This seems suspiciously like a “save game” feature. Many games even auto-save which functions suspiciously like what they are describing as a “trigger point”.
While I am sure this is new and innovative, it still reminds me of when pyramid schemes mostly converted to MLM terminology. I had a friend that tried to convince me that MLM wasn’t a pyramid. So, I had him draw their sales hierarchy on a sheet of paper for me…
Yes. And this description gives me Alone in the Dark (2007) vibes: they explicitly stylized chapters and subchapters as episodes on dvd. Would they make something original to build a game around this idea? Would it be linear-only, for games like TLOU with limited choices? Or it’s just about patenting everything that’s not nailed down?
I think it would only stand out if you would be able to rewind and passively watch the in-engine recording of your whole previous gameplay (like in cybersports, or clip editors in some games), with an option to jump in at some sections. But it’s a little too much to implement smoothly, having no reason.
By pure chance, I am watching Edge of Tomorrow as we type. (It’s a Tom Cruise time loop movie, if you haven’t seen it.)
A game with a story line built around that concept would be very interesting, for sure. However, the old Sierra adventure games came to mind, specifically Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, where you just had to keep trying different things until you didn’t die. It was fun back in the day, but it got old really quick.
Implemention in a sports game is a cool idea, though.
Returnal
Yeah. I was just thinking that they were describing rogue like games.
Deathloop
It’s not good but it’s the same core idea.
Many emulators have been doing something like this for quite a while. Its called a “saved state.” In some cases, a saved state can introduce bugs into the game play and mess up your progression, but that is just in emulation.
Hell, Nintendo has this on their Switch online emulator. Are they going to have to remove that from NSO because Sony patented it?
Nintendo did it on the wii
They did, but that isn’t really relevant to the discussion. The Wii Virtual Console is discontinued and technically doesn’t have live support from Nintendo like the Switch and NSO currently. If Sony somehow did get a patent for save states in games, I don’t think it would retroactively apply to the Wii.
And? Sony has patented their way of doing it, big deal if it’s been done elsewhere. It isn’t something PlayStation games can do easily so they’re building a solution.
This article isn’t saying this is some groundbreaking discovery of technology or something, nor is it a press release/announcement.
The points you make are the exact reason why people are looking at this patent in a funny way.
What they are describing in the patent is basically a save game or checkpoints for subchapters in a game. This is not innovative or new and that is the problem. You can’t patent something that can already be considered public domain or common practice.
It’s very much a big deal if this has been done somewhere else. The patent is obscure enough to look unique but it common enough to start years long legal battles.
On reading the patent, it is specifically referencing streamed game checkpoints. That is, believe it or not, very different than save games stored locally. Still, I find it hard to believe that NVidia, Google or Nintendo wouldn’t have a patent for that already. If not, it may still be considered common use.
The devil is in the details for this issue. Is it really a new thing or is it “reverse” patent trolling?
This is a big deal as it could be that Sony is attempting patent trolling on the save game feature.
yeah this can only work if implemented by the devs. The only reason this can be done for some older emulated games is that there is only a megabyte or two needed to capture the state of the entire system. Not several gigabytes.
I was under the assumption the collections that utilize this system do it by just saving the inputs and timestamps and simulate them as such rather than understanding the entire whole state. I’m not sure how it works with non-seeded elements
I do agree with you about the dev focus. It would be way more complex even though if feasible if you can simulate without it graphically but you I can’t imagine it just being a system similar to recording or achievements
that only really works with deterministic systems though. You could do that with a 6502 or simple systems because you could perfectly predict what the state of the system would be in just by replaying inputs. everything up to predicting all cache misses.
consider a badly written game on a modern console (remember that save states should work for any game) in which physics is tied to framerate. Follow the chain… framerate depends on system speed… which, indirectly depends on the ambient temperature (a console running in a hot climate would throttle earlier than one running in an air conditioned cool room). And because modern systems execute more than one process, it also depends on what else is running (were you downloading a game in the background, slowing down the game ever so slightly?) or unpredictable things such as interrupts on certain system timers. And the list goes on and on. Even if the game didn’t have physics depending on framerate, differing deltaTime on each frame means different floating point rounding errors happen, which could accumulate over time.
