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

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...
This is not how things work.
 
Warnen said:
As much as my PS4/Xbox failed to resume a game correctly I'd say it's not guaranteed to work anywhere.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I'm mainly a Switch player so that's where I used to using it. Worst problem I've run into is Smash Bros. sometimes not properly reconnecting to the GCN controller adapter upon resuming, forcing me to physically unplug and replug it. I wonder if the Switch is better than the other consoles at keeping suspended games since it has a battery to fall back on in case of a power fluctuation.

01011001 said:
as I said, it works but even on console it is not perfect. there are many games that have severe performance impacts when resumed from suspend mode. (stutters, severely impacted framerate, crashes, etc.)
some games can straight up crash if suspended.

the feature is a great one in theory, but it is unreliable. if you know a game supports it without issue I get why it can be useful, but games like Persona 5 where save points are 20 minutes apart are a very rare kinda game these days.
Dark Souls for example literally saves every few seconds (granted that is made so that you don't have it as easy to cheat the system but still) other games are similar.

in the vast majority of games you do not need a suspend mode, and I wouldn't trust the suspend mode on PS4 or Xbox, or even Switch actaully, without testing it beforehand before I try and rely on it.

for most games it is just as good to just turn them off and restart them later
Click to expand...
Maybe if you play mostly modern games there's not always a strong need for this feature, but in my opinion one of PC's greatest strengths is its virtually limitless backwards compatibility. It would be great if the OS allowed an elegant and reliable way of suspending that was universal to the entire vast library of PC games.
 
did you know that on Xbox the apps do not affect the games running? You can suspend a game.. watch a movie then resume the game after.
 
theclaw135 said:
It happens. Occasionally consoles achieve something before it's widely adopted by PC.

Proper smooth scrolling platformers took longer to become commonplace.
We still don't have games consistently on BD-ROM discs.
In 1983, the Famicom boasted a better color palette and sound chip.
Click to expand...
One of these things is not like the others.
 
But why? Can't you just save your progress and continue the next day?
If it's a small pause why not press escape to enter the menu and do what you need to do.
Or pres escape and then the windows key to go to desktop and do what you need to do.
You're over complicating something that is not complicated at all.
 
Elektro Demon said:
But why? Can't you just save your progress and continue the next day?
If it's a small pause why not press escape to enter the menu and do what you need to do.
Or pres escape and then the windows key to go to desktop and do what you need to do.
You're over complicating something that is not complicated at all.
Click to expand...

Well, in modern games you can do that and usually, I don't have any problem with it, but with some and older games, you can't. Nintendo Switch has this feature, putting the console to "sleep" like a mobile phone, and the new Xbox will have it even better because you can power off the console. It is a feature that I always wanted in console and computer, but I don't know if in a computer could be very hard to do. I want this feature because I don't always have the same time to play games, so if I can't save the game is a big problem, but usually, I don't have these problems with modern games.
 
01011001 said:
people don't even use it on console because it works like crap and is almost useless.

this has nothing to do with PC preferences
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I use it all the time on PS4 without any issues at all. I actually rarely close a game before putting my console to rest mode.
 
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I'm VERY anal retentive about my in-game Metric being as close to accurate as possible.

So the idea of leaving my game open when I'm not playing it physically irritates me.
 
In 25+ years of gaming, I have not once had the need (or thought) to suspend a game for weeks or months, wanting it to "just be in the background", so that I can just start it up again.
Most games let you save whenever or save on exit so you don't lose anything, etc.
Those that don't are usually designed around repeating content, anyway. E.g. Borderlands is designed with respawning enemies in mind so you don't really lose a thing when it resets you to some nearby checkpoint.

Anyway, I don't think this can really be done on any PC platform in a way that would work universally for an arbitrary running program.
But
Virtualization would probably be the easiest approach here - save the state of the entire virtualized machine and restore it when "loading" the game.
I have
But the reason it hasn't been so far is because I don't think anyone has ever requested that.

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.
Click to expand...
But that still requires the game to actually support this, doesn't it.

