allowed to ever happen again.
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@suchchoices
Having a default install directory for games has to be a setting in Windows. I don’t think we should be asking for or expecting games to scan our PC’s for where games are installed; comparing registry entries/executables against a database so that they can present us with a default directory.
A lot of the fault regarding where save games are kept is Microsoft’s. Most program data which you would want to transfer between PCs is kept in the Roaming folder. But for games they make a special case and have not one, but two extra folders . Why do they have a ‘MyGames’ folder AND a ‘Saved Games’ folder under Users?
edit:
Just found a good (by which I mean bad) example. C&C3 has Saved games in the SavedGames folder, replays in Documents and maps and profile data in AppDataRoaming!
(P.S. in other news we’re all bankrupt, just in case everybody is just reading about games and hadn’t noticed)
11. No putting checkpoints right before cutscenes.
12. No installer music (that can’t be switched off).
13. No unskippable publisher videos when you start the game.
14. No gamespy?
I was all prepared to go ahead and implement in my game anything you said.. and then it turned out half of it was irrelevant because there are no savegames.
I’ll get right on to the windowed mode though.
holy fuck, I didn’t even see that saved games folder. i have maybe 10 games installed, including COH and Bioshock and Spore, and that folder is empty.
Fuck it. I’m going to sick to MyDocuments/Kudos2. At least that bloody works.
BTW apparently SHGetFolderLocation() is now SHGetKnownFolderPath(). They changed it just to annoy everyone apparently…
Skippable intro videos and logo splashes. (Echoing Maximum Fish above)
Crysis allows me to skip all but the EA logo, whereas Gears of War makes me watch four screens (about twenty seconds) before I can get to the main menu. I couldn’t find the responsible .bik files, either. Another of Games For Windows’ splendid innovations.
I remember some game that forced me to watch the intro videos the first time after installation that it was launched, but allowed me to skip them from then on. This was perfect. I think it was Titan Quest, or its expansion.
I’ve seen many whines about PC gaming(Most recent being the gamer’s manifesto), but this one takes the cake.
Oddly enough the one that resonated the most with me is the one that I don’t see anyone commenting on, #1. Alt-tab support. Far and away in my opinion the most annoying thing a dev can ever do is not include alt-tab support.
I do not want my PC to be stuck on your game until I exit. A PC is not a console, and the lack of an alt-tab option (and a FAST one at that…TF2 I’m looking in your direction) seems like an attempt to turn it in to one.
All of these.. Yes, yes, and yes. God yes.
So many recent games fail at ALL of these. I hope other major game blogs pick this up so devs have no excuse when they KEEP DOING IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.
Can’t really disagree with anything on the list, as it’s mostly common sense stuff (beyond #3, possibly, for reasons others have mentioned).
On #2, and an extension of the last part of #5, keep my saves in the damn game directory, instead of spreading it to my documents or some other place (though I have to admit I’ve almost been convinced otherwise by a couple of posts here).
Also, I would put #7 as “let me change my quicksave and quickload keys”. I’ve seen many games that let you configure everything else, but not save/load, which kind of sucks.
Ever since Crysis I’ve completely lost any sympathy for developers not doing #1; Crysis is probably the most advanced game ever, yet almost instantly alt-tabs itself on/off even if you leave it half an hour.
agreed. and all games should support the old standard of alt+enter to toggle between windowed and fullscreen mode. Yes it *is* a bitch to code it. No there is no excuse not to do it.
If anybody in the industry reading this, please get rid of the
FUCKING SHIT COCKSUCKING INTROS OF FUCKING NVIDIA EA INTEL YOURGRANDMA BULLSHITLOGO CRAP
because
I ALREADY BOUGHT YOUR SHITFUCKING GAME NOW LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!
how hard can it be?
many have said it already, but
8. NO! Escape should still bring up the menu/ pause game as expected, but SPACE should skip the cutscene. I’ve missed exposition in more than a few games trying to get to the menu to turn off subtitles or change resolution and ending up skipping the cutscene
Points 2,4,5, and 6 are pretty much licked by most steam games, so it wouldn’t be a whole heap of effort to get in the other features on this list.
I’ll add a few more too… 11, 12, 13 and 14 are taken so…
15. in relation to standardised keys, WASD are fairly standard to move, but use / reload / lean left /right might aswell be too. Even having a setting where games can choose from a few different standard defaults would be nice, like how some xbox games have a few different controller setups.
16. display setting menus and difficulty settings should be standardised too. Crysis had some very confusing display settings menus. It seems like every developer has a [slightly] different opinion about what goes in the ‘advanced’ section of the display menu. Wouldn’t it be nice to have universal display settings that would become the default for any installed game?
