NEED SOME HELP BRAINSTORMING A SAVE SYSTEM

I'm working on an RPG/board game hybrid and I'm wanting to implement something like "shop points" where if you beat a board or do something cool or whatever you'll get some shop points to spend at the shop where you can purchase unlockables like new boards/characters/games/etc.

The problem arises when you save the game in the middle of playing a board. Let's say you're playing with a friend (it's two player) and said friend has to leave so you save your game. Well, if you want to start a new game later on by yourself then you'll lose all the "shop points" that were in the abandoned save file.

Then on your new save file you get some shop points, and then your friend eventually comes over and you start up the old save again. Now when you beat that game, you have essentially two separate save files with two different values for shop points. That sucks!

Usually I'm good at brainstorming work-arounds for rm2k (using rm2k, not 2k3) limitations but I'm at a wall here. Is there any solution to this aside from someone making a patch to alter the engine?

author=LockeZ
Well, you would basically need to create a custom system of multiple saves. If, for example, you wanted three saves... you would need three of every switch and variable. And the first save slot would use the first set of variables, the second save slot would use the second set of variables, and the third save slot would use the third set of variables. But certain unlockables would be stored and shared among all three. The player could then start a new game or continue a game in any of these three slots.

The catch here is that you would only use one "real" save. All data from all saved games would get saved in the same save file. And you would probably want to automatically load it each time the player starts the game up, if there's a patch that lets you do that, though that's not strictly necessary.

Well that would certainly work, the only problem is the feasibility. I'm more than willing to put in alot of work on my projects but so far (and I'm not even anywhere near done with this project) I have 1559 switches and 1715 variables.

Since this is a game that supports up to four players at once, I need to keep track of everyone's items individually (and there are a ton of items), what everyone's board progress is and all that stuff which leads to the massive amount of variables so far. I'm just not willing to triple all of them and implement it, it would literally take months and probably kill off my ambition for the project :(