I don't see how this could be reliably done on a system level. Not on a PC, anyway.
Just dumping and restoring RAM wouldn't be enough. You also have video RAM (and addresses on main RAM would reference addresses on video RAM so even those would have to match), you also have file states, states of the OS that depend on the game, other applications that depend on the currently running games, user-launched applications that might want to actually check on and change the game's state (e.g. for speed hacks to speed up slow turn-based games).
The list of things you'd have to mind for this to actually work reliably on a system level is pretty gigantic. Maybe possible on console as:
  • Consoles have much less going on at any given time than a PC has
  • Consoles are a closed platform where the OS devs will always know what's happening. On a PC, OS devs cannot know what will or won't happen as users have full control over what programs are installed and running (some of which deeply influence the OS itself)

  • but I'd still bet it is very complicated and very error prone (and comments seem to suggest that is the case).


TheGreatWhiteShark said:
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"
Click to expand...
 
you can't.

doesn't bother me though. i doubt i'm even gonna use quick resume features on console. it's a nice feature but i just can't see myself playing one game then going into another then back.

alt+tab is enough for me on PC if i need to use my browser or something. it doesn't make any sense to load a game up and never close it. load times on PC are short so it's not that much of a trouble.
 
In 25+ years of gaming, I have not once had the need (or thought) to suspend a game for weeks or months, wanting it to "just be in the background", so that I can just start it up again.
Most games let you save whenever or save on exit so you don't lose anything, etc.
Those that don't are usually designed around repeating content, anyway. E.g. Borderlands is designed with respawning enemies in mind so you don't really lose a thing when it resets you to some nearby checkpoint.

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.

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"
Click to expand...

I don't see how this could be reliably done on a system level. Not on a PC, anyway.
Just dumping and restoring RAM wouldn't be enough. You also have video RAM (and addresses on main RAM would reference addresses on video RAM so even those would have to match), you also have file states, states of the OS that depend on the game, other applications that depend on the currently running games, user-launched applications that might want to actually check on and change the game's state (e.g. for speed hacks to speed up slow turn-based games).
The list of things you'd have to mind for this to actually work reliably on a system level is pretty gigantic and to even attempt it sounds like a genuine nightmare.
Possible on console as:
  • Consoles have much less going on at any given time than a PC has
  • Consoles are a closed platform where the OS devs will always know what's happening, what is allowed, etc. On a PC, OS devs cannot know what will or won't happen as users have full control over what programs are installed and running (some of which deeply influence and change the OS itself)
If you'd find a PC OS that was way more closed and can fully control what is running (e.g. something like Lakka with RetroArch), I think it could be done.
But a normal Mac/Linux/Windows? I don't think so.
Your best chances here would be virtualization - running the game in a virtual machine, as virtual machines are always stored and loaded like that, including games they run. Of course, running a game in a virtual machine would come at a hefty performance price.

It's definitely one advantage of closed systems like consoles - and I say that as a complete PCMR-guy.
 
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Run windows in a virtualized environment as said above

But then PC are for multiple tasks, unlike consoles where you are limited to one game at suspension..
 
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TheSHEEEP said:
In 25+ years of gaming, I have not once had the need (or thought) to suspend a game for weeks or months, wanting it to "just be in the background", so that I can just start it up again.
Most games let you save whenever or save on exit so you don't lose anything, etc.
Those that don't are usually designed around repeating content, anyway. E.g. Borderlands is designed with respawning enemies in mind so you don't really lose a thing when it resets you to some nearby checkpoint.

Anyway, I don't think this can really be done on any PC platform in a way that would work universally for an arbitrary running program.
But
Virtualization would probably be the easiest approach here - save the state of the entire virtualized machine and restore it when "loading" the game.
I have
But the reason it hasn't been so far is because I don't think anyone has ever requested that.


But that still requires the game to actually support this, doesn't it.