@Katsumoto
I totally agree, I always install games on c:\games\ so I can tell quickly when games are hogging diskspace. But I’m sick of having to specify it (and of playing that little game where you turn “program files” into “games” using only the right arrow and delete key. Ok maybe that’s just me.
@karthik
Uhm… you can save Far Cry anywhere. It autosaves at certain points, but you can also open the menu and save any time….
@Sid Sinister
The Sims games don’t count on this list because they are technically the spawn of the devil.
I am in complete agreement with Bitkari. All developers must host their own patches. To not do so is troublesome and an inexcusable. Also all patches should be cumulative. If I want to update my game to 1.5 I should not have to download the 1.1 patch and the 1.3 patch and the 1.5 patch and install each one in succession. With modern internet connections patch size has basically become irrelevant. Just offer one big patch.
Ideally all games should come with auto update where you click one button and the patch is downloaded and deployed. Auto update, however, needs to be an OPTION not a requirement for those of us running mods incompatible with the most recent patch or for whatever reason.
Also in line with the Alt-tab point, never map keys so that Alt and tab need to or could rationally be pressed at the same time. Several games I have played, most recently including the Witcher, have done this and it is really annoying (Yes, I know it can be changed but it should never have been set that way in the first place).
@Downloads_Plz
It takes forever to switch to and from any fullscreen Source game, but even that is still better than Goldsrc. It wasn’t the time it took to switch, but that you’d lose your sound until you restarted the game if you alt-tabbed out.
I do think that the save-games should stay out of Program Files, though. Games should be run as a limited user and limited users shouldn’t have write-access to Program Files. Won’t someone think of the security!?
My list:
1) Quake style console
2) Good modding support
3) ESC key skip all non-interactive crap
4) Having Quicksave/Quickload
5) Screenshot key
6) Run on my native LCD monitor resolution, and looks good
7) Ability to change FOV
8 ) Ability to rebind keys
etc..
as if millions of angry internet men cried out in varying levels of pent up irritation
Good list RPS. I agree 100%. The other thing I would add after playing STALKER is
11) Don’t invalidate old save files when a new patch is applied.
Having to start the game from scratch because you’ve patched it? Unforgivable.
@cliffski
NO!
Some people actually use the Documents folder for documents (yes really, I’ve seen it). Having to dodge dozens of game folders to find their files is not fun. Clicking on the democracy2 folder instead of docs does not make them happy people.
I really want to be able to bind key _combinations_, even if it’s limited to Ctrl, Alt, Shift. Some games do this, most (in my experience) don’t. I know it’s possible to do this without stepping on the bindings for the individual keys, and it would allow me to bind related actions to related keystrokes. Even if this isn’t something I need in most games, I want it in any game complicated enough to justify remappable controls.
1.) Good
2.) Agreed, or, ideally, make the save game folder itself customizable, I don’t like a load of extra folders in “my documents”
3.) not really an issue, some people prefer a lower resolution to improve performance, it’s the same thing as saying “turn everything on high initally because it looks better”
4.) almost all new games do
5.) Not really saying anything, devs don’t deliberately make uninstall process’ long, it’s just either poor coding or good coding.
6.) Industry has solved this problem via securom, woo!
7.) lol
8.) I can’t think of a single game I own where escape doesn’t bring up a menu or similar. Agreed with the cutscene point though.
9.) A bit ridiculous, I’d prefer saves didn’t corrupt than backing up saves
10.) Well dev’s obviously know this, GSC on the other hand could do a MUCH better job of letting people know the patch will break saves.
why the bloody need to shit allover the Documents and Settings/users/ folders?
keep the saves, configs and EVERYfucking thing inside the games` install folder!
digging thru Documents and Settings/blah/blah/blah/blah/
is always a pain.
And plz why install yet another pukbuster ( I think I`v had 5 of them at some point) and another aGaya driver
and rebindable controlls is a MUST above all those things!
@James
Seconded.
When I double click the icon of a game on my desktop, I do so because I want to play the game in question. Not because I want to stare for several seconds at your companies logo. I’ve bought the game, you have my money, you don’t need to advertise any more.
Multiplayer via that POS Gamespy as an option, not as the only choice.
I hate Gamespy. I do not understand why devs/pubs use it, as it’s such a pain in the arse to use. Really puts me off multiplayer gaming if it’s through Gamespy and it’s flaky login system, with random lag and disconnects. Relic Online is almost as bad, but at least that’s one series of games.
And yes, lose the playing of the damn EA (or whoever) logo every time I launch a game. I’m sick of seeing the logos of who the game was developed by, published by, sponsored by, the hardware it (apparently) runs best on, etc. I know this shit, and even though I wasn’t interested in it all the first time I had to sit there and watch it, I’m even less interested now, on the thirtieth launch of, say, WAR, or Crysis Warhead, or whatever. I don’t care who made it, I just want to enjoy the product I paid good money for.
