Suggestion: AUTOSAVE

[Lex]

During a game at 7dtd, I suffered a sudden power outage which compromised the save file. As promptly suggested to me on the support and bug report forum, I tried everything I could to try and fix the file. Unfortunately in my case I had very little luck. Needless to say, I immediately thought about how useful it would be if the program generated at least two autosave every 20/30 minutes. If it happens again that for any reason the program terminates incorrectly, it would be much safer to draw on a recovery backup. Thus losing only 20 minutes of experience rather than, as in my case, over 20 days. Nevertheless I believe that 7dtd continues to be the best simulation in the open world with zombies in 2021. Although understandable, at the moment I have no desire to start a new game. Maybe I'll try again with the next patch, which maybe will also include an autosave

[Shurenai]

The game is constantly saving to disk as you play; every step you take, every block you damage or break, every item you pick up, every minute that passes by. That very nature is exactly why a sudden power outage will shatter the save file- There's a reason every game under the sun warns you not to power off the system or close the game while the save icon is present on the screen. Interrupting the save causes save fragmentation/corruption; As now only a part of the changes are written to disk when it needs all of them to have a functioning save.

So, what we don't need is auto-save; It already autosaves, constantly. What it lacks is a working backup system. A big problem there though is that unlike most other games where save files are measured in 50-100kb, or maybe 5-25mb at most, values that can be, practically speaking, instantly saved with little impact on performance, 7dtd saves start at 250+mb and grow from there to in excess of 1gb and more depending on how long you continue playing the same save.

Gamers don't typically mind if they lose kb or a couple mb of space to auto saves- But when you're talking multiple gigs, it's a different story; And that's before discussing the impact on performance as the game backs up such a huge amount of data; It would likely require interrupting play entirely for several seconds each auto-save.


I'm sure a backup system will be properly implemented eventually. But, In the mean time, I'd strongly recommend making manual backups. before each play session at the minimum....Or getting an unterruptible power supply so that you don't suddenly lose power without being able to log out and close your computer down safely; since this is pretty much the exact use case for it. :)

[SuperMeatBag]

To echo the above post and add a little, outdated but still very usable UPS's are pretty cheap to get hold of, enterprise needs move pretty fast and many that are unusable to current businesses will happily run a home PC more than long enough to save a game and shutdown in safety.

[Niknokinater]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

The game is constantly saving to disk as you play; every step you take, every block you damage or break, every item you pick up, every minute that passes by. That very nature is exactly why a sudden power outage will shatter the save file- There's a reason every game under the sun warns you not to power off the system or close the game while the save icon is present on the screen. Interrupting the save causes save fragmentation/corruption; As now only a part of the changes are written to disk when it needs all of them to have a functioning save.

So, what we don't need is auto-save; It already autosaves, constantly. What it lacks is a working backup system. A big problem there though is that unlike most other games where save files are measured in 50-100kb, or maybe 5-25mb at most, values that can be, practically speaking, instantly saved with little impact on performance, 7dtd saves start at 250+mb and grow from there to in excess of 1gb and more depending on how long you continue playing the same save.

Gamers don't typically mind if they lose kb or a couple mb of space to auto saves- But when you're talking multiple gigs, it's a different story; And that's before discussing the impact on performance as the game backs up such a huge amount of data; It would likely require interrupting play entirely for several seconds each auto-save.


I'm sure a backup system will be properly implemented eventually. But, In the mean time, I'd strongly recommend making manual backups. before each play session at the minimum....Or getting an unterruptible power supply so that you don't suddenly lose power without being able to log out and close your computer down safely; since this is pretty much the exact use case for it. :)

I don't immediately believe that the game would autosave to that degree- that's pointless considering that, should any anomaly present itself and the game ceases to respond during an ever-so-present autosave, a constant autosave would be worse than no autosave, bricking your save completely instead of just losing the session's progress (not to mention the constant disk usage).

