Any way to rewind?

[Amander]

The game contains a little too many ways to make things go fubar and restarting the whole level every time gets really tiresome. Is there any way to rewind or save mit-level so I can try a particular part without having to redo everything else?

[inspiral66]

No.

The matter of rewinds and quicksaves has been discussed often and at length on this forum, but there are as many people who are against some form of saving as there are for it. And I seem to remember the dev saying a rewind feature would be difficult to implement.

[freibooter]

It's the one feature that I'm really missing.

The Toki Tori guys managed to implement an amazing rewind feature after enough people requested it and it made the game so much more fun and enjoyable. Once you have the ability to rewind it allows for so much more complex puzzles while eliminating most of the frustration involved, I really so no valid reason against it other than being hard to implement.

I know it's probably not an easy task to implement retroactively, but even quick save or checkpoints would go a long way. Even though levels are comparably short I see nothing really enjoyable about having to repeat a level over and over and over again, just because there is a tricky part near the end.

I'd be more than happy about a quick save feature if rewind is to hard to do ... but having neither is rather detrimental to the enjoyment I'm getting out of this otherwise very well done game.

[targetbsp]

I can appreciate that rewind might be a challenging addition to a game. Quick see shouldn't be though. And whilst some may argue they don't need it, I can't see anyone being against it? You just wouldn't use it if you didn't want it surely?

The problem is going to be when you quick save at a point where the level is already unrecoverable without having yet realised it. That's where rewind would help!

[inspiral66]

I can appreciate that rewind might be a challenging addition to a game. Quick see shouldn't be though. And whilst some may argue they don't need it, I can't see anyone being against it? You just wouldn't use it if you didn't want it surely?

The problem is going to be when you quick save at a point where the level is already unrecoverable without having yet realised it. That's where rewind would help!

I completed this game (eventually!) and I'm in favour a quicksave system. But many aren't. I suspect there's a bit of elitism going on, like they're saying 'If I can finish the game without quicksaves then so should everybody else.' I do hope a voluntary checkpoint system is incorporated at some point in the near future as it does seem to mean a great deal to a lot of people.

[Amander]

How can anyone sane be against rewinding/saving? It's not like people HAVE to use such features only because they're in.

[inspiral66]

How can anyone sane be against rewinding/saving? It's not like people HAVE to use such features only because they're in.

I agree, though I doubt a rewind feature will ever be added. Two Tribes did it retroactively with Toki Tori, but maybe the way that game was coded made it doable in a way that it isn't with BTM. I'm only going on what the dev has said on this forum. However, I can't help thinking a simple checkpoint, maybe one on smaller levels, two on larger ones, would go some way to satisfying those people calling for a rewind or save game system.

[careface312]

i remember this one time i died in tetris and then i was all like 'lol screw this im rewinding' then i kept playing tetris until i had to go to bed

The game doesn't need a rewind feature, call it elitism or whatever you want but every game shouldn't need to bandage your shins everytime you fall down.

[targetbsp]

i remember this one time i died in tetris and then i was all like 'lol screw this im rewinding' then i kept playing tetris until i had to go to bed


I'm not sure the play style of an endurance game like tetris is a valid comparison to a platform puzzler (except for the fact they both have tetrominoes in)
In any case, Tetris was released in 1984. Games have moved on. They auto-save or have checkpoints before moments you may mess up. You recover health by ducking behind cover rather than prating you survive long enough to reach the next rare health pack. You're not expected to complete 100 levels of a game with 3 lives.
Games are for everyone now, not just gamers. Personally I've been a gamer for decades but even I find it jarring in this day and age when I have to redo a level when I mess up rather than restart just before the bit I messed up.

I'm not even saying I need the feature. Not played far enough in to determine that. But not putting one in, when so many are asking for it, is simply failing to cater for differing skill levels of your customers.

Magicka has always had a problem with this. I love that game and it's great co-op but the lack of being able to save when I want or even set a difficulty level makes it incredibly frustrating to play solo. I didn't buy it for several months because of that.

And despite liking the demo of BtM, I didn't buy this out of concern for getting stuck on it early on but was pleased it come up on HIB.

People have different skill levels at different things and games should cater to that. You give me a strategy game, I'll play it on hard. You give me an action game, I'll play it on easy. If you don't give me the option or at least design the game so I don't have to re-do chunks of it to reach the bit I'm struggling with then I won't buy the game. I HATE redoing things.

