Any way to move save file location yet?

[Ice]

I know the devs have been updating like crazy, but have they fixed this yet? I have a small system drive

[Simbolic]

Never heard anything about compressing the game not sure is possible. Just something we got to deal with games are getting very massive in terms of Hard Drive space. This game did go down around like 10 gigs was even bigger at one point.

[Razamanaz]

You can create a symbolic link if you want to move your saves to another drive. The game won't know the difference. I move game folders to a different drive all the time with the /D command. Check out this discussion. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1086940/discussions/0/3812913565884914706/

[Ice]

Originally posted by Razamanaz:

You can create a symbolic link if you want to move your saves to another drive. The game won't know the difference. I move game folders to a different drive all the time with the /D command. Check out this discussion. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1086940/discussions/0/3812913565884914706/

THAT is kind of unacceptable.

I put all my games on a bigger driver separate from my small system drive. It cannot hold save files. And I would rather not have to create a drive link to play a game in 2024 soon to be 2025.

A little ridiculous tbh.

[Razamanaz]

Originally posted by Kitty:

Originally posted by Razamanaz:

You can create a symbolic link if you want to move your saves to another drive. The game won't know the difference. I move game folders to a different drive all the time with the /D command. Check out this discussion. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1086940/discussions/0/3812913565884914706/

THAT is kind of unacceptable.

I put all my games on a bigger driver separate from my small system drive. It cannot hold save files. And I would rather not have to create a drive link to play a game in 2024 soon to be 2025.

A little ridiculous tbh.

Don't hold your breath for the Devs to add this function. I've seen very few games that give you an option for where to store saved games. Why can't your larger drive hold saved games? Anyhow, I pointed you to a solution so suit yourself.

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Why should they? Windows has built in tools to either do linking or move the appdata folders completely. And if your main drive is to small for a few save files, it's definitely to small for the appdata folder, given that that folder can easily reach a couple of gigbytes already...

[belgix]

That a kind of funny question because a save file is at the end of the game only 17MB. The only thing that is big where the save file is located is the cache directory which is safe to delete.

[Ice]

Originally posted by belgix:

That a kind of funny question because a save file is at the end of the game only 17MB. The only thing that is big where the save file is located is the cache directory which is safe to delete.

Windirstat shows BG3 files taking up >20GB on my C drive. It's not even installed on it. This is after I deleted all but 2 save files.

[Madmanx]

i upvote it's problematic, at least put a delete all button inside the menus

[guard65]

Use some old school IT magic.

The saves go in your 'User' Folder. You can point the profile folder to an alternative drive, i.e. D:\users

It will effect every user profile and can go wrong on you if that drive goes off line but it would fix your issue.

You can look up online on how to move your user profile folder for your O.S. version. Usually a GP policy.

[Wuorg]

Even speaking as someone that knows at least enough to solve this problem using Windows, not everyone has that knowledge or is comfortable using those kinds of features.

There's no reason this can't also be something players could change in the game's launcher. It would be very simple to implement, but perhaps they are worried about potential tech support overhead of people accidentally getting their files confused around--once it becomes an official feature of the launcher, they'd be obligated to help those people who didn't know what they were doing in the first place. Only reason I can think of to not do something like this.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by Kitty:

Originally posted by belgix:

That a kind of funny question because a save file is at the end of the game only 17MB. The only thing that is big where the save file is located is the cache directory which is safe to delete.

Windirstat shows BG3 files taking up >20GB on my C drive. It's not even installed on it. This is after I deleted all but 2 save files.

Prove it.

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Originally posted by Kitty:

Originally posted by belgix:

That a kind of funny question because a save file is at the end of the game only 17MB. The only thing that is big where the save file is located is the cache directory which is safe to delete.

Windirstat shows BG3 files taking up >20GB on my C drive. It's not even installed on it. This is after I deleted all but 2 save files.

1gb would be around 400-500 saves.
Are you telling us you are keeping 8000-10000 Saves around?

Originally posted by Wuorg:

Even speaking as someone that knows at least enough to solve this problem using Windows, not everyone has that knowledge or is comfortable using those kinds of features.

There's no reason this can't also be something players could change in the game's launcher. It would be very simple to implement, but perhaps they are worried about potential tech support overhead of people accidentally getting their files confused around--once it becomes an official feature of the launcher, they'd be obligated to help those people who didn't know what they were doing in the first place. Only reason I can think of to not do something like this.

It's more likely, that it's just not worth it. Saves are just not big enough.
On a moderately used system the appdata folder in total can easily take up 40-50gb...
Given that a save is around 20-30mb it's laughable in comparison.
People who complain about the save folder almost guaranteed have way, way worse offenders that are eating away their space, and the correct solution is to move the user folder to a different drive. Moving the saves is just putting a bandaid on a broken arm.

