Steam Achievements & local game storage

[simtrip]

Hi

I noticed an issue with the in-game achievements display whilst playing this game on two different user accounts. Whilst playing on a different account, I got an achievement which correctly displays on my Steam profile but it doesn't show as completed on the Achivements page in game.

It appears that achievements are stored locally in "AppData/Local/Horde Hunters" along with metaprogression data but not synced with Steam in any way.

I'm guessing the fix for this would probably just come along with Steam cloud save support or something, not sure if that's planned in the future?

[Antti]

Hmm, are you saying everything else syncs for you between these accounts except the achievements?

Steam Cloud is enabled and should be working for all the files. You can see the stored files here for yourself: https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage

[simtrip]

Thanks for the link, I think I see the issue now and it is also replicable with other games that use AppData or other user-based folders on Windows.

I can verify that after deleting the contents of "AppData/Local/Horde_Hunters" except the steamcloud.vdf file, then relaunching the game, cloud data is restored. But important to note is that it's only restored to the state of that folder on that particular Windows user account. I can do the same process on a different Windows account and I'll be restoring the saved state of that other Windows user's folder instead. This means I effectively have two sets of synchronized data that work independently. Or phrased differently, the total amount of synchronized data for the game includes two user accounts folders.

This maybe makes sense if you did want to use multiple Windows accounts for different progression states, but it feels a bit contrary to how you'd expect Steam to handle this. To me it feels like your Steam account should be the single source of truth for one progression state of one game. This gets a bit funky if your game explicitly allows "profiles" but in that case I'd expect all profiles to be synced at once.

So to answer your question re: achievements, they are not a special case here in terms of behavior at all, but they do illustrate the issue clearly, since you can always check your Steam profile to view your achievements. These are obviously Steam account based, but since the "achivements.save" file is synced to a user directory, you can end up with multiple "achievements.save" files synchronized independently and neither of them alone would reflect the complete state of your actual Steam account achievements.

I think the fix for this would probably require moving the synchronized save directory to somewhere in your steam install folder, which I appreciate might be too much work to fix and may even be an engine limitation? I'm not sure what restrictions GM has on where you can save files, I know this would likely be an issue in Unity for example.

[Antti]

Originally posted by simtrip:

To me it feels like your Steam account should be the single source of truth for one progression state of one game.

Yes, this is how it should work. For example I have the game installed on PC and on Steam Deck. Whenever I play on either one the progress is saved to the cloud and carried across. If this is not happening for you then something is wrong.

Make sure you have cloud enabled on Steam settings -> Cloud -> Enable Steam Cloud synchronization for applications that support it. Also make sure you have it individually enabled for the game from Properties -> General -> Keep games saves in the Steam Cloud for Horde Hunters. I have noticed that sometimes they may have not synced (cloud has been busy or inaccessible etc.) but it should note that next to the Play button.