Confused about Save mechanics. Little help, pls?

[Degasai]

I may just be dense, but the way SE handles game saves is blowing my mind. I have yet to choose "Yes" to save my progress, exit, reload the game and find any save game that is even close to when I actually saved. I've tried Save As. I've tried Ctrl + F5 quick save. I've tried just clicking Save in the options menu.

When I bought and played this a couple of years ago, I quit playing because I could never reliably save my game...and the game's autosave couldn't, either. It still has the same issues. I've tried turning Autosave on and also leaving it turned off and saving only manually. Nothing seems to work. I went into AppData on my local machine and looked at the Saves directory. My head exploded. Nothing in there makes any sense. If the game autosaves, where is the save file named "Autosave"??? If you quicksave, where is the "Quicksave" save game file? If you "Save As", the game creates another folder with that name, and it's full of garbage and not a single file that was created even close to the time you actually created the save file. Not even in the "Backups" folder that is created by the game.

What am I missing here? I just clicked the "Save" button, then clicked Yes when it asked me if I wanted to save. I got sent to the main menu, and exit to desktop. It asked me if I was sure, so I clicked Yes. I immediately went to the save menu and looked for ANY file in there that was dated at the time I logged out. There wasn't any file in there that was even created TODAY! I opened the game again, and clicked "Continue" in the main menu. It loaded a save from YESTERDAY. I've been playing for 8 hours and the most recent save I can load is one that was saved over 24 hours ago.

This is game design 101, guys. Why can't they get this right? Or even anywhere close to Game Development standards and practices?

[Sir Thwaites IV]

Well said Degas

[jake from statefarm]

Well I'm not in to coding of how it works but I'm assuming it's not making the same name for its backups and auto saves that will be completely different to what you would think but the part about how it won't save it boggles my mind I don't have a problem I would check
1. Is the time on your computer correct
2. If so it might just show different times on save files because logic in SE does not exist
3. Try verifying cache
4. If still not working uninstall game (don't worry settings and blueprints will be saved) and reinstall it and still not working somehow complain to keen and blame clang

[Degasai]

None of the times make sense. Time on my PC is correct. I even looked for anything that looked like the game was saving with foreign time nomenclature. I've run into that before. Nope, no luck. You would think that saving 3 different ways manually and autosaves every 5 freaking minute, you would be able to pick up where you left off. They've even got stealth saves, it seems. When you click "No" to saving before exit, it still saves! At least, that's what the forums are saying. I don't have any way of knowing...

[RogueDelta]

If you're playing on dedicated servers, then the server saves periodically and usually has local save game options turned off.

Also try using continue last game. If that doesn't work then you probably have mutliple versions or parts of versions of SE installed and need to backup your local files and then do a clean re-install. There's also a verify integrity of game cache you can try. Or you can try switching to the Dev version, see if the problem persists, and then change back to the normal version, and see if it is fixed. And if you have such cluttered game save files you can't even tell what was played or when it was played, then I suspect your game install is corrupted and needs to be re-installed or a severe dose of file management needs to occur.

[SpetS]

the main load game doesn't show the correct date for some reason, but don't worry, that is the last savegame.
you can also click on the savegame (don't open it) then select Backup, and there you will have a list of savegames, depending on how many you set in the option, and with the correct date.
You don't need to turn on autosave to have backup files

edit, just checked, is not sort by saving date, but by loaded order

[Degasai]

I played SE last on my old rig. I built a new 980ti I7 PC a year ago. This is a new install on this Win 7.1 computer. So it can't be legacy issues. However, RogueDelta may still be on to something. I'm going to see if I can identify my latest save and back it up. I'll try to track down and clean all of my local SE files, and do a fresh install.

I've not looked into the dedicated server option, but I'll do that. I haven't set up a dedicated server, but I'll look into that. I reinstalled the game to check out the new features (Campaign and planets). So I first played the Campaign, which didn't allow for saving. After that was finished, I started a new "Star System" game under the Custom tab. All the save options are active in this play-through.

