I was thinking about how many maps were harmed, and its progress totally lost, and just for such a simple thing: The lack of safety when nobody is watching.
You maybe think it’s totally fine when building with a long time trust built friend, and the project by itself can be in good hands like this easily, well you’re right. But imagine when you just added other unknown player and seems like this guy is ok, but unfortunately he is a backstabber who only wanted to get your confidence to mess up and destroy your long time progress map in a short time.
A backup can be the most obviously answer for this happening, but this cannot be always present for some reason if you trusted so much, that thought nothing bad could ever happen, and even when having at your disposal, it’s such a boring thing getting the last save from your project available after a disaster.
Getting into the principle and much before the moment to think about a backup, the game projects could have something like a “Only read” option, but adapted for something like “Only look” in the project, offering an optional button to turn on or off this feature when requested. In short, these things would look like this:
- Only look OFF - The player can edit and manipulate every single game object in the project.
- Only look ON - The player cannot edit anything, and would have two more options/filters to choose on that:
- Can edit when owner is online NO - The player is not allowed to edit in any circumstance, even when the project owner is found online together.
- Can edit when owner is online YES - The player is not allowed to edit, but the project is unlocked to be editable when the game owner is online.
As you can see, it’s a simple addition for safety the game can afford to have, when a big doubt strikes the player if your project members are really trustful or not, and maybe retire for a long period the thinking of someday must have to use the Backup available in a hurry, avoiding some headaches during the same time of course