[Wuorg]

Originally posted by 1337_h4x0r_xXx_deathlord666_xXx:

Originally posted by Wuorg:

Even speaking as someone that knows at least enough to solve this problem using Windows, not everyone has that knowledge or is comfortable using those kinds of features.

There's no reason this can't also be something players could change in the game's launcher. It would be very simple to implement, but perhaps they are worried about potential tech support overhead of people accidentally getting their files confused around--once it becomes an official feature of the launcher, they'd be obligated to help those people who didn't know what they were doing in the first place. Only reason I can think of to not do something like this.

It's more likely, that it's just not worth it. Saves are just not big enough.
On a moderately used system the appdata folder in total can easily take up 40-50gb...
Given that a save is around 20-30mb it's laughable in comparison.
People who complain about the save folder almost guaranteed have way, way worse offenders that are eating away their space, and the correct solution is to move the user folder to a different drive. Moving the saves is just a bandaid.

Idk, the truth is probably closer to some combination of the above. There's a lot of "if Windows can handle it, let Windows handle it" in app development, which is probably a good thing in most cases (edit: hence my comment about tech support--if the ball is in Microsoft's court, then they are the ones that have to deal with any problems, not the studio). In this case, I don't think it would be too much to ask to make it easier to store saves at the very least on the same drive the game is installed on.

Besides, there's plenty of reasons a user might want save files to be in a particular location, besides storage size.

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Originally posted by Wuorg:

Besides, there's plenty of reasons a user might want save files to be in a particular location, besides storage size.

Sure, but apart from maybe some really old shareware titles I basically don't really know any titles that offer that feature...basically all games I played in the last 30 or so years either saved the game in the game directory itself (which can be a problem in itself) or a specific directory provided by the OS, like appdata, my documents or something similar, and leaves the managing of their folders to the user.
Do we really hold each users hands with every little thing?
Maybe it could even be seen as a good thing, that if a user wants to change that, they have to learn just a tiny little bit about their system, and thus become a tiny little bit more competent in handling their system.
After all, if they learn to change the userfolder, they not only solve the save file issue for BG3, but also for Skyrim, Fallout 3, nv, 4, Oblivion, Starfield, most (if not all) paradox games, Mass Effect, Most, if not all Square Enix games, Wasteland 3, Xenonauts 2 and probably thousands of other games and programs, instead of relying on each and everyone of them making a custom solution, which will never be the same across the board, leading to a hude chaotic mess of different methods and default locations for every dev and every publisher...

[Wuorg]

Originally posted by 1337_h4x0r_xXx_deathlord666_xXx:

Originally posted by Wuorg:

Besides, there's plenty of reasons a user might want save files to be in a particular location, besides storage size.

Sure, but apart from maybe some really old shareware titles I basically don't really know any titles that offer that feature...basically all games I played in the last 30 or so years either saved the game in the game directory itself (which can be a problem in itself) or a specific directory provided by the OS, like appdata, my documents or something similar, and leaves the managing of their folders to the user.
Do we really hold each users hands with every little thing?
Maybe it could even be seen as a good thing, that if a user wants to change that, they have to learn just a tiny little bit about their system, and thus become a tiny little bit more competent in handling their system.
After all, if they learn to change the userfolder, they not only solve the save file issue for BG3, but also for Skyrim, Fallout 3, nv, 4, Oblivion, Starfield, most (if not all) paradox games, Mass Effect, Most, if not all Square Enix games, Wasteland 3, Xenonauts 2 and probably thousands of other games and programs, instead of relying on each and everyone of them making a custom solution, which will never be the same across the board, leading to a hude chaotic mess of different methods and default locations for every dev and every publisher...

Those are all very fair points. I suppose, then, what it really comes down to for me is tech literacy. The whole thing seems to be black magic to so many of them. I can't tell you how many times I've had to tell someone (including people with incredibly active Steam accounts) where their save files are, or try to explain to an end user that X program's files are spread out over these seemingly unrelated locations. Not to mention how to reveal hidden folders so they can find AppData in the first place. While you are right that things have worked this way for a long time at this point (dear lord I don't like thinking about that!), it remains rather unintuitive to most users that these things would be so "hard" to find. Most seem to expect all save files, config files, everything related to a program, really, to be downstream from the same root--even young users with no preconceived notions of a file system (or indeed, even what a file system even is).

For various reasons we don't do things like that anymore and I am not really sure what a good solution would be, beyond considerate devs shipping their apps with useful shortcuts. On a broad scale, I still don't like the solutions you are referring to, as changing a save directory *should be* a super simple thing to do. That end users even need to mess about with symbolic linking and/or moving their profile seems so asinine to me. Maybe I am just prejudiced against Windows, eh. Smarter and more informed people than me have thought about this problem before though, I am sure.