If opposing a save feature in a game makes you feel good about yourself because you can do it and don't see why the game should be opened up to a wider audience, well I'm glad I could help your self esteem. :)

[careface312]

I'm not sure the play style of an endurance game like tetris is a valid comparison to a platform puzzler (except for the fact they both have tetrominoes in)
In any case, Tetris was released in 1984. Games have moved on. They auto-save or have checkpoints before moments you may mess up. You recover health by ducking behind cover. You're not expected to complete 100 levels of a game with 3 lives.
Games are for everyone now, not just gamers. Personally I've been a gamer for decades but even I find it jarring in this day and age when I have to redo a level when I mess up rather than restart just before the bit I messed up.

I'm not even saying I need the feature. Not played far enough in to determine that. But not putting one in, when so many are asking for it, is simply failing to cater for differing skill levels of your customers.

Magicka has always had a problem with this. I love that game and it's great co-op but the lack of being able to save when I want or even set a difficulty level makes it incredibly frustrating to play solo. I didn't buy it for several months because of that. And despite liking the demo, I didn't buy this out of concern for getting stuck on it early on but was pleased it come up on HIB.

You give me a strategy game, I'll play it on hard. You give me an action game, I'll play it on easy. If you don't give me the option or at least design the game so I don't have to re-do chunks of it to reach the bit I'm struggling with then I won't buy the game.

If opposing a save feature in a game makes you feel good about yourself because you can do it and don't see why the game should be opened up to a wider audience, well I'm glad I could help your self esteem. :)

Comparing this to magicka is redundant, a level there takes 20-40 minutes. Levels on this take 1-2 minutes.

I'm not too fussed whether the game gets a save feature or not, I've already finished it and don't really plan to play through it again (not saying its a bad game or anything, I just find replaying puzzle games pretty dull).

I'm just tired of everything needing to be spoonfed nowadays.

[inspiral66]

Gaming has changed enormously over the past two decades. I can remember the days when you loaded games from a cassette and had three lives to complete it. Saves? What are those? And they were expensive. I could only afford a new game on my pocket money once a month! And if you got stuck you had to hope one of the few gaming mags would publish a walkthrough.

*sighs* Those were the bad old days! :)

Thankfully we now have saves, quicksaves, checkpoints, we have regular updates and patches, and walkthroughs on YouTube. The gaming community no longer comprises teenage diehards and we can buy our games for a couple of quid and then have it squirted down the phone lines to our computers. This is all for the better. In no way is this worse. Blocks That Matter is an exceptionally good puzzle platformer and I've recommended it to lots of people, but even I wonder why the devs are holding out against installing a checkpoint system when so many want it. If it's because the coding would be a nightmare or cause problems on some PCs, I can sympathise. But if it's because they think the game will be less pure or somehow less honest to its roots, i.e. block games from the 80s and 90s, then I think they're making a mistake. It's not about spponfeeding gamers and making things easy, it's about opening games up to everyone.

[Sparkey]

I'm also against quicksaves, unless they carry some kind of penalty (no stars/special blocks if a quicksave is used). The levels are very short and quicksaves would just make it too easy in my opinion.

Not every game has to hold your hand all the way to the end.

[targetbsp]

If it would make it too easy for you... You. Don't. Have. To. Use. It.
We're not trying to make it easier for you. We're trying to make it easier for those who find it hard. Why would it being easier for me affect you?

I don't even know if I find it hard yet, I've not had opportunity to game of late. I just know I'm likely to find it challenging compared to most because platformers are not my typical genre. I'm a Tycoon, TBS kind of guy. I will fully admit I suck at shooters, platformers, and anything where you need reactions. But every now and again an especially good or interesting entry into that genre will pique my interest. I have to play them on easy and save often.
If the game has no option to account for the fact that I might not be any good at it then it loses a sale. A game that can't cater for varying levels of player skill is badly designed.
As I said, I can't yet say for sure this applies here but clearly a number of people think it does and even if I find I don't need catered for in this regard - they should be.

I don't know what stars or special blocks are. If they're some method of scoring and not getting them doesn't prevent you from actual game play then I'd have no problem missing out on them. The same way I don't care if my score is scaled based on my difficulty level. Heck, even make an achievement for doing the game without quicksaving or something. I know hard core gamers like that kind of thing.

[careface312]

If it would make it too easy for you... You. Don't. Have. To. Use. It.
We're not trying to make it easier for you. We're trying to make it easier for those who find it hard. Why would it being easier for me affect you?