I don't see how this could be reliably done on a system level. Not on a PC, anyway.
Just dumping and restoring RAM wouldn't be enough. You also have video RAM (and addresses on main RAM would reference addresses on video RAM so even those would have to match), you also have file states, states of the OS that depend on the game, other applications that depend on the currently running games, user-launched applications that might want to actually check on and change the game's state (e.g. for speed hacks to speed up slow turn-based games).
The list of things you'd have to mind for this to actually work reliably on a system level is pretty gigantic. Maybe possible on console as:
  • Consoles have much less going on at any given time than a PC has
  • Consoles are a closed platform where the OS devs will always know what's happening. On a PC, OS devs cannot know what will or won't happen as users have full control over what programs are installed and running (some of which deeply influence the OS itself)

  • but I'd still bet it is very complicated and very error prone (and comments seem to suggest that is the case).
Click to expand...
Games don't need to support this. It works that way because every game on XBox is running on virtual machine.
Actually you can use same feature on PC as long as you can run you games on VM.
 
Just to understand the utility of this feature: I'm actually playing Ninokuni 1 on PS4 (it's the same on PC). In this game you can save anywhere on the world map or in cities, but not in dungeons. Dungeons use the old school save points scheme (one at the beginning of the level, one at the end before the boss). If I play it on PC I need to know beforehand if I will have time to complete the dungeon or to get to the next save point. And I understand that this is a first-world problem, yes, but the thing is that on consoles I can enter a dungeon and play or stop playing no matter how much free time I have.

I don't need to adapt my time to the game, the quick resume function adapts the game to my time.
 
I work in IT support. Windows 10 is simply not made to stay on for that long. The longer its on, the more unstable it gets. If you have more programs open, it gets even worse.
 
imo people need to learn to respect the planet more and switch off leisure products when they don't use them.
but it's another topic
on topic and for current incoming usage isn't the feature becoming irrelevant when you can load your saves in same amount of time ?
 
An SSD will surely help. A lot of the time I save my game, close it, and suspend my PC. Some apps can allow you to suspend your PC and it'll be right where you left off when you resume. But it can also create a number of issues. That's just the way things go.
 
I'm not even sure how the feature works on the PS4, but I doubt I'd ever use it. Does is have any negative effect on the gameplay timers of some games, cause that would be a deal breaker.
 
I just wish that there was a program that would let me quick save any game on the PC. Similar to how Skyrim will have quick saves. I realize that's asking too much.
 
I don't know, maybe I'm a caveman, but whether it's on PC or console, I just save & close when I'm done playing a particular game. I never even considered doing anything else.
 
I shut down my PC every night so that everything can auto-update. I would never use the feature. My boot time is under 15 seconds and most games load fast enough I can't read tooltips on load screens so I don't really mind waiting a few seconds to play.

I'm interested to see what happens to quick-resume games on consoles when the games have an update.

Using Forza Horizon 4 as an example, it has an update every season to add the new cars and seasonal info for the events which requires a restart on both console and PC. If I suspend Horizon 4 on the last day of a season and the next season is in full swing when I resume the game, what will happen? The game runs on a clock that's always running so that all players everywhere are playing in the same time of day and weather. You can't stop time in the game, so if you suspend the game a month later what issues are people going to run into? If you don't update the game, the new season will have placeholder prizes (wheelspins, easy to obtain cars and cash instead of new exclusive cars) and events for the new season, but even those require a restart. Playing the game without updating also often results in broken season completion numbers.

I'm thinking there will be a lot of suspended games that won't resume without updates, and will still eject you from the game to do the update.
 
MastAndo said:
I don't know, maybe I'm a caveman, but whether it's on PC or console, I just save & close when I'm done playing a particular game. I never even considered doing anything else.
Click to expand...
Same, i'd feel very uneasy leaving a PC/console turned on even if just on sleep mode. Let alone with a game on the background
 
It does come in handy in consoles, I use it all the time. My best example was playing one of the older Resident Evils and I couldn't find a save point (or ink ribbon) and I had to be somewhere. Instead of losing alot of progress I just powered down and resumed exactly where I was when I came back. Don't forget linked to this; games update over night and controllers re-charge. I'm led to believe the power usage is extremely low (I've never noticed a spike in my bill using it).

There's somethings consoles do better, somethings PC's do better. It's all good, no need to be defensive.
 
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