I like the autosave function and kudos to Keen for allowing players to disable it. However, I am at a loss as to why they would trigger a save every 5 minutes. Is there a config file where you can increase that to 15 minute autosaves?

[Lystent]

I have been playing stable with autosave 'on' and have been clicking the 'save' button upon exiting the world. I have yet to see if it actually saves the game when I hit that button when exiting or not.

Anyways, the way the game should be saving is by-the-world; each world is its own document/folder. Whenever it saves, it should be overwriting the save, and updating the backups. And the 'continue button' should bring you to the most recent save.
If the continue button hasn't been doing that, then something is wrong, but you can do things the old way and always refer to the 'load' menu.
If the load menu is not showing the worlds you have saved, or told the game to save, then there is a far more severe problem, and you may have to check the folder to see if the world files are there. if they are not, then that is either because the game was not stable enough to write the save, got firewalled, etc. and it needs to be fixed.

[Degasai]

Many thanks, Lystent. I actually managed to drill down far enough to identify my latest save. It was nested something like 8 folders deep. I've now successfully deleted every other "World" folder. I created this nightmare by using the "Save As" feature. I was doing 3 or 4 of those per session and naming them for easy identification. From my experience in gaming on the PC for 20+ years, that seemed the safest way to do it. Little did I know...

Here's the way I *think* it works. When you click the "Custom" tab when starting a new game, and click "Star System", the engine makes an automatic save in the AppData/Saves folder. It shows up as a folder named "Star System <date> <##-##>. Not sure what the number represents.

Inside this folder, it saves the state of every planet in your solar system (or asteroid field or whatever). It also creates a "Backup" folder. This is where your autosaves are placed (or manual backups from the main menu, I think?). Every time the game autosaves, it creates another folder in that Backup folder and names them <date><xxxxxx>. Inside THAT folder is saved, once again, the state of every planetary body in your solar system. These are saved as *.vx2 files.

If, while playing, you do a "Save As", it repeats the ENTIRE process. It creates ANOTHER folder in AppData with the name of your "Save As" game save. It's a whole shipload of FAIL, as a game mechanic. After playing the Star System custom world for about a week, my AppData/Saves folder contained 2,537 files in 319 folders. When you "Save As", you are basically creating another entire world. Let's say you Save your original game as "Miner Test". You are now no longer playing your original game. You are playing a COPY of your original Star System game that is now named "Miner Test". In the Software Development world, this is known as a "Cascade Failure". And it is a mind-boggling example of game design.

This Keen software bunch.... *sigh*

Never mind.

[Lystent]

Originally posted by Degas:

Many thanks, Lystent. I actually managed to drill down far enough to identify my latest save. It was nested something like 8 folders deep. I've now successfully deleted every other "World" folder. I created this nightmare by using the "Save As" feature. I was doing 3 or 4 of those per session and naming them for easy identification. From my experience in gaming on the PC for 20+ years, that seemed the safest way to do it. Little did I know...

I often use the 'save as' to create bookmarks of a particular moment before I do something drastic, like spawn in a planet. So, I have 259 world saves.

Edit: also, I somewhat organize all the saves by name, and when saving as, I add something like 't2' or 't1 v2 p1' at the end of the name... helps for a short bit.

[Degasai]

Thanks again. Yeah, I'm thinking I'm going to avoid that "Save As" button like it was a venomous insect. If I feel I absolutely need a save before I take a significant risk, or for whatever reason, I'm going to copy my save files into an appropriately named folder. That way, I am the one controlling the file proliferation and not the SE save mechanic.

[CelticChaos]

What really cooks my noodle is when you load from a backup file, and then the game makes backups of the backup - so your original save game when you try to "Load" it after playing another world for a while isn't even close (which is the point you are making I get it).

I periodically will copy the files from a backup folder into the root of the save folder and then reload. Then content loads correctly (we shouldn't have to) but it works.

[Degasai]

I know, right? That's almost as irritating as every developer making Space/Space Colonization titles voxel-based games :P