I don't even know if I find it hard yet, I've not had opportunity to game of late. I just know I'm likely to find it challenging compared to most because platformers are not my typical genre. I'm a Tycoon, TBS kind of guy. I will fully admit I suck at shooters, platformers, and anything where you need reactions. But every now and again an especially good or interesting entry into that genre will pique my interest. I have to play them on easy and save often.
If the game has no option to account for the fact that I might not be any good at it then it loses a sale. A game that can't cater for varying levels of player skill is badly designed.
As I said, I can't yet say for sure this applies here but clearly a number of people think it does and even if I find I don't need catered for in this regard - they should be.

I'm sorry but this is exactly the train of thought that goes into dumbing down games, some games should be hard. Play a touhou game or even one of the bit trips then try claim this is hard..

Not everything should be accessible to everyone, games are supposed to be challenging.

[targetbsp]

I haven't said I think the game should be dumbed down or easier. I've said it should have the *option* of being easier.

Why would you be opposed to this? Do you lack the will power to avoid easy mode if the option exists or something? Why does how someone else wants to experience a game affect how you experience it?

[careface312]

I'm not just talking about this game in particular, I'm talking about the industry as a whole.

I don't give a crap how people play single player games, people moaning about them being too hard so we end up with easier ones in the future is what bothers me.

[targetbsp]

I intend to play the new Batman game on easy and based on the prequel I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. I presume you're going to play on hard? Are you going to lose sleep over the fact some of us aren't challenging ourselves as much as you?

Chuck me a TBS and I'll play it on hardest. It doesn't bother me that other people will play it on easy. I'm just glad they get to enjoy experiencing it.

[careface312]

You're not asking for a slight change in this genre though, you are asking for the absolutely massive change of rewinding when you screwed up. A puzzle/platformer game without the risk of dying is just stupid frankly.

It isn't the same as giving some bad guys more heatlh in a action game.

[inspiral66]

To get back to BTM, I can see both sides of the argument for including a checkpoint system (let's forget rewind, it ain't gonna happen). But really, I don't see how a simple checkpoint halfway through a level would make it "too easy". It would simply be a convenience thing. I can think of a couple of places in the game where I had to grind my teeth after dying near to the end and realising I would have to start over. Sure, the levels are short and once you've developed the knack most of the tasks aren't too difficult, but even so it can get a bit irritating when, for example, you're trying to get all the stars or the special block on the Mama levels and a damn block doesn't break when you headbutt it and suddenly it's game over....a hundred times over! :)

[Sparkey]

I haven't said I think the game should be dumbed down or easier. I've said it should have the *option* of being easier.

Why would you be opposed to this? Do you lack the will power to avoid easy mode if the option exists or something? Why does how someone else wants to experience a game affect how you experience it?

You play a game with the limitations it offers to try and beat it. You don't arbitrarily impose limitations yourself. If you did, you might as well play it with one arm tied behind your back and the screen upside down.

I don't even know if I find it hard yet, I've not had opportunity to game of late.

You haven't even played it yet and you're already demanding crutches. Maybe this isn't the game for you. Go play the game first and then come back to talk about it so you at least know what you're talking about.

To get back to BTM, I can see both sides of the argument for including a checkpoint system (let's forget rewind, it ain't gonna happen). But really, I don't see how a simple checkpoint halfway through a level would make it "too easy".

I don't see a problem with checkpoints halfway through some of the (esp. longer) levels at all, my issue is just with quicksaves and rewinds.

[targetbsp]

You play a game with the limitations it offers to try and beat it. You don't arbitrarily impose limitations yourself. If you did, you might as well play it with one arm tied behind your back and the screen upside down.


So if a game has difficulty levels, you would choose easy even though you want a hard game?



You haven't even played it yet and you're already demanding crutches. Maybe this isn't the game for you. Go play the game first and then come back to talk about it so you at least know what you're talking about.


Right from the start I said I hadn't played the game enough to determine whether I need help and was merely arguing the point for those who are asking for it. This in response to an earlier post that people are against (post 5) providing a quick save system. I can see why some people would be for it. I can see why some people wouldn't need it. But I cannot comprehend why someone would be against it. People here sure have certainly proved that earlier poster right though!!

