Autosave Options

My question is a bit subjective, but that's ok as I'm open to subjectivity... but uhm, what would you consider the most ideal method for autosaves? Currently I have my game setup to autosave on screen transitions, however, that's caused problems for players as my game is still in development and sometimes a map transfer will go to an area where the player gets stuck/bugged. Errant autorun event, accidentally placed the transfer in a wall/off them map... things happen. Fixing the issues isn't a problem but it's still annoying for players to experience. I'd like the game to save before map transfers instead of after them but that doesn't seem to be possible. Or if it is, I haven't been able to figure it out. That being the case, what would you consider to be a good method to handle auto saves? Every x steps taken? Every x hour/s of game time? I'm open to suggestions here...

Edit: Actually, scratch that, I just figured something out. Problem has been plaguing me for months, I ask a question on a forum and I have an epiphany. If anybody reads this and has issues with/wants to use autosaves as well, this is what I did.

I picked 4 regions to use as regional events, 14 for up, 30 for down, 21 for left, and 23 for right. Any regions would work though. Then I setup a global common event to check if the player was standing on said regions and facing the door/entryway. If the player hits enter/ok the game autosaves and then transitions the map. If you have your doors setup to transfer on touch, just set the event up to save when the player touches that region. It causes a very brief delay, barely noticable, for map transitions but other than that I haven't noticed any performance impact.

Edit 2: Correction, this method isn't really viable for touch doors. It'll work, but as soon as the player walks over the region the game will pause for a second. I suppose there are ways to make it work but I don't use many touch doors and I just wanted to try it out.

I made auto save like that and I think it's the best option.

@Landazar What's calling the save script/event? Does it save before every battle after a certain time lapse? On a side note, the gab window is awesome, I use it too :)

This is parallel event which runs every 5 minutes. Event in first order checks party location - if detects that party is in battle, will skip save progress until party won't come from battle. Otherwise it will create a save file located at slot number 30 (I'm using Yanfly's Save Core, so I made more slots for my game. In this form as you can see on screenshot auto save will also occur directly when map is loaded. To avoid that simply move script: this.wait(60*60*5) at top of the event list.

And It would looks like that:

Ah ok. Cool. I'll keep that in mind.

I did my autosaves at plot specific points only, usually before a huge battle in case the player forgot to save, though some of them are after long cutscenes too.

However, I also have one rule on autosaves, and that is I will never autosave you if you are in a dungeon you cannot leave until it is finished. There's only 3 of those in the plot, and you are autosaved before you enter it (and while you can still change your mind), but once you enter I don't autosave the game until you leave.

Also if your game is still in development I wouldn't autosave at all, just to avoid what you mentioned. Add it in when sections go to Beta format.

@bgillisp Yeah, there won't be any autosaves in dungeons. At least there won't be once I add the conditional statement to the top of the event. I do/will have specific save points, Final Fantasy style, that players can use. I was saving at key points but people still complain... not like you can't save anytime not in a dungeon in my game....... I've gotten the save before transition to work though, for now at least. I changed it to touch because using "ok" was causing issues, but every time the player touches one of the save regions an event saves the game. It waits 10 frames so that the player doesn't pause then it autosaves. It will only do this every 360 frames. So far it's been working seamlessly, but I just set it up and testing is limited for now.