When a game (like "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter") only offers auto saving, how difficult would it be for the developers to provide an upgrade/patch that offers one extra auto save on exiting play ??

Wish I knew... while this is a wonderful game, the lack of saves is spoiling it for me to a degree. When I got back from the Ranch at 11:00 last night, I thought I'd just play until I got sleepy. When I did, I had to keep on playing until I got to an auto-save after a puzzle and had to rush through before I fell asleep. Why do they DO these things?

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter uses Unreal Engine 3 as a game engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_engine_3#Unreal_Engine_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_engine_3#Unreal_Development_Kit

It's possible for a game that uses Unreal Engine 3 to allow you to save anywhere --
For example, the Fable Anniversary Wiki at
http://fable.wikia.com/wiki/Fable_Anniversary
lists the ability to "Save anytime, anywhere, including during quests."

But as far as I can tell, the ability to save anywhere is not the default
for the Unreal Development Kit, and requires extra work.

Here's a website that describes how to incorporate saving into a game.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ConfigSavegameSystem.html
I have no idea how difficult it is for a developer to incorporate saving
with Unreal Engine 3, but it looks non-trivial to me.

It's possible that the developer tried to incorporate saving but the result was unstable, producing bad saves or crashes.
Or the developer may have had some idea about how they wanted people to play the game which did not involve saving anywhere. Or maybe they just didn't think saving anywhere was that important for this type of game, considering how much extra work it would be.

Adding a save anywhere feature to a game after the fact is difficult if not impossible.
You usually end up with something resembling "checkpoints" instead of "save anywhere" saves.

I decided not to buy this game for this very reason.
I'm watching it on you tube instead. What a beautiful game.
The one I'm watching,you can tell the person has played it before.
Some folks are saying that it is only 5 1/2 hours long.
Thanks for the info Jenny.

Cathy

Thanks, Jenny100

So, not much hope of a "game quitting auto save" being forthcoming

Poor Ethan Carter will have to officially go on the back burner for now, then.

From Sad Mad

According to "Stiler" over at the JA forum,

So if you can get that system working for you, you may be able to complete the game using dead bodies and elevators as checkpoints.

That's so good to know. I was actually dreading trying to play tonight even though I think this is such a good game because of the saving issue. I'll give it a try because I did download and install the patches.

Thank you SO much, Jenny100 !! That sounds like really good help

This morning I started at the elevator with a save and played over a hour and didn't get any save. To bad the game looks great and plays good. I just wish there was more saves. Yesterday I played two hours no save. Don't think I will be playing it again. There are certain things you have to do before a save comes on. Mad is going to put it on the back burner and so am I.
Richard

From your post in Discussions, you have downloaded the latest patch since writing this post. Has that helped? It should increase the number of checkpoints.