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How do you *suspend/resume* games on PC?

This sounds like a problem that RTX I/O will be able to solve. Instantly loading your game back into the world state saved in a "Game State" config/settings file created when you suspended it seems like a possibility.
 
Honey Bunny said:
What so many are struggling to say is... You can't.
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lol right! And to why you would want to is if it's a game that doesn't save every 5 secs that you are almost through a part that takes a long time and you do not want to do it all again.
Very simple answers here.
 
fran.fernandez said:
Also, in one week or one month i will restart or turn off my PC for sure.
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source.gif
 
What pc games take longer than 5 seconds to fully boot up with an ssd?
This thread is hilarious. I've never heard of some one alt-tab their games for weeks/months and wonder why it won't work...
 
Turn on S3 power state in BIOS (or you don't have to just type "powercfg -a" to the command line to see what is available to you) and then you can use sleep fucntion which shuts down your PC in a way console does it.

Also you can probably....in the future....use VMs for this type of shit. However it's such a miniscule deal in this day and age with fast storage, that I really don't know what is the issue.
 
fran.fernandez said:
Maybe im missing something, Ctrl +Tab is not ideal?
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Yup. PC has a lot of other software that uses RAM, apart from the game you are playing.
Therefore it's pretty impossible to keep track of all that, mostly because video RAM memory controls on GPU are not good enough.
Consoles solve that by reserving a certain amount of RAM/VRAM for game use, no other app can touch it.
PC will never be able to do that. Unless some sort of "GameOS" is invented (Steam wanted to do it, but it seems they failed).
 
I just make the power button hibernate the system and it usually works haven't tried it with really old games though maybe it would give issues there.
 
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TheGreatWhiteShark said:
What you are describing here is xbox's quick resume feature

Basically when you leave a game, a full image of current ram is cached on the ssd, along with some other details.
This way when you reboot the game that image is pulled, and there you go.



microsoft now does it for multiple games and not just one on new xbox, which is great.
how it could be implemented on pc? at a system level, but just think about the bitching of users that discover that their precious gigabytes of ssd storage are "being held captive by some microsoft non-sense they didn't ask for"
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It's called "a fucking quick save".

Fuck this trend of autosaves and checkpoints.
 
Even if you Alt tab the game is still using your resources. Pass on that. PC doesn't support this in general. Emulators can do it but generally it's not a thing. Though on a NVME games load nearly instantly, worst part is all the dev and publisher splash screens before the title.
 
vkbest said:
You don't know how consoles games work
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That's also not generally how pc games work either. Instant save slots generally only exist in retro collections, some indies and emulators. But games like halo mcc? Doom eternal? MHW?
Lol no, auto-saves sure but not save slots.
hemo memo said:
The master race can't do a simple function that the damn Switch has?
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The switch is a portable device, that feature is practically a necessity.
 
We live in a world where our consoles can be turned on with a wireless controller, we no longer have to get up and change our games, games can load so fast I can't even read the loading screen messages etc...

But no... you guys are drawing the line at "suspend and resume is lazy". I don't use the feature myself, but any quality of life feature is welcome in my books and would be nice to have included somehow even if it is on PC.

Omeggos said:
The switch is a portable device, that feature is practically a necessity.
Click to expand...

So is my laptop.
 
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Omeggos said:
That's also not generally how pc games work either. Instant save slots generally only exist in retro collections, some indies and emulators. But games like halo mcc? Doom eternal? MHW?
Lol no, auto-saves sure but not save slots.

The switch is a portable device, that feature is practically a necessity.
Click to expand...

It's a hybrid. Also the 7 years old PS4, XBO consoles have them.
 
So many PC fans lashing out instead of admitting that there's one thing that consoles can do better than PCs. My word. If PCs did have this feature, you guys would be all over it just like console players have been for years. This jealousy is unseemly.

Imagine if consoles had cloud backups and PCs didn't - "Why would you even want a cloud save lol? Just stop being lazy and make your own backup!!"