And another thing:
12) Do not, under any circumstances use or support the abomination that is Games For Windows Live. And if you have the Games For Windows label, ensure you support other control pads beyond the 360 controller.
YES! Fucking save files!
I told the installer to stick the game in my D drive why in gods name are you saving my save games in my windows drive?!?!
The D drive is labeled GAMES you bastards.
re: all the installer path malarky:
All this has reminded me of the good ol’ Amiga. The built in installer program started with a quick choice, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced (or similar), if you went for advanced then you’d get asked about the location of every file (assuming the programmer had bothered to script the installer), on intermediate you’d only be asked the more important questions (eg install to where? and where would you like your shortcuts to end up?), and beginner would often not bother asking any questions at all and just install to default locations.
Seems to me we could do with this universally (props to the one or two programs that actually do something like this already). Ideally with your level of expertise being set per user, so my mum can have a limited user account, and not be asked comlicated questions, and I can have full admin rights and be asked every little detail, but now I’m getting a bit beyond just games.
Offtopic:-
Cliffski
You’re releasing Kudos 2 tomorrow?
Ontopic. Good list overall gents. There isn’t much I can add or say, save that actual resolution only really suits people with beat machines generally. A better option is a degree of autodetection and optimal setting (best suitable resolution and graphic settings), which you used to get with a lot of games, but seems to have died a death in recent years.
Somebody please tell me I’m not going mad, but haven’t we seen this article before? When I saw the title I thought ‘oh yeah, this one included the alt-tab thing and the quicksave keys’. Then I noticed nothing about it appearing somewhere before. Help?
Edit – never mind, saw the alt-tab link at the bottom and remembered I heard the close-together-quicksave keys from a friend. Good list anyway
11) Don’t use DRM! I was just about to pre-order Red Alert3 on amazon; it has a natural incentive to buy the game because I want to play it online so I need a real CD key.
After reading all the terrible reports of the SecureROM restrictions and the fact that you can ONLY INSTALL THE GAME 5 TIMES I have decided to wait and see. Sorry you lost a sale EA. I bought the previous game C&C3 last year too.
i know there’s no chance in hell of nuking activation limits but it’d still be nice if there were. that’s just plain excessive.
Why the _____ does a game need to modify the registry?
I understand a work App like Office or Creative Suite where you need to link files to file editors and such.
Annoying!!! adding useless _#it to my registry just makes my comp’s boot time increase EVERY day.
A few thoughts:
- Screen resolution defaulting to desktop: I’ve got a crappy video card in my laptop. It runs a web browser and Office fine at the laptop’s max resolution, but a game made in the last year or three? Not a chance. A better solution is to have the game determine a recommended level based on your video card, RAM and processor during install and default to that.
- Unskippable cutscenes/logo splash screens – some (not all, but some) are there to cover up that they’re secretly loading screens; so maybe this should be to skip as soon as possible (or even show a loading screen if you quit a cutscene before everything is finished loading).
- ESC shouldn’t suddenly become skip in a cutscene. If it brings up a menu in game, it should bring up a menu in cutscene – it’s all about consistency. (The menu having a “skip cutscene” option at this time would be great.)
- Speaking of consistency: a standardized location for saved games means that saved games WON’T end up over My Documents. And yes, please keep them in my home directory.
%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\surely, Cliffski.When I get alt-tabbed out of anything running on the HL2 engine it takes days to get back in…
A new one to add, that goes along with the ALT+TAB: Proper support for the mouse in windowed mode, especially in strategy games. RTS and TBS games may not have a minimap and may rely on edge scrolling. In windowed mode, if you go outside the window it could ruin your game. Either trap the mouse, or include a minimap/scroll buttons.
I LOVE windowed mode. I love it, greatest thing ever, and usually when a game doesn’t allow it. Guess what? I’m not playing it. I like to talk to people while playing a game, I don’t care how ridiculous the game is. I want to talk about that ridiculousness.
Good article. Agreed on pretty much all points.
As a PC developer I would add:
- Let the user set any screen mode for the game, even if the video drivers say they don’t support it. They lie, oh yes, they do.
- Support multiple monitors
- Don’t put anything in the registry- you’re just making it hard to find, back up and restore. There are games that, I kid you not, put save games in there.
- Let the user choose where save games go. You let them choose the installation path, so why not the save games? I quite like my shared folder so I can play at home/work.
- Don’t use Vista-specific anything
- Don’t assume the machine is connected to the Internet
Oh, the old publisher name in the file path is a hang over from the old ‘designed for Microsoft Windows 9x’ certification, which brings me on to:
- Don’t bother with Microsoft logo certification.
