Auto Save feature is good not bad... Read on.

[yeti]

I think that the Auto-Save Feature is purely part of the new Functionality...

I think that it might be due to the fact that the garage is now huge and holding all the memory of all the cars and settings in it is impossible on the PS2 (Especially when attempting to render the Ring!)

Therefore I don't think that it's a new feature it's a necessary feature for some of the other benefits... If they hadn't used this then I don't think you'd have your 1000 car garage limit and it would be at 100 again... which would you prefer?

Also I suspect that it's part of the security to make sure that your current game can't be tampered with... or cheated on for Online accessibility...

So in short I think that we all need to stop complaining about it accept it as a small downside to a major upside and congratulate PD for increasing the garage size and including huge tracks such as the Ring and Le Mans.

C.

 

[yeti]

Any more comments on this auto saving feature?

I personally think this is why it was made.

C.

 

[strik3out]

I think that the Auto-Save Feature is purely part of the new Functionality...

I think that it might be due to the fact that the garage is now huge and holding all the memory of all the cars and settings in it is impossible on the PS2 (Especially when attempting to render the Ring!)

Therefore I don't think that it's a new feature it's a necessary feature for some of the other benefits... If they hadn't used this then I don't think you'd have your 1000 car garage limit and it would be at 100 again... which would you prefer?

Also I suspect that it's part of the security to make sure that your current game can't be tampered with... or cheated on for Online accessibility...

So in short I think that we all need to stop complaining about it accept it as a small downside to a major upside and congratulate PD for increasing the garage size and including huge tracks such as the Ring and Le Mans.

C.

Yeah but it's not online...

 

[Event]

I think its there so you can't just buy a car and take it for a spin and taken photos. You have to earn or permanently buy the car in order to take pictures or test it out.

That's just my opinoin.

 

[ragundy]

That's right.

 

[sexydawg]

I think you're probably right... maybe this is a holdover from the cancelled online functionality.

 

[The Locust]

Why are you guys so peeved about auto-save? Just enjoy the game, and stop looking for loopholes.

And if what you said was true, that it aids in the ability to load 1000 cars, so be it! 1000 car limit is an excellent idea, even though no one really needs 1000 cars in there.

But we're talkin about wants, not needs. =)

 

[feldon23]

As long as there aren't any bugs in it.

If there was Autosave in Gran Turismo 2, everyone here would have committed suicide. For those not familiar, if the right sequence of events happened while you were racing and/or testing cars in GT2, you'd come back to the Garage and all the cars would be gone!!!!

Autosave with no ability to configure it and no ability to simply leave our memory card unplugged is stupid because now if you want to buy a car just to try it out, you have to shut off the PS2, go into memory manager, clone your save to another memory card, reboot, load up your Testing save, do all the experimenting you want, and if you don't like it, reboot and load up your Original save.

In GT3, you simply pulled the memory card out of the slot.

 

[Zardoz]

Therefore I don't think that it's a new feature it's a necessary feature for some of the other benefits... If they hadn't used this then I don't think you'd have your 1000 car garage limit and it would be at 100 again... which would you prefer?C.

Well, to tell you the truth, if this is the case, then some might feel that the titanic car list, so full of cars that most of us have absolutely no interest in, is not a killer feature but instead is a problem that needed a solution.

 

[yeti]

Yeah but it's not online...

No **** Sherlock!!

I think you're probably right... maybe this is a holdover from the cancelled online functionality.

I definitely think that this is part of it...

I'm pretty sure that the PS2 can't hold all of the car data in memory when trying to render the big tracks...

So you remove Autosave and you remove Nurburgring...

C.

 

[Event]

As long as there aren't any bugs in it.

If there was Autosave in Gran Turismo 2, everyone here would have committed suicide.

Autosave is stupid because now if you want to buy a car to try it out, you have to shut off the PS2, go into memory manager, clone your save to another memory card, reboot, load up your Testing save, do all the experimenting you want, and if you don't like it, reboot and load up your Original save.

In GT3, you simply pulled the memory card out of the slot.

That's what its there for. PD wants to discourage that. KY doesn't want you to just buy a car, take pictures, and then load up your game again without the car. It makes it more challenging.

 

[linoleum]

I doubt it has anything to do with taking pictures. Prologue had the autosave as well, and no pictures were taken there.....

 

[sUn]

GT4 is the best game I've ever played.

 

[the Interceptor]

I don't think that auto-save is a necessity. If the Playstation had trouble keeping the garage and what not in its memory, it could reload data when necessary. That doesn't mean it needs to save data all the time, which is annoying for the time it takes and for the disadvantages it brings.

To sum it up: I still don't like it, and I don't believe it had to be there. 👎

Cheers,
the Interceptor

 

[LaBounti]

I love the feature. I think people over react to it just because PD wants people to play the game the way it was meant to be played. What they should have done was prevent the quick money tricks. I have not sold one car and i have over 100k without reapeating races for money. Every car i baught i used for that race and some i b-spec'd my way to victory.

The early races are so easy you could win with almost anything in the sunday cup. I beat all the races with a 67hp Be-1.

Its a great addition and i never have to save.

"Autosave with no ability to configure it and no ability to simply leave our memory card unplugged is stupid because now if you want to buy a car just to try it out, you have to shut off the PS2, go into memory manager, clone your save to another memory card, reboot, load up your Testing save, do all the experimenting you want, and if you don't like it, reboot and load up your Original save."

