Add time-based autosave interval option

[Mark Schreiber]

I’d like to request that Caves of Qud have an option added to do an autosave on the first zone transition after every N minutes of gameplay (perhaps even replacing the existing zone-transition-count-based option).

Caves of Qud has an autosave feature. Currently, this is triggered based on number of zone transitions.

Unfortunately, when one is rapidly moving across a number of zones, it becomes easy to frequently trigger the autosave many times, which makes it obnoxiously slow to do travel. One good example is moving down a couple of spiral-borer-created staircases; moving down 30 floors at a 5 interval save means having to do 6 saves.

I can increase the number of zone transitions, but then I stand to lose a lot of gameplay if the game crashes.

I don’t think that I normally worry much about losing a number of transitions; were I able, I’d use a time-based autosave in preference to it. What I’m most worried about is the amount of gameplay time that might be lost.

I have seen other video games use time-based autosaves, and I believe that this generally captures what the player is most concerned about losing.

[JRB]

Another small issue that I have with the zones-based autosave is that I often go up to the overland map just to consult it, rather than to move on it. This counts as two zone transition (one on the way up, one on the way down), so is very likely to trigger an unnecessary autosave. I suggest that going between the surface and overland maps not be counted as a transition for autosave purposes. (The transition would not occur until the player moves on the overland map.)