Guild Wars 2

I can’t speak for everyone here if they knew about entering painstaking passwords in old video games with a D-Pad and/or Joystick back in the old days, but Super Adventure Box could greatly benefit with such a feature for saving where you left off with the modern keyboard.

The password system would generate a code after you’ve left the Super Adventure Box without completing the level (It could simply be mailed to the player). The code would contain the necessary information for which checkpoints were completed, which baubles were picked up, enemies/bosses killed, hidden rooms exposed, etc.

I’ve cracked password generators for old video games before, and I was able to find passwords from the internet/usenet days; however, with (what I’m assuming we have) hidden account IDs and Character IDs, it wouldn’t be all too hard to encrypt these passwords to be character specific and prevent cheaters from passing over their near-complete saves to others.

With the said, there could be other neat passwords hidden throughout the Super Adventure Box, such as unlocking a Sound and Music Menu to listen to the music and sound effect in SAB without going to that specific level.

What do you guys think about this Old School solution?

What game had this? The only one that comes to mind right away was Mega Man but all it saved was items retrieved and states completed. The paths can be completed within two hours and that’s collecting all of the baubles.

Stellar idea.

15charrs

What stops you from just sending the password to your friends so they can freeride through the stage? You can’t character-bind the passwords or else you’ll need a needlessly large database to store every character of every account’s SAB standing, if the engine even allows it to be possible.

Ayrilana.1396:

What game had this? The only one that comes to mind right away was Mega Man but all it saved was items retrieved and states completed. The paths can be completed within two hours and that’s collecting all of the baubles.

Many 8-bit and 16-bit games had a password feature. They probably used it to save the cost of having to install an internal battery and writable flash within a cartridge.

MuffinOrama.7531:

What stops you from just sending the password to your friends so they can freeride through the stage? You can’t character-bind the passwords or else you’ll need a needlessly large database to store every character of every account’s SAB standing, if the engine even allows it to be possible.

Each digit (it can be any length), who’s values can go up to, let’s say, 64 (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, symbols, etc) corresponds to a certain item in SAB (Checkpoints, baubles, etc). No need to save passwords on a database since our account/character ID would encrypt the base password, rendering it character bound. All the system has to do is verify that it’s mathematically correct for your character and what you accomplished within the level (the base password). If it isn’t, you’ll get the infamous “wrong password” dialog. Having a password system saves space; hence, giving it another reason why some 8-bit and 16-bit games used it.

Steve Olson.5613:

Ayrilana.1396:

What game had this? The only one that comes to mind right away was Mega Man but all it saved was items retrieved and states completed. The paths can be completed within two hours and that’s collecting all of the baubles.

Many 8-bit and 16-bit games had a password feature. They probably used it to save the cost of having to install an internal battery and writable flash within a cartridge.

What games?

Mega-man, Castelvania, Aladdin, Tetris Blast, etc.

All games that didn’t have auto-save.

Some Gameboy games had those. One just coming to my mind is Rayman…

I would actually love this idea – especially if the passwords were in some kind of glyphs (e.g. New Krytan?) just to fit in the SAB a little bit better.

Except they did not save progress within a level and they were much more complex.

Ayrilana.1396:

What game had this? The only one that comes to mind right away was Mega Man but all it saved was items retrieved and states completed. The paths can be completed within two hours and that’s collecting all of the baubles.

I still have very fond memories of Chip’s Challenge…

Or better yet, let’s say halfway through, or every quarter of a level you get a new flute song unlocked. At the start of each zone you can play that flute song and it will warp you to whatever checkpoint that song is for. You could lock it like current flute songs in that unless you unlock the song it wouldn’t do anything, so that would keep people from giving free rides. Checkpoints would have to work like Trib mode so that just touching a checkpoint doesn’t let the other members just suicide to the further spot.

So basically it would be shortcuts if you are playing solo mode only.

MuffinOrama.7531:

What stops you from just sending the password to your friends so they can freeride through the stage? You can’t character-bind the passwords or else you’ll need a needlessly large database to store every character of every account’s SAB standing, if the engine even allows it to be possible.

Password is binary yes-no to completion of various parts of the level, converted to base 32 (or hexadecimal if short enough)

Then encrypt using hidden character ID