Thats hilarious, Its not stupid, whats stupid is the person that has to do all that just to play the game

 

[sexydawg]

I'm pretty sure that the PS2 can't hold all of the car data in memory when trying to render the big tracks...

So you remove Autosave and you remove Nurburgring...

C.

That can't be it... the save file is what... 1.5 megs? That is a monumentally small amount of memory in the grand scheme of things. The car data is not that much of a space hog. Having this in memory as opposed to the card would not make much of a difference.

Also, it is SAVING all the time -- if this was just to conserve memory on the PS2, couldn't it just load all the time? Why would it save?

 

[sukerkin]

I would guess that Yeti has the right of it here.

As soon as I heard there was an AutoSave 'feature' that seemed to operate at every opportunity (i.e. before switches between screens etc) I thought that either there was sloppy coding at work (from PD ... surely not ) and/or the game pushed the memory management beyond it's limits.

Essentially, the PS2 is emptying it's memory bucket prior to loading the next barrel of GT4 goodness and, in order to make sure that nothing is lost, it has no option but dump it to the NVRAM.

It's a poor solution but I guess the chaps at PD didn't have much option given the hardware platforms limitations. We'll just have to live with it ... like we have a choice ROFL!

 

[f1king]

"Auto Save feature is good not bad... "
I agree it is good leave it at that I dont see what all this is about.

 

[sexydawg]

Well, to tell you the truth, if this is the case, then some might feel that the titanic car list, so full of cars that most of us have absolutely no interest in, is not a killer feature but instead is a problem that needed a solution.

Why is this a bad thing? Hell, I think am wondering why they don't throw in more models with just a badge and stat change...

 

[yeti]

That can't be it... the save file is what... 1.5 megs? That is a monumentally small amount of memory in the grand scheme of things. The car data is not that much of a space hog. Having this in memory as opposed to the card would not make much of a difference.

Also, it is SAVING all the time -- if this was just to conserve memory on the PS2, couldn't it just load all the time? Why would it save?

Remember that that 1.5 Megs is a save file... this more than likely is a compressed save format... uncompressed this could quite easily be to a power of 10 and therefore 15Meg... and a huge portion of memory in a PS2.

Reading direct from the save file and uncompressing it whilst out of races quickly is probably where the real skill has come from with the programming.

C.

 

[sexydawg]

Remember that that 1.5 Megs is a save file... this more than likely is a compressed save format... uncompressed this could quite easily be to a power of 10 and therefore 15Meg... and a huge portion of memory in a PS2.

Reading direct from the save file and uncompressing it whilst out of races quickly is probably where the real skill has come from with the programming.

C.

Good point... how much memory does the PS2 have to begin with?

 

[PhillGuy]

It's too bad it slow the whole gaming experence down.. like the looooong menu loads etc

 

[hooyeah]

if you feel like messing around with a car cant you jsut pull out the memory card? or will the game not run without a memory card...havent tried to yet

 

[hooyeah]

It's too bad it slow the whole gaming experence down.. like the looooong menu loads etc

i've never seen it take anymore than 3-5 seconds not that big of a deal

 

[luke1500]

I don't think that auto-save is a necessity. If the Playstation had trouble keeping the garage and what not in its memory, it could reload data when necessary. That doesn't mean it needs to save data all the time, which is annoying for the time it takes and for the disadvantages it brings.

To sum it up: I still don't like it, and I don't believe it had to be there. 👎

Cheers,
the Interceptor

Just to point out that if it just loaded car data when it was needed like you suggested, this would be from the last time that the game was saved. Obviously if you bought a car and then went to use it (needing a load from memory), with no save in between, then you would still only have access to you old list of cars - it would need to save after purchase of each car, as it does in the game.

The only way for the game to store other than the memory card is in the PlayStation's RAM as would usually be the case, but if that is already too full for the car data, then there is no other option I'm afraid.

This would be an explaination for it at least

 

[exhaust_note]

you can turn it off you know...

 

[luke1500]

you can turn it off you know...

You can only restrict it to save only after buying or winning a car, thats what I understand from other threads at least!

 

[syclone538]

So you remove Autosave and you remove Nurburgring...

C.

I would be happy to give up half of the tracks and half of the cars to get rid of autosave. I don't want anyone to force me to play the game the way that they do.

 

[Stune]

I think that the Auto-Save Feature is purely part of the new Functionality...

I think that it might be due to the fact that the garage is now huge and holding all the memory of all the cars and settings in it is impossible on the PS2 (Especially when attempting to render the Ring!)

Therefore I don't think that it's a new feature it's a necessary feature for some of the other benefits... If they hadn't used this then I don't think you'd have your 1000 car garage limit and it would be at 100 again... which would you prefer?

Also I suspect that it's part of the security to make sure that your current game can't be tampered with... or cheated on for Online accessibility...

So in short I think that we all need to stop complaining about it accept it as a small downside to a major upside and congratulate PD for increasing the garage size and including huge tracks such as the Ring and Le Mans.

C.

At last somone with some sense. Can i add here that before in GT games ive been so used to autosave fuctions on other games that a couple of times ive forgetton to save it and lost my whole afternoon or so of hardwork. The autosave is a good idea also if i decided to save it say every hour in previus GT games if a powercut or somthing happened i could stand to loose up to an hours worth of progress now its limeted to one race only

 

[tigre_hobbes]

I don't understand at all.
Autosave is only on US and PAL version am I right?
So the PS2 can manage without autosave in japanese version but can't in other ones