Odd save file issue

[Skinny Pete]

I had an odd issue where attempting a screencap crashed the game. Infuriatingly, it was when I was just about to win with the Ariolimax, with the flagship on stage 3 crippled and shieldless, with hacked piloting and about to be killed by my next volley with no chance of survival.

I seem to recall Ray Robertson posting about this crash thing. My system is old and weird enough (old 32 bit MacBook) that it may well be peculiar to this system, but I seem to remember the issue coming up with recent Steam updates.

Anyway, the save file issue is more interesting. I brought the game up again, and the Continue option was gone. This was more or less normal and I assumed I got screwed and just quit out of Steam, annoyed.

However, the next time I booted Steam and started FTL, the Continue option was back, and the game was right before I started stage 3. So I once again tried to test the screen shot option, which again crashed the game. And again, quitting out of Steam and starting it again revived the save file.

I'm just wondering whether it was the game or Steam that somehow saved the file in the middle of the game.

[anarcher]

>macbook

This seems to be your main issue.

[Ray Robertson]

From what you described, the game didn't save when it crashed. It saved before you started the 3rd stage. Maybe FTL makes a hidden backup of your save at the start and end of a fight or in other words, whenever a "textbox" is displayed and only checks for a backup when the game is launched (edit) or closed. I don't know what I said doesn't quite make sense.

[anarcher]

It's actually fairly trivial to make a script that makes periodical backups of the ftl autosave. Most cases it's unneccessary, but you might look into doing that.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by anarcher:

>macbook

This seems to be your main issue.

That wouldn't make a save file magically reappear. The game has also never crashed for me in hundreds of hours of play.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Ray Robertson:

From what you described, the game didn't save when it crashed. It saved before you started the 3rd stage. Maybe FTL makes a hidden backup of your save at the start and end of a fight or in other words, whenever a "textbox" is displayed and only checks for a backup when the game is launched (edit) or closed. I don't know what I said doesn't quite make sense.

This didn't happen when I restarted the game, though. There was no save file and no Continue option. It happened when quitting out of Steam and restarting, though. That would seem to indicate it's making some kind of interim save file, maybe for situations like this, and perhaps backing it up somewhere.