Specifically, my experience of the game so far is from the Tech Demo back when it was out. I haven't got time to game for a bit unfortunately. :(

[Dippy11]

The lack of any rewind or undo feature is the reason I stopped playing this game after only a few hours total. I like the game, but it requires frequent trial & error. Unfortunately trial & error means making mistakes and having to redo everything up to that point makes it tedious. If I'm going to experience tedium, it had better be for something productive; not for a video game.

It's too bad, because otherwise it's actually a very good casual game. I definitely don't regret the purchase or anything, it's just that there's so much entertainment out there these days. I can't keep up with all of it and so I must be picky.

[Idolon]

Now, I agree that a full restart is a good way to make players think things through (in most cases), but any sort of checkpoint system would be very beneficial in the case of action sequences.

Later levels usually have parts that require precise timing, and failure results in death. I've had many situations where I've pretty much finished the level, only to just touch a slime or not perfectly time a certain jump. Suddenly SHWOOOOOP let's do the level one more time! For this very reason I am stuck on level 34, which I got to the end of on my first try to die on the last lava drop.

I would be completely in favor of quicksaves that come with penalties (no BTMs or stars) or set checkpoints in the later levels. Personally, I think a lack of them currently is a case of bad level design.

Also, a note to hardcore gamers: Remember that while old games were defining the way games today are made, they were also experiments, and not necessarily the "correct" formula to make all games. That's not to say they were "incorrect" either! After all, there is no "correct" way to make art.

[Raszlo]

Actually just going to the exit is the game's easy mode, chests and stars are higher difficulties :P

[WhoShotVR]

This issue is ridiculous. Adding a quicksave to BTM won't make it any easier. BTM is a jigsaw puzzle. Figure out the order in which to do something and you've solved the puzzle. I, like the original poster, am currently frustrated with the lack of a quicksave or checkpoint feature. The game is fabulous, and the aha moments I've already experienced in 22 levels have been incredibly rewarding. What isn't rewarding is solving one puzzle only to lose all my progress on the next, wholly unrealted section.

A perfect example is the level with the iron and copper ore: You begin in the middle, and there are four sections around the outside. Each section is an individual puzzle which provides resources to access the other sections. Solive Puzzle A, you'll have the tools to get to Puzzle B, but the two puzzles aren't interconnected. I solved Puzzle A a half dozen times in that level, just to get to Puzzles B and C, each which had their own inevitable trial and error.

It's like doing the edges of a jigsaw only to have someone undo you work because you tried to put together two pieces that didn't fit. I'm loving this game, but I'm not loving that it's so discouraging of experimentation. This isn't a challenge issue, as it doesn't help you solve puzzles. It just prevents you from solving the same puzzle over and over again.

EDIT: And since achievments are all the rage, you could reward players for finishing levels without quicksaving.

[abort_user]

yeah. there have been a few levels ive had to repeat (some requiring timing or some that are lengthy). but it will only be one part of the level that gives me problems. the rest of the level just becomes annoying to repeat over and over and over....

[careface312]

BTM is a jigsaw puzzle.

I'm sorry but no it isn't, why does everyone forget to mention the platformer side of this game? This isn't Toki Tori where you just do A, B, C in that order and the levels done.

By your logic every game is a jigsaw puzzle.

Lets just add auto respawn to all future games.

[Raszlo]

Looks like BTM is based more on Boulder Dash and Tetris than on Minecraft ;) The moments when the stone near the end killed you and you had to replay the whole level, or getting to ridiculous score on tetris and then the line block refused to come ;p

[Idolon]

Here's something about level design I wanted to bring up.

With every danger, the player will either pass or fail. Suppose upon every failure the level is reset for simplicity's sake. There is a probability for each danger: For x number of times that the player tries, how many times will they pass? This probability would be shown as a fraction:

__Pass__
Attempts

For example, if the player will theoretically fail for every time they pass, it would be 1/2, or 50%. Now, why do I bring this up? This can be used to calculate the overall difficulty of a level (as compared to others).

Suppose you find the pass/attempt ratio of every danger. If you take all of these fractions and multiply them together, you will get the theoretical probability of the player passing the level. For example, a level that has a danger with a 1/2 chance of passing, a danger with a 1/3 chance of passing, and a danger with a 3/4 chance of passing. The level will have a 1/8 chance of being passed. This means you can expect your player in a perfect world to fail 7 times before passing in this particular level. In the real world, players will obviously fail more or less times than this, but this gives us an approximate figure.

Now, here is another example. Suppose this is a list of pass/attempt ratios of each danger in the level.

