Where are the G__ SAVE FILES?

[PoleCat]

I've looked online and followed the advice but can't find the folder to save my soul. This is the result of poor coding. Why would this company make this so difficult to find? It should not be so hard! Why hide these files? They aren't even stored in the main file tree...

Win 10 Latest update.

[seven]

Try C:\Users\<windowsusername>\Saved Games

It's one of the standard locations games are saved, not poor coding.

[Docsprock]

I just tried looking for the saves too. Nothing found. I wonder if they are cloud-only saves?

[PoleCat]

No joy. Already tried that and found nothing. Something is off here....

Edit: Just a thought but I have this on an external drive (:D) and I'm starting to think that might the issue. I've scoured the files there but can't find anything. Perplexing to say the least.

[JamieLinux]

C:\Users\<your user name>\Saved Games\Stranded - Alien Dawn\<Steam id>

[Docsprock]

Originally posted by JamieLinux:

C:\Users\<your user name>\Saved Games\Stranded - Alien Dawn\<Steam id>

Ah yes. Thank you.

[JamieLinux]

Originally posted by Docsprock:

Originally posted by JamieLinux:

C:\Users\<your user name>\Saved Games\Stranded - Alien Dawn\<Steam id>

Ah yes. Thank you.

NP , anytime!

[PoleCat]

What user name? My computer name or Steam name? I still have no joy here.

[seven]

Your windows username. In C:\users there should be 3 (or more directories), Default (which may be hidden), Public and your user directory. If other people have logins for that computer they will be there also. Inside the folder with your name you should find another folder named "Saved Games" and inside that "Stranded - Alien Dawn", and inside that a folder named with a long number which is your steam id number. Inside that will be all the named saves and autosaves for the game. If you still don't see the saves there, use the windows search bar and search for savegame.sav. The saves are named "the title you used.savegame.sav", and that search should find them.

[PoleCat]

By Windows username do you mean that I have subscribe to that MS BS? I haven't and wont. This file structure is no good. Why would they spread the files out of their main directory? It makes no sense to me. Ah well, to the trash bin for this game.

[seven]

I didn't give you that jester, but I'm starting to wonder if that's what you're looking for. Did you even bother to look for the files? This is definitely a user problem, not a game problem. Maybe a picture will help. Here is where I would start looking to find my save files.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3272982048

[bmnoble981]

Originally posted by PoleCat:

By Windows username do you mean that I have subscribe to that MS BS? I haven't and wont. This file structure is no good. Why would they spread the files out of their main directory? It makes no sense to me. Ah well, to the trash bin for this game.

Got nothing to do with being subscribed, I use a local account without issue, go to your PC, Local drive, Users folder.

Then select the folder of the account you are logged into the computer as, then select the saved games folder, then the folder for the game, followed by the folder with your steam ID, all your save files for the game are there.

Same basic file path for most steam games these days.

[Boothy]

Originally posted by PoleCat:

By Windows username do you mean that I have subscribe to that MS BS? I haven't and wont. This file structure is no good. Why would they spread the files out of their main directory? It makes no sense to me. Ah well, to the trash bin for this game.

TLDR: Having save files under the game install folder is a bad idea, and has been against MS guidelines for Windows for decades now.

Details....

Very old Windows games, like in the 90s, into early 2000s (and a few badly written ones after then), used to regularly save all game data, so config, save files etc, to the same folder as the game was installed. (Typically C:\Program Files\<game>

This had a few issue, especially if you only had a single drive (i.e. C: drive).

1. If you uninstalled the game, all your settings and saves were also removed.
2. By default since the days of Windows 2000 (likely Win NT before it) C:\Program Files\ (and the x86 version) became a protected location (by the OS), to help with malware protection. (Games needed to be given admin permissions to be able to write data there, like save files, so not a good idea).
3. Not as big of an issue, but Windows is also a multi-user OS, so if all the saves were in the game folder, all users of that PC had access to them (i.e. someone else in the house could mess up your saves).

MS decided (back in the 90s), that all 'apps', including games, should therefore be split into two, the fixed install files (that only change when being updated/patched) go to one place, and the the changeable files (config/settings, save files etc) go somewhere else.

The basic idea being Install files go into C:\Program Files\ (or the x86 version), and all config/saves etc go under the user account (normally C:\Users\<username> on newer Windows).

Having the settings and saves etc under the user account meant no need to run apps/games as admin, kept these separate per user, and they don't vanish if you uninstall the app/game itself.

Unfortunately (in some ways) MS kept changing their mind as to where under your account these save files etc would go. And even though new places became the new standard, they kept all the old ways of doing things for compatibility.

Many old games still place files in the old locations (understandable), but even some newer games still use these old locations.

The modern place for all application data in Windows is %AppData% (just stick this in Explorer including the % signs), this is a system variable, and the location will change depending on who you are logged in as (i.e. it's account dependent).

Places like 'Saved Games' is a very old location, a hangover from the days of Windows 98 and earlier. (Although this is still under the user account).

For ref, https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/ is a useful reference site for save game locations and many other game specific data.

[JamieLinux]

Originally posted by PoleCat:

By Windows username do you mean that I have subscribe to that MS BS? I haven't and wont. This file structure is no good. Why would they spread the files out of their main directory? It makes no sense to me. Ah well, to the trash bin for this game.

It would be whatever user name you gave the local account:

C:\Users\<Your Local user ID>\Saved Games\Stranded - Alien Dawn\<Steam id>

Local ID being the user name you created when installing windows has nothing to do with the Microsoft Account.