If it's as pronounced as you say, that's a huge design flaw imo and needs to be patched asap to lessen that grip.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Niknokinater:

Originally posted by Shurenai:

The game is constantly saving to disk as you play; every step you take, every block you damage or break, every item you pick up, every minute that passes by. That very nature is exactly why a sudden power outage will shatter the save file- There's a reason every game under the sun warns you not to power off the system or close the game while the save icon is present on the screen. Interrupting the save causes save fragmentation/corruption; As now only a part of the changes are written to disk when it needs all of them to have a functioning save.

So, what we don't need is auto-save; It already autosaves, constantly. What it lacks is a working backup system. A big problem there though is that unlike most other games where save files are measured in 50-100kb, or maybe 5-25mb at most, values that can be, practically speaking, instantly saved with little impact on performance, 7dtd saves start at 250+mb and grow from there to in excess of 1gb and more depending on how long you continue playing the same save.

Gamers don't typically mind if they lose kb or a couple mb of space to auto saves- But when you're talking multiple gigs, it's a different story; And that's before discussing the impact on performance as the game backs up such a huge amount of data; It would likely require interrupting play entirely for several seconds each auto-save.


I'm sure a backup system will be properly implemented eventually. But, In the mean time, I'd strongly recommend making manual backups. before each play session at the minimum....Or getting an unterruptible power supply so that you don't suddenly lose power without being able to log out and close your computer down safely; since this is pretty much the exact use case for it. :)

I don't immediately believe that the game would autosave to that degree- that's pointless considering that, should any anomaly present itself and the game ceases to respond during an ever-so-present autosave, a constant autosave would be worse than no autosave, bricking your save completely instead of just losing the session's progress (not to mention the constant disk usage).

If it's as pronounced as you say, that's a huge design flaw imo and needs to be patched asap to lessen that grip.

It's pretty much a limitation of file size and file count. With so many files and so much size involved, Saving infrequently means a huge overhead at each save- Noone notices kb of data being written. They absolutely notice gb of data being written. Minecraft saves the same way- Most voxel games do, actually, since it's such a huge amount of data to write spread over hundreds or sometimes thousands of files.

Take a look at Valheim even; It's not even fully voxel based yet it's autosave at 20m intervals causes even the best computers to freeze up for a few seconds because it's commiting a huge load to ram/cpu/disk all at once.

The game has it's own methods of verifying file integrity each write. But, as explained in my previous post, it cannot do that when the power is suddenly shut off. It can cope with most forms of crashes without data loss, but power loss is another story entirely.

[Niknokinater]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Originally posted by Niknokinater:

I don't immediately believe that the game would autosave to that degree- that's pointless considering that, should any anomaly present itself and the game ceases to respond during an ever-so-present autosave, a constant autosave would be worse than no autosave, bricking your save completely instead of just losing the session's progress (not to mention the constant disk usage).

If it's as pronounced as you say, that's a huge design flaw imo and needs to be patched asap to lessen that grip.

It's pretty much a limitation of file size and file count. With so many files and so much size involved, Saving infrequently means a huge overhead at each save- Noone notices kb of data being written. They absolutely notice gb of data being written. Minecraft saves the same way- Most voxel games do, actually, since it's such a huge amount of data to write spread over hundreds or sometimes thousands of files.

Take a look at Valheim even; It's not even fully voxel based yet it's autosave at 20m intervals causes even the best computers to freeze up for a few seconds because it's commiting a huge load to ram/cpu/disk all at once.

The game has it's own methods of verifying file integrity each write. But, as explained in my previous post, it cannot do that when the power is suddenly shut off. It can cope with most forms of crashes without data loss, but power loss is another story entirely.

The concept of compartmentalization completely went over my head lel. I was specifically thinking of Minecraft too- but I never kept track of the region data, just the player data. Thanks for the clarification.

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Originally posted by Niknokinater:

I don't immediately believe that the game would autosave to that degree- that's pointless considering that, should any anomaly present itself and the game ceases to respond during an ever-so-present autosave, a constant autosave would be worse than no autosave, bricking your save completely instead of just losing the session's progress (not to mention the constant disk usage).

If it's as pronounced as you say, that's a huge design flaw imo and needs to be patched asap to lessen that grip.