And you can make save games ‘forward compatible’with any changes in patches easily enough, as long as you think about the possible future need to do that before you start.
Oh, and why not full video controls in cutscenes?
@spd from Russia: As has been stated several times already, storing saves in the game’s directory is bad mojo. In any proper OS (and some bad ones) a normal user does not have write permission there. User files go in the user’s home directory, plain and simple.
Great article.
Re the windows key, get a G15 then you can switch it off for games! Also, mouse thumb buttons are a godsend but PLEASE make your game recognise them, otherwise my thumb starts to atrophy.
Heads up, I’m pretty sure that you should infact install your games under Program files, while working with Vista 64bit I learnt that Program Files is a special folder, and all apps should be installed there. Forget what it was all about now. I put all my games under Program Files/Games/*game name*/
It’s pretty easy to do so, as it just means replacing the Publisher name with “Games”
I am used to backing up saves myself, manually, provided I actually do want to keep them.
I still get nightmares from the traumatizing events that unfolded when I wanted to backup a save and could not find it, for the first time, in the actual game directory. I eventually found this C:/Users/User/Documents/My Game. and was horrified when I saw this mess of configs and saves that dozens of games and demos had stored there. I had no clue whatsoever.
All I’m saying is an alternative option to this wouldn’t hurt. Just ask me on install where I want to put the shit.
“As has been stated several times already, storing saves in the game’s directory is bad mojo. In any proper OS (and some bad ones) a normal user does not have write permission there. User files go in the user’s home directory, plain and simple.”
What? Why would you not have write permission to the folder your game is installed to?
“%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\ surely, Cliffski.”
BWAHAHAHAHA as if it was that simple.
No.
You can’t do that stuff any more, not if you want to play ball with XP and vista. There are newer ‘approved’ ways of doing all this.
To everyone who wants all the savegames in the games folder, it ain’t gonna happen because amazingly under some setups, the user cannot have access to that folder. Thats the whole point of the MyDocuments crap. Even if your machine is locked down with lead weights, EVERYONE can access their own MyDocs. That’s what its there for.
Vista added more layers of confusion, redirection and virtualisation. yay!
I can use vista fu to get the location of the Savedgames folder, but heck, nobody uses it. They all save their games in Mydocuments\My Games
Even Rise of nations, a MICROSOFT game.
And here is a funny thing… there is NO way to get at the My Games folder in code. All you can do is grab MyDocuments and manually paste it on the end. I STRONGLY suspect that everyone is just hacking this, and that it’s not even a standard anywhere. So fuck it, I’m going to stick Kudos 2 saves and config in there too. I always hated it being in MyDocuments, but wanted to do it the approved way.
This thread could not have been more timely for me. (Kudos 2 wednesday btw).
> Even if your machine is locked down with lead weights, EVERYONE can access their own MyDocs. That’s what its there for.
Oh, if only this were true… Sadly, there are corporate/educational environments where not only do you not have access to these, they don’t even exist (which causes hilarious* Installshield problems). The user ends up with some crazy network path as their only editable area, which there is quite literally no way to guess.
*Not hilarious
Resume Game.
On the main menu, a button that will automatically load the last game you saved.
Call of Duty 1 managed to do this – so why hasn’t every game produced since then followed their lead? Why should I have to select “Load Game” and then choose the appropriate savegame when 99% of the time I will want to carry on from where I left off!
Normal users (non-admin) do not have write access in “Program Files” or any other directory outside their user directory. This is a good thing as it prevents bad software run by users from screwing up important system files.
Windows has traditionally been lax about this of course since all users until recently have been admins by default, but in Vista (and *nix) installing software does (and should) require admin privileges. Running software should not, meaning savegames need to go in the user directory. I would prefer the “AppData” part of the user directory myself, as I don’t find savegames to look very much like documents, but I don’t know what the official Windows docs (if any) say.
Too many comments to bother reading them all, but one thing I noticed half-way through is that no-one suggests using the PAUSE-key to PAUSE the game, which I find quite odd. Escape should cancel a window, bring up the main menu (in a paused state, if possible), but not pause the game without the menu. That’s what the pause-key is there for.
On another note, I’m not sure I consider the quick-save options of any use. Pretty much ruins any game taking a few steps and auto-save all the time, in my opinion. But if it’s so important to so many, I guess the games better have it.
May I add another one: Never, ever, let a resolution span outside your monitor, making you unable to change the settings back! Got into this in Home World 2, and haven’t been able to play it since.
I remember similar fun when people switch from dual monitor setups to single and when they launch some programs they are invisible :D
(you can use cunning combination of alt and control and arrow keys to find the windows :D)
Amen.