Finishing a level from a loaded state will not mark it as completed

[ioan-chera]

This bug is probably the same as in SpeedFix: saving and loading the game state does not store the player time and level completion. If you finish a level from a saved state, that level will not appear as completed, you'll have to do it all over again without saving. This makes the save/load feature useless. Supaplex would be much more playable if you could save after the more luck-based or frustrating stages. Would it be possible to make saving/loading also store player progress so you can finish loaded maps? Commercial ports like supaplex[dot]me and spin-offs like Elmer Production's Igor allow saving.

[sergiou87]

Hey! 👋

This is not a bug in the speedfix but a feature, as you can read here:

open-supaplex/resources/SPFIX63.DOC

Lines 1486 to 1493 in 53e45e9

	Ctrl-L = Load the snapshot file, written with Ctrl-W.
	The lower right corner of the panel will flash "LD" if there
	were no problems, otherwise it will flash "XX".
	"File does not yet exist" is an example of such a problem.
	It is not possible to complete a level by using this "cheat"
	method: If you want to officially finish a level, you have to
	play it from scratch, without using this snapshot Ctrl-L option!
	See also the command line options "W" and "L" above.

It seems that was a conscious decision to disallow completing levels without playing them entirely. That said, I kind of agree with your reasoning and I don't see the point in 2023 to do such a thing. People can always choose not to save&load if they want to "make it count".

However, right now I can't tell if it's a simple change or if that would have other implications in the behavior of the game 🤔

[ioan-chera]

Most of the game consists of deterministic puzzles which you'll play the same every time, once you figure them out. There are a few "action" maps where you need skill to dodge lots of enemies, where save scumming may ruin the tension, but I think those are a minority. In any case, there are over 1000 maps to play, if not an even larger threshold, and being restricted to retry any of them from scratch can seriously limit one's ability to finish them in a lifetime.

But since you said this was an original intent, then I guess it's up to you if you still consider this ticket valid. I mistakenly thought it's a bug.

[sergiou87]

I'm getting old and losing patience over this kind of thing too 😂 So I think it'd be nice to be able to complete games after saving & loading. I will leave it here tagged as enhancement.