A tangible mechanism to disable Continues
The change to saves being per-act rather than per-zone is controversial but I can accept that the large span of the zones means that people may want or need to take breaks between acts, and this is reasonably accomodating with respect to crashes as well. However, this does make continues irrelevant. I've heard it argued that Continues are meant to be part of the retro aesthetic, but... y'know, if that's what you're lookin' for, there are better ways to maintain it than that. I'm totally aware the vanilla team has been hashing this out back-and-forth ever since this change, so I don't want to add fuel to the fire without making a solid case. So, as follows:
- This merge request hides continues under saved gameplay scenarioes by default. They still exist in the save file in case this decision gets reversed for a later patch.
- You still visit the Continue screen. However, there are no miniature characters lined up above the waiting sprites, and you are always permitted to press jump and continue fighting. This keeps the pretty visuals and sound of the continue screen present in the gameplay loop for poorly performing players, and prevents you being thrown back to the title screen unless you REALLY want to stop playing for now.
- They are still available in no-saves, and forced in Ultimate mode, in case you somehow bring that into a save file in future versions.
- They can be re-enabled via a MainCfg parameter, the aptly named
useContinues; see continues.soc for a test file. - Getting 50,000 points in NiGHTS may no longer give you a continue when they're not available in the session, but thanks to the NiGHTS bonus, you're still guaranteed an extra life, even without any additional changes in that scene - so you're not losing out on much.
- Once you've collected all the emeralds, Emerald Tokens now give lives instead of continues when the latter isn't in play. They still give score as per their 2.2.0-onwards value in Record Attack, too. It's not quite the 50 rings people have been hankering for, but at least it's worthwhile picking them up at all post-emerald-collection in multiplayer.
- Since the save cards were designed to showcase your lives AND continues at the bottom of them but continues are no longer in session, use the empty space for score instead. This score turns green when you hit MAXSCORE, and is prepended with greyed out zeroes to subtly let you know the miniature goal to achieve if you want to.
Even if you disagree with the decision to disable continues, I would hope that this gets merged with the SOC parameter disabled (so Continues are still available but can be turned off); however, I feel that I've done a reasonable job of maintaining the high quality of presentation and managing the little issues that have arisen due to minor changes adding up between patches.
Also, this may be a little cheesy, but this merge request is dedicated to all hardworking medical professionals everywhere. May they rise up and Continue their arduous task to keep us all safe.