Lost my saves

[SpartanMayBeHigh]

Hi! Today while playing my home had a blackout. When i opened back the game i saw that my profile didn't exist anymore. I tried to recover the older save from the userdata, but when i change today's save with the yersterday one when i open the game is like i didn't nothing and the save come back to 0 progress. Any solution?

[Ad Hominem]

The store page says the game uses cloud saves, is there a way to recover it that way?

[SpartanMayBeHigh]

Originally posted by Ad Hominem:

The store page says the game uses cloud saves, is there a way to recover it that way?

Yea and i saw that i have .owwset file saved from yesterday in the cloud, but i don't know how i can load an old cloud save

[SovietThighsSaveLives]

Ok so the great thing about this game, as long as you dont have memory of a gold fish, is there really no physical progress in the world, however, the progress you do get is what *you* know about. So for example I could easily delete all of my save file and just pick up a new computer and be no father back than where I was.

[King in Yellow]

Originally posted by ThiccThighsSaveLives:

Ok so the great thing about this game, as long as you dont have memory of a gold fish, is there really no physical progress in the world, however, the progress you do get is what *you* know about. So for example I could easily delete all of my save file and just pick up a new computer and be no father back than where I was.

You do keep the notes in the ship log though, there's even an achievement for completing it. Having to revisit every place and read all the conversations again because your save has been erased would be pretty dull.

That aside, even if it's a rather short game, some people don't have a lot of spare time or only play during the weekends. The ship log really helps keeping track of everything.

[GunBoat]

Well now, I do everything and am up at the museum and life happens and I have to quit and leave. When I get back the only restart option is new expedition which starts me at the beginning.

Ground hog day or no ground hog day, rule number 1 of games is that life happens, put the player back where they were on relaunch as if they hadn't left. It is obvious that this ground hog day game is incapable of melding with one's more important LIFE!

The ground hog day throwback should not key on when you have to quit the game. It should use another in-game mechanism for that.

Of course I could be incorrect in my understanding of what is going on here.

[Nert]

Originally posted by God:

Well now, I do everything and am up at the museum and life happens and I have to quit and leave. When I get back the only restart option is new expedition which starts me at the beginning.

Ground hog day or no ground hog day, rule number 1 of games is that life happens, put the player back where they were on relaunch as if they hadn't left. It is obvious that this ground hog day game is incapable of melding with one's more important LIFE!

The ground hog day throwback should not key on when you have to quit the game. It should use another in-game mechanism for that.

Of course I could be incorrect in my understanding of what is going on here.

That is far, far from a rule of games, let alone #1

It doesn't key on quitting, there is an in-game mechanic it keys on, but discovering exactly what that is is part of the game. Death or quitting will end a loop from your perspective, though.

The loops aren't very long but the tutorial section (essentially everything up until you leave the Museum) aren't part of one. You can walk directly to the observatory and grab the launch codes, no need to do anything else again, once you make it through a single loop or die (you can even immediately fly directly into the sun) you won't have to worry about "new expedition" anymore

The game auto-saves every time you see the words "Ship Log Updated" from then on

[GunBoat]

Originally posted by Nert:

Originally posted by God:

Well now, I do everything and am up at the museum and life happens and I have to quit and leave. When I get back the only restart option is new expedition which starts me at the beginning.

Ground hog day or no ground hog day, rule number 1 of games is that life happens, put the player back where they were on relaunch as if they hadn't left. It is obvious that this ground hog day game is incapable of melding with one's more important LIFE!

The ground hog day throwback should not key on when you have to quit the game. It should use another in-game mechanism for that.

Of course I could be incorrect in my understanding of what is going on here.

That is far, far from a rule of games, let alone #1

It doesn't key on quitting, there is an in-game mechanic it keys on, but discovering exactly what that is is part of the game. Death or quitting will end a loop from your perspective, though.