It's pretty much a limitation of file size and file count. With so many files and so much size involved, Saving infrequently means a huge overhead at each save- Noone notices kb of data being written. They absolutely notice gb of data being written. Minecraft saves the same way- Most voxel games do, actually, since it's such a huge amount of data to write spread over hundreds or sometimes thousands of files.

Take a look at Valheim even; It's not even fully voxel based yet it's autosave at 20m intervals causes even the best computers to freeze up for a few seconds because it's commiting a huge load to ram/cpu/disk all at once.

The game has it's own methods of verifying file integrity each write. But, as explained in my previous post, it cannot do that when the power is suddenly shut off. It can cope with most forms of crashes without data loss, but power loss is another story entirely.

Yep. Even on my overclocked 3900x with Raided drives for the game and for the saves AND using a ramdisk buffer to boost the speeds even more, I still see my FPS drop in half when Valheim makes a save.

7 Days is constantly writing data to files that can be up to a gigabit in size each. If it stored the data in RAM and saved periodically, you would see massive pauses in gameplay when it was saving, and having a separated save system would just fill up your drive enormously. This isn't a game where the save is a single 38MB file. It's a chain of several files and folders that can take up several gigabits as a whole.

[Seftak]

May i add about the UPS that it could save like your whole computer? A sudeen power outage may be followed by a power spike in your outlet and fry you PSU and thus frying a part or your whole computer. It's not frequent but might happen. So consider yourself lucky to have only lost your save...

[vgifford]

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

7 Days is constantly writing data to files that can be up to a gigabit in size each ... This isn't a game where the save is a single 38MB file. It's a chain of several files and folders that can take up several gigabits as a whole.

My current Navezgane save folder is 960 MB.

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by vgifford:

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

7 Days is constantly writing data to files that can be up to a gigabit in size each ... This isn't a game where the save is a single 38MB file. It's a chain of several files and folders that can take up several gigabits as a whole.

My current Navezgane save folder is 960 MB.

I've had personal saves up to 12GB, and the servers I run have been up to 30GB. That's still quite a large bit of data to be writing to the disk all at once. Especially if you consider that most people still have platters or slower SSD's.

And in the earlier comparison with Valheim, that save is only 150MB.

[JimmyIowa]

Originally posted by Niknokinater:

I don't immediately believe that the game would autosave to that degree

Then run resource monitor in windows and watch process file I/O in realtime while playing, and be enlightened. :)

Originally posted by Niknokinater:

If it's as pronounced as you say, that's a huge design flaw imo and needs to be patched asap to lessen that grip.

Heh. It's not a design flaw. Here's a very brief and generalized description of what is happening. 7dtd is a true fully destructible fully modifiable world. Whenever you change the state of something, it has to be saved in the world data. But the world is far too large to keep all of it in memory and still run on the majority of today's machines. So the game only keeps a small area of the world which is around the player in memory. Say for discussion purposes it's 256x256 meters (blocks).

However, if you put even a very brief moment's thought into this, you will realize the issue - The player is almost always moving and changing the state of things. (How often, in percentage of gameplay time, do you stand still doing nothing? For me it's close to 0%.) As you run though a POI damaging things, say with missed shots from a gun, opening containers, and changing the state of sleepers (by waking or killing the sleepers) etc, you are changing the state of blocks constantly. However, as you move, the game can't keep in memory a trail 256 blocks wide behind you of all changes in the world you have made. That quickly adds up. It has to keep only the 256x256 area around you. Which means every time you move 1 meter it have to save changes you made to blocks 128 meters behind you, and load in the state of blocks 128 meters ahead of you.

I hope this helps your understanding.

Note: This description is a generalization meant to assist in visualizing what the program has to do under the covers. The saving and loading is actually done in chucks of 16 meters not 1 meter. But that becomes harder to visualize. It's easier to visualize a simple square around the player that moves with the player.

[Realty13]

Originally posted by SuperMeatBag:

To echo the above post and add a little, outdated but still very usable UPS's are pretty cheap to get hold of, enterprise needs move pretty fast and many that are unusable to current businesses will happily run a home PC more than long enough to save a game and shutdown in safety.

