Save games keep disappearing

[Malorion]

I've completed the game but left my save in place and my daughter had played all but the last level. Then life happened and we didn't play for a while and she came back to it the other day (about 4 days ago?) to find all the albums were blank. She started again and got through the first level then quit as normal. Today I'm going in to make a save for my other daughter and the albums are all blank again. Any ideas what's happening?

[Malorion]

I've just checked C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<userid>\1135690\remote and there's 3 sav files in there; main, save0 and save1. I tried copying them to %USERPROFILE% \AppData\LocalLow\Witch Beam\Unpacking\ but everything's still blank.

[hummeline]

Hey there! This is really strange-- we're looking into it! Can you try verifying game files at the very least, just in case that fixes it?

[Malorion]

Originally posted by hummeline:

Hey there! This is really strange-- we're looking into it! Can you try verifying game files at the very least, just in case that fixes it?

Thanks for looking into it!
I did the verify but it didn't mention any problems found. Started the game and the albums were all blank. Started a new game and completed the first level, then went back to the menu checked the albums and my album was there. Quit then started again, all albums are blank again.

[capoeira45]

Game not saving?

I'm having a problem where my files aren't saving. I can exit to the main menu and still access my file but when I exit the game, any saves are gone. I've had to restart several times. It seems the only way to play is to complete it in one setting. Anyone else having this problem?

[hummeline]

Thank you for letting us know! We're looking into it -- are you playing on Mac or PC?

[dKenGuru]

Same problem. PC, Win11. Game on drive D. OS on drive C,

[hummeline]

Ok, so this might be an issue on Steam's end, either being able to write or read save files. Can you try either force-quitting Steam OR uninstalling and reinstalling Unpacking and see if that changes anything? So sorry for the delay here, we haven't been able to replicate the bug on our end yet!

[Malorion]

Ok, I uninstalled Unpacking, quit out of Steam & Shutdown my pc last night. Started up again this morning, ran Steam, installed Unpacking, started an album (all were blank) and played the first level. Quit (via menu), restarted, no albums saved.
(And I haven't had this happen on any other game)

[hummeline]

Thank you for the update, and SO sorry it's still happening -- we're still trying to figure out what could be causing it

[Malorion]

Thanks. Some further info that might help:

I've got Steam installed in the default location

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam

however I have another folder to install games to in

G:\Games\Steam

(C: is an SSD but not lots of space, G: is an HDD with tons of space). I've got Unpacking installed in the G: location.

According to PCGamingWiki, the Unpacking save locations are:

Windows	%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Witch Beam\Unpacking\*.sav
Steam	<Steam-folder>\userdata\<user-id>\1135690\remote\ 

When I look in the %USERPROFILE% location there's a

Unity\<long number>

folder with .sav files in it (main.sav, save0.sav, save1,sav) but the last modified dates are last year (the folder however says last modified 2 days ago, probably from stuff in the Analytics folder that's in the same location).

My G: Steam folder doesn't have a userdata folder but my C: folder does (of course). In that save location, there's three files with the same names again but main and save0 have last mod dates of 25th Jan 23 and save1 has 27 Mar 22 (probably when I first played?). But the game doesn't seem to see them.

I'm wondering if there's some confusion over the save location because of the multiple install folders. Could the save and load routines use different methods to determine where the save files should be located hence saving correctly in the C: location (as other games installed to G: do) but is trying to load from G: that doesn't have a userdata folder?

I'm going to try manually copying the

\1135690\remote\

folder to the G: location and see if it sees the saves to load from (won't solve the issue because I'd have to manually copy over every time it saves). Then I'll try uninstalling again and reinstall to C: and see what happens and I'll report back.

[Malorion]

Ok, neither made any difference. Once I quit and start again, all albums are blank.

[Malorion]

More info: now that I've moved the install to the C: Steam folder, I've played a few levels (doing dark star for the first time! :) ) then quit and the files

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\38391959\1135690\remote\main.sav

and

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\38391959\1135690\remote\save0.sav

have their timestamps updated. So either it's not seeing them to load from (looking in the wrong location?) or not recognising that they are valid save files

[raitime]

Hello
I lost also hours of gameplay and tried to understand the issue.
I'm on Windows 11, and my Steam games are installed on my second hard drive, (my C: is too small).

When I uninstalled the game and installed it on my C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam folder, it solved the issue to boot the game with my save and the day after same issue.
Now everytime I want to continue after a reboot of my PC I need to reinstall the game ...

[Feathered Serpent]

I lost my savegame as well, but I found out, why. Does anyone of you use CCleaner with Winapp2.ini addition?

Within that, there is an option for Steam Cache. The problem now is: it also deletes a file, which for whatever reason is important.

Example:
Steam\userdata\<steamid>\1135690\remotecache.vdf
Steam\userdata\<steamid>\1135690\remote\main.sav
Steam\userdata\<steamid>\1135690\remote\save0.sav

These files exist in the game IDs folder. If Steam is closed and one deletes the remotecache.vdf and starts Steam and Unpacking again... for whatever reason it thinks, there is no savegame. Upon starting a new game, it then overwrites the already existing files with the empty savegame.

I was able to recover my save0.sav from a weekly backup, before I started Steam and Unpacking again after using CCleaner. I disabled deleting of remotecache.vdf in the winapp2.ini, but I also excluded userdata\<steamid>config\librarycache\ from cleaning because games also save files in there sometimes which make it impossible for them to load a savegame.

After starting Steam and Unpacking once, then exiting Unpacking I copied my backup sav games into the folder. Upon next start of Unpacking my save state was back.

Is Ccleaner the reason? Maybe, but when the .sav file is still there, Unpacking should recognize that and load it anyways.

[hummeline]

Oh this are all very helpful for us to figure this out -- we have had another report that saving to the separate drive causes it, we're in the process of replicating that on our end (and thank you all for your patience!)