The loops aren't very long but the tutorial section (essentially everything up until you leave the Museum) aren't part of one. You can walk directly to the observatory and grab the launch codes, no need to do anything else again, once you make it through a single loop or die (you can even immediately fly directly into the sun) you won't have to worry about "new expedition" anymore

The game auto-saves every time you see the words "Ship Log Updated" from then on

No, that is exactly rule #1. If games do not meld with LIFE then people will not play them and the main goal that rule # 1 directly supports is to have as many people as possible buy and play the game.

So you're saying that everything I did on the way up to the museum is uneccessary from a game standpoint? No advantage is given if you do any of it or not?

[ultramage]

The OP did not describe how exactly they attempted to restore their saves from userdata.
I'm seeing that the game doesn't actually write to userdata, but points 'remotecache' at AppData/LocalLow/Mobius Digital/Outer Wilds/SteamSaves/ . I also see that there is a 'Backup' directory. Messing with this can cause problems if not careful, especially if you try to fight steam's cloud saving logic without having an idea how it works. Replacing the files won't work since they'll just get replaced back.

I think what I'd do is to copy the backup elsewhere, then start the game, then, while the game is running in the main menu, overwrite its savefiles with the backup, and then exit the game. If cloud saving works like usual in this game, the files will then get written to the cloud as the 'new' version and you'll be good to go.

That said, you don't lose that much of value by restarting and it's probably easier to just quickly retrace your steps, if you just started out.

[ultramage]

Originally posted by God:

No, that is exactly rule #1. If games do not meld with LIFE then people will not play them and the main goal that rule # 1 directly supports is to have as many people as possible buy and play the game.

So you're saying that everything I did on the way up to the museum is uneccessary from a game standpoint? No advantage is given if you do any of it or not?

In this case it's not your fault and it's mainly a side-effect of how the saving system is implemented and how it affects gameplay consistency. They chose to not do full world state saving/loading, since that's complicated and would likely lead to many bugs and glitches; instead, they always begin from a predictable, restartable state.

This then creates a gameplay problem: if the player quits out before looping at least once, what should they do? They can't put the player where they were, because full world state saving/loading is not implemented. But they also can't just start the loop and have the player wake up with the launch codes and ship log intact, because the player hasn't yet witnessed the death sequence and thus skipping ahead like this could lead to incredible confusion. So far they don't seem to have a better answer to this than to end your savefile and put up a warning.

Regarding the tutorial area, yes, pretty much. Just as in the time loop, you as the player retain all the information you've seen and learned when doing the tutorial are the first time, and you are not required to go through it a second time. There are a few tiny in-game things I noticed that change if you do the tutorial - you get the zero-g cave log entry (needed for achievement), Marl sends a greeting to Esker (1 extra dialogue option), and the Hide&Seek frequency is recorded. Aside from that, I don't think there are are any conversation options that open up down the line that would depend on having talked to anyone in the tutorial area. There are however one or two cases where you can come back with new info from elsewhere for some extra bit of fluff, like the ever growing list of complaints to Hal.

[Nert]

Originally posted by God:

No, that is exactly rule #1. If games do not meld with LIFE then people will not play them and the main goal that rule # 1 directly supports is to have as many people as possible buy and play the game.

So you're saying that everything I did on the way up to the museum is uneccessary from a game standpoint? No advantage is given if you do any of it or not?

Pong. Tetris. Mario. Sonic. None of those had save states that put you back exactly where you left! I'm happy to agree that games that require too much time commitment at a time are frustrating but this isn't one of them


Kinda. The village is essentially a tutorial, they taught you game mechanics - specifically things like how to use your signalscope, how cameras work, how to detect ghost matter, how to fly in Zero-G and repair things, but since that's all stuff you've now learned you don't have to do it again

It's a core theme of this game that time is looping and only memories persist: Say you go to place X and read "there's a secret door behind a rock over on planet Y", but then you die and the loop starts over. You don't have to go back to X, you can go straight to Y, and your Ship Log will have a note saying the same. It'll also let you know if there was anything more at X that you missed, if not then you probably never need to visit X again

[GunBoat]

I apologize to the OP for kinda hijacking a bit but I hope the continued conversation helped some. Thanks to all who provided input, each piece helped with the overall pic. I'm going to give it a try again and punch through it and then play tech support for my kids on it.