Nonsensical Savegame System

[Hammir]

I am about 90% of the way through my game. I like to save every once in a while. Unfortunately, at this point, when I try a new manual savegame. I get a message, stating to the effect that I have to many savegames already, sorry! And then it tells me to delete some.

So, I look around in game for a place to delete a few. Guess what - I can't find one! No worries, I figure I will locate the savegame folder and delete from there (Steamapps?Common?Portal 2). I do that - no luck. I searched for savegames in the "User" directory, but could not locate any saves there. My guess is thatt my Cloudsaves are being repopulated into the local svegame menu each time.

Am I missing something in game to delete the saves (it is a possible)? If not, I am pretty disappointed with this oversight by Valve. This is uncharcteristic of their products.

Thanks for any help.

[Zeitgeist2505]

I never understood why Valve thought it would be a good idea to place files and folders so deep in C: or have them all over the place on the HDD.
It's the most un-organized install I have ever seen for an application.

1. Start the game and go to LOAD. There is a delete button at the bottom.
Simply click the save you don't want and then click Delete.

2. The Save files you are looking for on your computer can be found in this directory
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Portal 2\portal2\SAVE\
or
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Portal 2\portal2\SAVE\
If you are running a 64bit version

Make sure you back up your saves or simply move the ones you don't want to a seperate folder location.

[Hammir]

Originally posted by *Geist Von PA*:

I never understood why Valve thought it would be a good idea to place files and folders so deep in C: or have them all over the place on the HDD.
It's the most un-organized install I have ever seen for an application.

1. Start the game and go to LOAD. There is a delete button at the bottom.
Simply click the save you don't want and then click Delete.

2. The Save files you are looking for on your computer can be found in this directory
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Portal 2\portal2\SAVE\
or
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Portal 2\portal2\SAVE\
If you are running a 64bit version

Make sure you back up your saves or simply move the ones you don't want to a seperate folder location.

Thank you for clearing that up.

It seems there is no "delete" option within an active game from the save/load menu. You are correct, that option is available from the initial front-end game menu. That makes no sense; the game tells me to delete savegames to make room for a new one but I can't since I can't delete any from that point in the game. I have to leave a game I cannot save to make room and then restart to save.

Crazy.

Thanks again.

[Zeitgeist2505]

Not a problem.

Also.
You should be able to overwrite prior old saves from the save option while playing.
Just click on an old save and click save and it will prompt you with a question if you want to overwrite that save.

As for deleting on the fly while in-game.
I guess the devs didn't think about that since you can overwrite old saves.
However that doesn't make much sense why it asks you to delete some save states while playing.

[Hammir]

Originally posted by *Geist Von PA*:

Not a problem.

Also.
You should be able to overwrite prior old saves from the save option while playing.
Just click on an old save and click save and it will prompt you with a question if you want to overwrite that save.

As for deleting on the fly while in-game.
I guess the devs didn't think about that since you can overwrite old saves.
However that doesn't make much sense why it asks you to delete some save states while playing.

If so, I just got stupid. I don't think I was prompted to overwrite. I could be just blundering things - as I said, it could be just me. If that is the case, my only valid complaints would be the savegames buried leagues within folder directories and the obvious "delete" save game not available within an active game.

Thank you for your patience and advice, I sincrerely appreciate the time you took to help.

[Zeitgeist2505]

Originally posted by Hammir:

Originally posted by *Geist Von PA*:

Not a problem.

Also.
You should be able to overwrite prior old saves from the save option while playing.
Just click on an old save and click save and it will prompt you with a question if you want to overwrite that save.

As for deleting on the fly while in-game.
I guess the devs didn't think about that since you can overwrite old saves.
However that doesn't make much sense why it asks you to delete some save states while playing.

If so, I just got stupid. I don't think I was prompted to overwrite. I could be just blundering things - as I said, it could be just me. If that is the case, my only valid complaints would be the savegames buried leagues within folder directories and the obvious "delete" save game not available within an active game.

Thank you for your patience and advice, I sincrerely appreciate the time you took to help.

It's not a problem.
I too have days where I am completely blind to things that are right in front of my face.

[omed_86]

You can also presss F6 for quick save, and F7 for quick load. Becareful though, i once pressed F6 instead of F7 when I wanted to load, and I saved in a pretty critical situiation XD I had to load an autosave.

[Huw]

Coming a bit late to the party, but I wrote this Python script. Sharing it here in case anyone else has the same problem, and stumbles across this page. The script finds savegame (*.sav) files for all Steam games, groups them by directory, and in each directory, removes all but the most recent (by default) 10 non-autosave files.

I wrote it to run on Python 3.10 on Linux, where Portal 2 seems to pick up changes to the savegame directory immediately. It should work on Windows if you change the `os.path.join()` statement in function `find_files()`. I advise taking a backup copy of the common folder before running for the first time, and also running with the `--dryrun` option.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import argparse
import glob
import os
import pathlib
from collections import defaultdict

def make_key(pair):
    path, _ = pair
    path = pathlib.Path(path)
    return path.parts

def find_files():
    home = os.environ['HOME']
    paths = os.path.join(home, '.local', 'share', 'Steam', 'steamapps', 'common', '**', '*.sav')
    paths = glob.glob(paths, recursive=True)
    parents = defaultdict(list)
    for path in paths:
        parent = os.path.dirname(path)
        time = os.path.getmtime(path)
        parents[parent].append((time, path))
    parents = [paths for (parent, paths) in sorted(parents.items(), key=make_key)]
    parents = [[path for (time, path) in sorted(paths)] for paths in parents]
    return parents

def filter_files(paths, keep):
    for path in reversed(paths):
        if 'autosave' in os.path.basename(path):
            yield path
        elif keep > 0:
            keep -= 1
        else:
            yield path

def delete_files(paths, keep, dryrun):
    paths = list(filter_files(paths, keep))
    for path in reversed(paths):
        print(path)
        if not dryrun:
            os.remove(path)

def parse_args():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument('-k', '--keep', type=int, default=10, help='files to keep')
    parser.add_argument('-d', '--dryrun', action='store_true', help='perform dry run')
    return parser.parse_args()

settings = parse_args()
for paths in find_files():
    delete_files(paths, settings.keep, settings.dryrun)

[Bromstine]

Originally posted by Huw:

    home = os.environ['HOME']
    paths = os.path.join(home, '.local', 'share', 'Steam', 'steamapps', 'common', '**', '*.sav')

That join is an abomination. ;-)
Use

os.path.expanduser('~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/**/*.sav')

instead.