1/8
3/10
2/7
5/11
1/20

This would be a very, very difficult level. The chances of passing are 3/12320, meaning you can expect the average player to fail in excess of 4100 times before succeeding, and therefore should probably never ever be made. I'm just using this extreme example to make a point.

Now, what effect would a checkpoint have on this level? Let's say we stuck it in here:

1/8
3/10
2/7
=CHECKPOINT=
5/11
1/20

Now let's separate the level into two groups: pre-checkpoint and post-checkpoint. The chance of passing the pre-checkpoint portion is 3/280, or about 92 failures per pass. The chance of passing the post-checkpoint portion are 1/44. Since the post-checkpoint portion does not depend on the first portion's passing for every trial, we can simply add the number of approximate failures of each portion to get our total probability of passing the level. As a result, we can expect the player to fail ~136 times before passing, as opposed to the original ~4100.

Now, let's suppose each trial of the level took 10 seconds. 136 failures * 10 seconds = 1360 seconds, or 22m 40s. 4100 failures * 10 seconds = 41000, or 11h 23m 20s. This is a difference of 11h 40s. Note that these calculations do not take into account trials that do not reset on failure, or the fact that trials will have different lengths of time.

I hope you can see why a checkpoint would be a good idea in this case. Checkpoints aren't always a good idea, but they generally lower the frustration much more than they lower the actual difficulty.

Also, be sure to check my math. ;)

[Raszlo]

While I don't really see a need for implementation of checkpoints in the game, I Would love to see new 'respawn' block for the custom maps in the editor. Creator could set how many retries are possible (0 by default which would be infinite). Upon death there would be robot explosion and then effect like on leaving the workshop with spawning on the respawn block. The blocks carried should be unaffected by this action.

[inspiral66]

@idolon, that's a considered bit of math there, but I think we need to take into account that making a player replay those earlier difficult section makes him or her a better player, so something that once felt incredibly hard to begin with becomes almost second nature. Thus, as we progress and unlock levels, the game's designers can assume the player has reached a certain standard of ability and create subsequent levels accordingly. Of course we all have our limitations. i.e. if I compare myself to some of my friends I'm better than C but nowhere near as good as A. Having said that, I am in favour of a checkpoint system. A simple checkpoint - one per level - would make the game accessible to more people. And surely that's a good thing?

[Idolon]

The math isn't exact, but the point still stands: any form of checkpoint/save will reduce frustration more than it reduces difficulty, and that in my mind is an improvement.

[peter tron]

look, i've read through this thread and i have taken in both sides.

i myself am in favour of some form of quicksave/checkpoint system.
anything, one per level, having to earn it, anything!
something needs to be there.

what winds me up is when others that oppose checkpoints/quicksaves somehow think that they make the game easier.

how is that even possible?
i mean, really think about that!

i have also noticed that those in opposition seem to be completely ignoring the fact that some people have VARYING DEGREES OF SKILL.

this is called being human, it is quite normal.

if you had a checkpoint before a nasty 'pixel perfect' jump, it wouldn't suddenly reduce the difficulty, would it?
it would still be as hard as it was before.

i don't feel having to go back to the beginning to replay all the other traps/puzzles that you know off by heart and could do blindfolded is helping to improve your skill to deal with the impending difficult section.

it's tedious-you know how to do it-WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN??

look, it's a no-brainer:

checkpoints/quicksaves CANNOT make a game easier, but they do make a game more bearable when having to deal with a tough section.
a player should not be penalised by being made to go back to the beginning, just because they don't possess the same skill set as those "elitists".

it's not the difficulty that's the real problem, it's the tedium of repetition.

oh yeah, i grew up in the early 80's when games were really tough. no quicksaves then, hah!

what i'm saying is:

i knew what it was like then, so elitists should respect my background.
i survived through the 80's gaming culture, and i don't wish to go back to those stressful, turbulent times of ridiculous playability factors and non loading multi-load levels due to misaligned azimuth heads on yer spectrum 48k cassette recorder!!!

(of course, there was LOADS of good times too, don't get me wrong!)

[inspiral66]

Well said.

[peter tron]

;)

i mean, really. somebody's got to tell these arrogant people.

[Vyrastas]

look, i've read through this thread and i have taken in both sides.

i myself am in favour of some form of quicksave/checkpoint system.
anything, one per level, having to earn it, anything!
something needs to be there.

what winds me up is when others that oppose checkpoints/quicksaves somehow think that they make the game easier.