So in this case, replaying inputs does not get you the exact state. you were in. there are just too many variables.
No game should save gigabytes. Even megabytes can be too much. If the game is very linear a save could mean a single number. Even if it has character cosmetic customization and a convoluted plot with lots of choices it’s still usually in the kilobyte range. The larger saves (overall) would be sports games like rally racing where the game needs to be able to provide a thorough replay of every race.
system state is not the same as a save file. System state is the cpu registers, the process’ entire memory space (because you don’t know what the game might do at any point) gpu context, etc.
edit: example: the save file for older games was measured in bytes. System state is much larger han that. It contains everything not just what the developer decided to allow you to save.
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My BG3 saves are massive. Not at the PC but very much in the Gigabytes
I just had a revolutionary idea: what if every time you reach a new point in a game, it showed you a certain sequence of icons related to that point in the game. Then, if you ever want to play that part of the game again you can just insert that same sequence of icons into an option of the game and it’ll play from there.
Then people could also share the sequences they discover with their friends, allowing said friends to skip part of the game if they want to.
So many people did not read the sarcasm from this lol
I was afraid I was too old and people wouldn’t even know games used to do this.
Just got flashbacks of Lemmings from my childhood when reading this comment, lol
The OG Crash bandicoot had this as memory cards were not widely used at the time. So you would write down the sequence to get back to that section.
That’s how our games worked in the 80’s. Most of them used passwords. I remember one that used a tic-tac-toe looking thing where you entered a combination of dots to load your game. I think it may have been Mega Man. Zelda was the first one I remember that actually saved your game. There was a battery in the cartridge.
Mystical Ninja for SNES did this
Another software patent that no one should respect because it does something that was done 30 years ago.
This sounds emulator savestates with more steps.
New Sony Patent Will Let You Replay A Game From Any Point Possible
Possible points: beginning of the game
Ohhh they’re doing an apple and inventing F5 + F8 save states
That’s not what the article says. This is basically a save game for every-ish moment in the gameplay + a facility to launch the game at the scene you’re watching a video of, which is massive amounts of data + progress sync, so if they figured out how to do that at scale, it’s legit innovation.
So isn’t this like what stadia wanted to do with its integration with YouTube where you could watch someone’s letsplay and there’d be a button that could take you to where they were so you can experience it or see if you can do better?
How were they able to patent it if something like this was already described by another company years ago?
Not enough info in the article to tell the difference, I’d say. Maybe because this should apply to your local games? IDK
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So… they’re inventing level codes you can re-enter to start from there.
I’m massively impressed by Sony, clearly revolutionary technology right there.
If you can encode your entire game progress into that level code, then it’s just that, yep.
Yes, that’s why NES games sometimes had 50 character codes.
Yes, NES games. Now try that with Baldur’s Gate.
To me it sounds more like hitting f8 reload but being able to choose the f5 quicksave from any point in the game, not just the points that you remembered to save or your most recent f5?
did they grant a patent for a mission select screen
… sooooo … chapters?
I think this is more granular than that. More like; pages, paragraphs, or even sentences than chapters.
Sounds cool and all but I heavily doubt they would do the work to implement it like that. Replay value doesn’t add market value in the view of the producers. So there is not much money to be made from the large amount of work this requires.
Of course if they ever do it, feel free to correct me, people from the future
The patent shows that the save states stream through an API, it’s likely this isn’t for local save but for people streaming games. It will open streaming possibilities like letting audiences pick up exactly where the person they’re watching is, or other audient interactions like “beat this section quicker than I did.”
In that case there is little difference to just sharing a save file, which everybody can already do. If this is everything that the patent covers, then I’m against them having a patent for it. That idea is so generic and nothing somebody should be allowed to have control over
I don’t disagree as iirc the Stadia had a “Share State” feature that isn’t a far cry from this - though that didn’t rely on trigger points.
Sounds like a billion save files taking up space