This is sound advice. I have not run a computer without a UPS since before Win 98 and it has saved me many times due to the fact they have built in surge suppression and gives you enough time to save what you are doing and shut your computer down properly. Even if the battery goes bad you can buy a replacement battery and not even have to buy another UPS.

[Lex]

Wow, I didn't know it would elicit this flood of responses. Thanks to all for the clarifications and suggestions. I quickly reply about some solutions. UPS are the worst possible purchase ever, at least for home use. Better to invest in the protection of the main electrical panel, where you can get multiple safety devices and voltage correction filters at better prices than any similar quality UPS. Without considering the fact that in the worst case scenario, as mentioned by a user, you will have secured not only your PC, but also all the appliances you have in your home. The fact is that if there is no energy anyway, there is nothing to monitor. And as rare as these events are, who among you has never had any? :)

As for the save system, now I understand that we are dealing with something very complex and before continuing, I would like to make it clear that I do not understand anything about programming! :D
What made me think, however, is the fact of having such an important resource of information accumulated (I have even read 12GB) that all of a sudden they become useless. It is a bit as if the interruption of the electric current made everything that I had previously saved on my HDs unreadable. There must be some way to get the cows in the barn. It would not be possible to make a certified backup at the exit of the program, at least of that or those files that are essential to read everything else? I realize that if you have a server that works 24/7, you will still have to set a specific time for this backup. But making one at the close of the program shouldn't be too much of a challenge. Then again, I'm a profound programming layman. So if I wrote some nonsense, have the leniency to interpret them as such. Anyway, I want to congratulate the developers, who have done an extraordinary job to date. Keep it up <3

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by Lex:

Wow, I didn't know it would elicit this flood of responses. Thanks to all for the clarifications and suggestions. I quickly reply about some solutions. UPS are the worst possible purchase ever, at least for home use. Better to invest in the protection of the main electrical panel, where you can get multiple safety devices and voltage correction filters at better prices than any similar quality UPS. Without considering the fact that in the worst case scenario, as mentioned by a user, you will have secured not only your PC, but also all the appliances you have in your home. The fact is that if there is no energy anyway, there is nothing to monitor. And as rare as these events are, who among you has never had any? :)

As for the save system, now I understand that we are dealing with something very complex and before continuing, I would like to make it clear that I do not understand anything about programming! :D
What made me think, however, is the fact of having such an important resource of information accumulated (I have even read 12GB) that all of a sudden they become useless. It is a bit as if the interruption of the electric current made everything that I had previously saved on my HDs unreadable. There must be some way to get the cows in the barn. It would not be possible to make a certified backup at the exit of the program, at least of that or those files that are essential to read everything else? I realize that if you have a server that works 24/7, you will still have to set a specific time for this backup. But making one at the close of the program shouldn't be too much of a challenge. Then again, I'm a profound programming layman. So if I wrote some nonsense, have the leniency to interpret them as such. Anyway, I want to congratulate the developers, who have done an extraordinary job to date. Keep it up <3

It comes down to cost usually. A single-PC UPS will range from $30-150 depending on the load and uptime. Overhauling your electricity with backup power is generally $3000+

Which do you think people are more likely to go with?

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

Originally posted by Lex:

Wow, I didn't know it would elicit this flood of responses. Thanks to all for the clarifications and suggestions. I quickly reply about some solutions. UPS are the worst possible purchase ever, at least for home use. Better to invest in the protection of the main electrical panel, where you can get multiple safety devices and voltage correction filters at better prices than any similar quality UPS. Without considering the fact that in the worst case scenario, as mentioned by a user, you will have secured not only your PC, but also all the appliances you have in your home. The fact is that if there is no energy anyway, there is nothing to monitor. And as rare as these events are, who among you has never had any? :)