Took the words out of my mouth. I just started playing this game recently, and once I got a goodly way into it, kept thinking there should be some kind of checkpoint or 1-2 move rewind or something. Redoing everything because you're short one block at the end is not fun or challenging. It's just a waste of time. The argument that a checkpoint/rewind makes the game easier holds no water. It's still just as hard. Adding that feature just removes some of the repetition that some of us find pointless. The repetition doesn't make you a better gamer, you're not building up FPS skills or hand/eye coordination or muscle memory... you're just mindlessly placing puzzle blocks that you've memorized positions for.

I grew up gaming in the 80s too. I love a challenge as much as anyone and when I like a game I go the extra mile to master it. This is a decent game and I like the puzzles, but the repetition of trial and error here is just not fun, regardless of the challenge.

[k4ever]

Gaming has changed enormously over the past two decades. I can remember the days when you loaded games from a cassette and had three lives to complete it. Saves? What are those? And they were expensive. I could only afford a new game on my pocket money once a month! And if you got stuck you had to hope one of the few gaming mags would publish a walkthrough.

*sighs* Those were the bad old days! :)

Thankfully we now have saves, quicksaves, checkpoints, we have regular updates and patches, and walkthroughs on YouTube. The gaming community no longer comprises teenage diehards and we can buy our games for a couple of quid and then have it squirted down the phone lines to our computers. This is all for the better. In no way is this worse. Blocks That Matter is an exceptionally good puzzle platformer and I've recommended it to lots of people, but even I wonder why the devs are holding out against installing a checkpoint system when so many want it. If it's because the coding would be a nightmare or cause problems on some PCs, I can sympathise. But if it's because they think the game will be less pure or somehow less honest to its roots, i.e. block games from the 80s and 90s, then I think they're making a mistake. It's not about spponfeeding gamers and making things easy, it's about opening games up to everyone.

Here's something about level design I wanted to bring up.

With every danger, the player will either pass or fail. Suppose upon every failure the level is reset for simplicity's sake. There is a probability for each danger: For x number of times that the player tries, how many times will they pass? This probability would be shown as a fraction:

__Pass__
Attempts

For example, if the player will theoretically fail for every time they pass, it would be 1/2, or 50%. Now, why do I bring this up? This can be used to calculate the overall difficulty of a level (as compared to others).

Suppose you find the pass/attempt ratio of every danger. If you take all of these fractions and multiply them together, you will get the theoretical probability of the player passing the level. For example, a level that has a danger with a 1/2 chance of passing, a danger with a 1/3 chance of passing, and a danger with a 3/4 chance of passing. The level will have a 1/8 chance of being passed. This means you can expect your player in a perfect world to fail 7 times before passing in this particular level. In the real world, players will obviously fail more or less times than this, but this gives us an approximate figure.

Now, here is another example. Suppose this is a list of pass/attempt ratios of each danger in the level.

1/8
3/10
2/7
5/11
1/20

This would be a very, very difficult level. The chances of passing are 3/12320, meaning you can expect the average player to fail in excess of 4100 times before succeeding, and therefore should probably never ever be made. I'm just using this extreme example to make a point.

Now, what effect would a checkpoint have on this level? Let's say we stuck it in here:

1/8
3/10
2/7
=CHECKPOINT=
5/11
1/20

Now let's separate the level into two groups: pre-checkpoint and post-checkpoint. The chance of passing the pre-checkpoint portion is 3/280, or about 92 failures per pass. The chance of passing the post-checkpoint portion are 1/44. Since the post-checkpoint portion does not depend on the first portion's passing for every trial, we can simply add the number of approximate failures of each portion to get our total probability of passing the level. As a result, we can expect the player to fail ~136 times before passing, as opposed to the original ~4100.

Now, let's suppose each trial of the level took 10 seconds. 136 failures * 10 seconds = 1360 seconds, or 22m 40s. 4100 failures * 10 seconds = 41000, or 11h 23m 20s. This is a difference of 11h 40s. Note that these calculations do not take into account trials that do not reset on failure, or the fact that trials will have different lengths of time.

I hope you can see why a checkpoint would be a good idea in this case. Checkpoints aren't always a good idea, but they generally lower the frustration much more than they lower the actual difficulty.