I would love if Windows implemented a universal "suspend program" feature that would just tuck away any program in its current state and free up your resources. If needed, it could prompt you to hibernate instead of shutting down when a suspension is active. I wouldn't even care if it took some time to resume, the real advantage is just being able to safely get out of the game in two seconds without thinking about it.
 
fran.fernandez said:
I have a gaming PC but never finish a game on it.
One big reason is the, pause/ sleep/ suspend /resume.

Right now i do ctrl + tab, Netflix, youtube... etc. back to game.

Everytime i ctrl+tab back to the game (one day later, one week later) it will have some bugs or crash, 100%.
Need to restart and lost checkpoint.

Also, in one week or one month i will restart or turn off my PC for sure.
Maybe im missing something, Ctrl +Tab is not ideal? I do have a Xbox controller but no desktop shortcut.

Sad, i was playing sunset overdrive last week, back today and load all from way back...
Click to expand...

Why would u want to let a game on for a week just to burn energy? or are you using your pc as heater?
 
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Jeeves said:
So many PC fans lashing out instead of admitting that there's one thing that consoles can do better than PCs. My word. If PCs did have this feature, you guys would be all over it just like console players have been for years. This jealousy is unseemly.

Imagine if consoles had cloud backups and PCs didn't - "Why would you even want a cloud save lol? Just stop being lazy and make your own backup!!"

I would love if Windows implemented a universal "suspend program" feature that would just tuck away any program in its current state and free up your resources. If needed, it could prompt you to hibernate instead of shutting down when a suspension is active. I wouldn't even care if it took some time to resume, the real advantage is just being able to safely get out of the game in two seconds without thinking about it.
Click to expand...

Mmo's have this, rts games have this. Lots of games have it. Some genre's don't for whatever reason. Hardly a feature pc doesn't have.

U also need to realize there are metric ton more PC games then console games on the market, so if you play a certain genre u either ecounter it a lot or u don't. Anyway most games have save solutions anyway and u are done.
 
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Kenpachii said:
Mmo's have this, rts games have this. Lots of games have it. Some genre's don't for whatever reason. Hardly a feature pc doesn't have.

U also need to realize there are metric ton more PC games then console games on the market, so if you play a certain genre u either ecounter it a lot or u don't. Anyway most games have save solutions anyway and u are done.
Click to expand...
It would be nice to have it on the OS level, though, and just have the assurance that you can use the same method to accomplish this with any game.
 
Suspend/Resume is one of the best features that this generation brought. You can be anywhere in any game, turn the system off, and walk away.

You end up with being able to press a single button on your controller, the console and TV both boot up, the TV goes to the correct channel, and then you press one more button on the game tile that's currently running to be immediately where you left off. No loading, no splash screens, nothing.

I can't even get my PC to log into Steam half the time without having to force close and reopen it. Then, it has to restart for an update. Anyone who plays both console and PC can see the truth here.
 
hemo memo said:
It's a hybrid.
Click to expand...
It's a portable with a usb-c based video output.
GametimeUK said:
So is my laptop.
Click to expand...
As is my surface pro. Hence why rather than having it turn off, I have it set to just go into sleep mode while idling. Which isn't too far off from a pause resume feature.

As for a more legitimate answer,i would assume the OP's issues are due to the complicated nature of pc's. Consoles can do these features because they exist as gaming machines whereas pc's have a lot more things running in the background. It honestly doesn't surprise me that a game can be corrupted if you leave it in idle for several days to weeks at a time.
 
DESTROYA said:
You can't press the pause button ?
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One of my favorite uses for suspending is to stop the game during a cutscene when I don't know whether hitting start will pause or skip.

It doesn't take much imagination to see how this could be a convenient feature.
 
Jeeves said:
It would be nice to have it on the OS level, though, and just have the assurance that you can use the same method to accomplish this with any game.
Click to expand...