As for the save system, now I understand that we are dealing with something very complex and before continuing, I would like to make it clear that I do not understand anything about programming! :D
What made me think, however, is the fact of having such an important resource of information accumulated (I have even read 12GB) that all of a sudden they become useless. It is a bit as if the interruption of the electric current made everything that I had previously saved on my HDs unreadable. There must be some way to get the cows in the barn. It would not be possible to make a certified backup at the exit of the program, at least of that or those files that are essential to read everything else? I realize that if you have a server that works 24/7, you will still have to set a specific time for this backup. But making one at the close of the program shouldn't be too much of a challenge. Then again, I'm a profound programming layman. So if I wrote some nonsense, have the leniency to interpret them as such. Anyway, I want to congratulate the developers, who have done an extraordinary job to date. Keep it up <3

It comes down to cost usually. A single-PC UPS will range from $30-150 depending on the load and uptime. Overhauling your electricity with backup power is generally $3000+

Which do you think people are more likely to go with?

To add on to this, $30-150 for protection on your $1000-3000 PC, or $3000+ to additionally protect your...light bulbs? Toaster? Most of the other things on your power grid either have their own built in surge protection, Or are tiny and often inconsequential to replace, Or are things that only function for a limited duration at a time, and so the chances of a surge at that exact time are minimal to begin with.

And to go a step further, Most other things don't lose data when they have the power shut off- Your PC does; So either way a UPS is still valuable, as it provides you the time necessary to shut down your PC safely, or possibly for the power to come back on.

Going with the rareness of the event to begin with, the UPS is significantly cheaper, will protect one of the most expensive and precious electronic items in your house from damage; And ultimately, most other appliances and electrical objects in your house will survive a surge just fine.

[Lex]

I begin by apologizing. I realized that writing that buying a UPS was a bad investment may have irritated some. I will make it clear that I was talking about my personal experience. I admit that I was in any case indelicate.

I bought a UPS in the late 90's. It weighed about 20 kg, and had a moderate impact on the energy bill. And for the avoidance of doubt, it did exactly what it promised to do. Because I have tested it more than once. I paid dearly for it already for that time, but I knew I had bought a very good quality device. After a couple of years I sold it because it was really clear to me that the maintenance of this device (the batteries tend to seem efficient and need to be replaced) in relation to the work done, was unfair. Furthermore, the proliferation of high-quality (but high-priced) power supplies for PCs had brought my attention back to various and possible circumstances.

Can an energy overload cause problems with the light bulbs? Of course, but also damaging the electronic components of a refrigerator, a washing machine and much more. Not to mention the fact that it can propagate from your hub / modem and damage your motherboard. If you are convinced that standard protective devices can protect you from such problems, I can only hope that nothing silime will ever happen to anyone. I have decided otherwise.

I built a house about ten years ago. I don't know what the current prices are for the passive devices I am referring to. But even without doing research, I know that $ 3,000 buys far more than you need. A few years ago, I also found a diagram on the internet, but don't ask me for the link. You will surely find other examples if you search in electronics magazines. If you are interested in looking for it and you know how to use a soldering iron, you can find the scheme to build a filter panel for the correction of electrical modulation with more than one interruption device. If you can, you want to take the whim and use military electronic components (bigger but more resistant, if you know where to buy them). I believe you would be spending less than $ 500 anyway. Of course if someone knew that $ 30 is enough to protect a device that can deliver 750w while to protect the voltage that passes through a 5 / 6Kw meter it is necessary to spend 100 times more, that someone could or should have some doubts.

But anyway, if you are convinced that with $ 30 you can buy something of quality that will keep you safe from problems, I can only be happy for you that you have found your balance. I can only talk about my personal experience. And that's fine even if it differs from yours. And my experience has taught me that it is better to protect yourself from overloads, rather than having 30/50 seconds of auxiliary energy to turn off the PC. After all, I, like the vast majority of people, use the PC mainly for recreational purposes. Those who work on it at home may find it more interesting to buy (if they haven't already) an auxiliary backup system. Even in the event of a blackout you will only have lost a few hours of work. Or buy them both, but in this case we are leaving the domestic context, to introduce ourselves in the professional one. And, before anyone points this out to me, I know full well that a backup device costs well over $ 30 / $ 150. Or maybe there are some for this price too. What I know for sure is that you pay for quality.

Having said that I send you a hug and have a wonderful day.