Also, be sure to check my math. ;)

look, i've read through this thread and i have taken in both sides.

i myself am in favour of some form of quicksave/checkpoint system.
anything, one per level, having to earn it, anything!
something needs to be there.

what winds me up is when others that oppose checkpoints/quicksaves somehow think that they make the game easier.

how is that even possible?
i mean, really think about that!

i have also noticed that those in opposition seem to be completely ignoring the fact that some people have VARYING DEGREES OF SKILL.

this is called being human, it is quite normal.

if you had a checkpoint before a nasty 'pixel perfect' jump, it wouldn't suddenly reduce the difficulty, would it?
it would still be as hard as it was before.

i don't feel having to go back to the beginning to replay all the other traps/puzzles that you know off by heart and could do blindfolded is helping to improve your skill to deal with the impending difficult section.

it's tedious-you know how to do it-WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN??

look, it's a no-brainer:

checkpoints/quicksaves CANNOT make a game easier, but they do make a game more bearable when having to deal with a tough section.
a player should not be penalised by being made to go back to the beginning, just because they don't possess the same skill set as those "elitists".

it's not the difficulty that's the real problem, it's the tedium of repetition.

oh yeah, i grew up in the early 80's when games were really tough. no quicksaves then, hah!

what i'm saying is:

i knew what it was like then, so elitists should respect my background.
i survived through the 80's gaming culture, and i don't wish to go back to those stressful, turbulent times of ridiculous playability factors and non loading multi-load levels due to misaligned azimuth heads on yer spectrum 48k cassette recorder!!!

(of course, there was LOADS of good times too, don't get me wrong!)

Nuff said! lol

Actually, I would like to put my 2 cents regarding the "hardcore gaming community". Im 32 and have been playing videogames since my cousin got his atari 130XE, and then after my cheap dad bought me an atari 2600, while my neighbour was already playing in his godly NES. From that time, till the PS1 came out, one didnt have too many great games released all at once every month. I was a kid and had all the time in the world to play videogames AND to go through all those excruciating, stressful game segments where one error you made got you killed, and either it was game over, or you will have to replay the whole level again. Now not only I dont have that available time to play games since I have a family, a job, etc ... BUT theres also hundreds of games out there that are really good ( the so called INDIE boom ). Why would I spend hours and hours on a game trying to finish a couple of levels, when I could have played another game and finished the whole thing in the same time? When I was a kid I wanted to finish all my games 100% and it didnt matter if I wasnt having fun playing it trying to achieve that. Now I want to have fun everytime I play a game, so by not adding a checkpoint feature in BTM the devs are just being somehow hard on people like myself.

The thing is that I like myself to be challenged and still have a lil bit of that 80s kid in myself that make me push myself into a difficult portion of the game in order to complete it and feel good about it .... thats my reward. Others may not feel that way and may opt to stop playing the game. I understand their point of view and somehow include myself in that group. I already made a thread about how I love this game, but its just this checkpoint issue that stopped me for giving this game a perfect score.

[Waypoint]

Eh. Toki Tori's puzzle system was designed around "can't take it back" mechanics. The tools were unrecoverable, you had one chance to freeze monsters in place down to half-block accuracy, monsters had to be beaten to key points before they blocked you off and manipulated around tricky obstacles, and levels tended to be longer.

BTM's system is already lenient as hell. You usually have an overabundance of resources, almost all misplaced blocks can be reclaimed without trouble so long as you exercise a modicum of foresight, monsters are rarely more than a mild annoyance, the few times you need to move them around they err on the side of status quo and don't walk off edges, Extreme Temperature was about the only really difficult platforming test in the game, and most of the trickier "you have one shot" timing gimmicks are in short levels. A rewind just isn't worth the trouble to implement.

The other thing about rewind/checkpoint systems is that the game tends to be normalized around its extensive use. Like, every time. Toki Tori was aggressive and brutal in how many ways you could blow it. Modern FPSes are designed around thirty-second chunks that you're barely mechanically capable of passing on an individual basis with perfect aim, extensive foreknowledge of enemy positions and scripting, and a tailwind of luck to boot. BTM was a really relaxed game that generally speaking wasn't really trying to eat your face, even when you were being chased by a giant slime that was trying to eat your face. The levels were designed to be reasonable to go through in one go. I get the feeling if they included a rewind, the latter half of the game would've looked a lot more like Extreme Temperature; and while it was fun as a one-off optional bout of masochism, we really didn't need a game's worth of it.

[Shad0WeN]

^^ I agree that a rewind system is not critical in the base game, however a few of the community made levels I tried were big and could have used it.