Devs can do it themselves, they don't because they don't care. Barely a problem to even talk about as loading is so fast these days anyway. And if you gotta walk away or something u can just minimize the game or let the game run while pressing esc in the few games that don't allow you to do it.

Like i said there are so many games on PC with so many different engines and games older than 30 years that nobody cares about even bothering with it. Consoles have a select amount of games that only run on there hardware so its easier to support this way as its more controlled. but that also results in far less games on the platform as result.
 
Allow me to shoot some holes in the collective thinking here. I think most people on either side of the subject are missing some obvious points. The first of these points revolves around game consoles and why they are able to suspend play. Even though a game console is basically a computer in a box, most of that hardware is dedicated solely to gaming. The reason why you can suspend a game and do something else is thanks to a form of containerization that PS4 and XB1 are employing--basically, some amount of CPU and memory are retained for basic OS while the rest are always dedicated to gaming. In this sense, your game container is simply paused or put to sleep. Everything about the state of that container is frozen in memory until activated again.

Compare this to your PC and ask yourself what inside your box is solely dedicated to gaming. None of it. None of it is dedicated to gaming. All of it is general purpose hardware including the GPU. In order for your PC to suspend games just like your console does would imply that a huge chunk of your memory, GPU, and CPU would be frozen while your game is suspended. You might possibly tolerate this for a while until or unless you need that CPU or GPU for some actual work. Or the alternative here might be to write out your game application container's full state in some sort of compressed format that might still require several gigabytes of disk space. Your suspended game would load much like a VM would load, but after 5-40 seconds you would be right where you left off.
 
Kenpachii said:
Devs can do it themselves, they don't because they don't care. Barely a problem to even talk about as loading is so fast these days anyway. And if you gotta walk away or something u can just minimize the game or let the game run while pressing esc in the few games that don't allow you to do it.

Like i said there are so many games on PC with so many different engines and games older than 30 years that nobody cares about even bothering with it. Consoles have a select amount of games that only run on there hardware so its easier to support this way as its more controlled. but that also results in far less games on the platform as result.
Click to expand...
See, I'm not sure if console developers even have to worry about implementing compatibility for this feature. It looks like the OS just takes care of it. I've never heard of a console game that suspends/resumes better or worse than any other console game, so I'm inclined to believe it's not on the devs to implement it. If anyone knows more about if/how console game devs have to worry about supporting this feature, feel free to chime in.
 
Would be nice but would require games be sandboxed or virtualized in some way to isolate just the memory they are using to be dumped.. and it's just not super feasible in general, as games use OS services that other apps use.

But PC games tend to be far more flexible with saves anyways. You can also do stuff like backup auto-saves for games that try to stop save-scumming lol
 
Arun1910 said:
"All" - Stop generalising.

I have a PS4 Pro and use the standby function a lot, it is quick, it is useful.

I also have a PC that boots off an SSD and boots games off an SSD. Although obviously slower than the Suspend/Resume console function, I could in theory get into a game in about 15-20 seconds.

Not sure why anyone needs that much faster.
Click to expand...
Let's say I'm playing a character tower in Mortal Kombat or story mode in Street Fighter. If I stop midway through, I have to start the entire thing over again. Same for sports games.
 
I havent had a gaming PC since 2004. You say 15+ years later and there is still no way to suspend/resume system wide on PC? KEK
 
Master level trolling

tenor.gif


Looking forward to the update after the XSX drops: Why can't I have 5 games suspended at the same time on my PC???
 
This thread is a joke.
The op is complaining about not being able to resume a game after leaving it alt tab for a week.
And the pause feature on ps4 is a joke.
And I don't know what spec op pc has but my 2080ti and 32gb ram of ram have no problem running games and web browsing / YouTube simultaneously all day.
 
kingpotato said:
Master level trolling

tenor.gif


Looking forward to the update after the XSX drops: Why can't I have 5 games suspended at the same time on my PC???
Click to expand...
So now it's trolling to ask about a feature that's ubiquitous on every gaming platform besides this one? Especially when the advantage of PCs is often touted to be the ability to play games however you want to? Even if for whatever reason it's not technically feasible on PC, there's nothing wrong with wishing that wasn't the case.

This feels like the new "comfy couch".
 
diffusionx said:
You know that the OS that Xbox One runs on is Windows 10 right?

I know there are different hypervisors/layers to make it all work but this is not an impossible engineering feat.
Click to expand...

the issue is that Xbox games are designed to support this, and on PC with its different launchers and types of games, new and old, this is basically impossible to reliably implement.

even on Xbox One and PS4 it's unreliable and can lead to either crashes or massive performance degradation.
on Switch it seems to work the best so far, but here too not every game works perfectly with it.
 
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I once accidentally (stupid keyboard button) put my pc in hibernation while playing Tomb Raider (2013).
After I turned the pc back on, the game continued like nothing happened.
This was before the Xbox One was even released, so it seems windows can suspend things pretty well natively.

Ofcourse not all software is going to like being cut of from certain system processes, even shortly, so I doubt it would work for every game.
 
01011001 said:
????? but why ?????

I'm really confused about why you would need a resume feature for a game that you stop playing for days or even weeks and then come back to...
why not save, turn it off and just re-launch it once you wanna play it again? is it really an issue that you'll have to wait maybe 1 minute to get back in after days of not playing?

modern games save like every other second

edit: also, no there is no way to suspend games reliably on PC.
consoles that have features like that are designed to do this, Windows on the other hand is not designed with that in mind. it works with less complex programs but even here it's not reliable
Click to expand...

the one Area were this could REALY help out a ton is with GT 7 long distance races . Like a 60 Lap Race. Or like 2 Hours of Nürburgring. I will abuse the hell out of that system there...
 
01011001 said:
the issue is that Xbox games are designed to support this, and on PC with its different launchers and types of games, new and old, this is basically impossible to reliably implement
Click to expand...

PS4 didn't have suspend/resume for a year and a half:

www.eurogamer.net

PS4 update 2.50 to add Suspend/Resume feature

PlayStation 4's upcoming 2.50 update, codenamed "Yukimura", will add a host of new features including the option to Sus…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

It's just keeping a copy of the game state around somewhere and loading it back up. It is basically the same concept as save states, which every emulator these days has. I don't think Super Mario World was designed for save states.

I am not saying it is 1-2-3, but the idea that it is impossible, no way. Especially on a modern OS which, despite how it may feel sometime, Windows 10 is.
 
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diffusionx said:
PS4 didn't have suspend/resume for a year and a half:

www.eurogamer.net

PS4 update 2.50 to add Suspend/Resume feature

PlayStation 4's upcoming 2.50 update, codenamed "Yukimura", will add a host of new features including the option to Sus…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

It's just keeping a copy of the game state around somewhere and loading it back up. It is basically the same concept as save states, which every emulator these days has. I don't think Super Mario World was designed for save states.

I am not saying it is 1-2-3, but the idea that it is impossible, no way. Especially on a modern OS which, despite how it may feel sometime, Windows 10 is.
Click to expand...

the issue is that even on PS4/One/Switch, as I said, it is unreliable, and these systems are way more specialised and games can be optimised for the feature.

on PC there's no regulation and no current optimisation for this.
it's certainly possible to attempt but many games wouldn't work reliably with it
 
T-Cake said:
All the naysayers in here sound like they've never used the standby/resume feature on consoles otherwise they would know it is very useful and wouldn't be objecting.
Click to expand...
It's useful because loading takes forever on consoles. At least on my pc loading is pretty fast. Even on games not installed on SSD.
Many games on pc also allow you to tweak configs to skip intro videos.

Also, quicksave, alt+f4
 
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Bonfires Down said:
I play only on PC but I want absolutely nothing to do with the god complex PC gamers that seem to roam the internet.
Click to expand...
I always hear people saying this, but i've never seen anything thats too much different from the usual console warriors. They're far from the most numbered too.
 
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