Using the cloud to restore a previous save

[Wahooka]

I have a game that sometimes crashes and screws up its save file.

I want to turn off "cloud sync" temporarily so I can have a good save preserved in the cloud.

Would there then be a way to revert back to this save?

I am not sure how to force the game to go back to a previous save that is in the cloud, do you know how to do this?

[Yujah]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Wahooka:

Would there then be a way to revert back to this save?

There would. I'd just delete the local copy of the savefile and reenable Steam cloud which would then download the cloud copy.

Doesn't however really seem to be a need to involve the cloud. I.e., you'd just at set times and with the game closed locally copy /where/ever/savefile to /where/ever/savefile.bak, and copy back said .bak when you want to restore.

If you actuially copy rather than just rename, that is, make sure that the modification time on the local /where/ever/savefile ends up newer than the cloud copy, Steam should detect a conflict when starting the game again and offer to upload the local file.

What for any given game "/where/ever/savefile" is you find out with the help of PCGamingWiki, and should you in fact for some reason want to manually download Steam-cloud copies you can through https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage

[Wahooka]

Thanks for the help.

So just to be clear:

If I ever delete my current save and replace it with an older backup, then how do I stop the Cloud Sync from replacing the older backup with the current save again?

I wasn't exactly sure how to get around that, you mentioned copying instead of renaming but that didn't make much sense to me.

[Yujah]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Wahooka:

Thanks for the help.
If I ever delete my current save and replace it with an older backup, then how do I stop the Cloud Sync from replacing the older backup with the current save again?

The copy-thing was about file creation/modification times.

That is; if you'd delete your current local savefile and then copy some backed up savefile back in its place it would get an OS-level file creation time of "now". When Steam then starts the game it sees that the time on the local file is newer than the time on the cloud copy and should so as to resolve that "conflict" offer to either download the cloud copy (no) or upload the local one (yes).

Note that as far a Steam is concerned the situation would be the same as you e.g. having played the game offline; it just sees that the local savefile is newer than the one it has...

Admittedly it might (I believe will) also throw up the conflict dialogue when the local savefile is just generally different rather than only "newer" but am not at a system where I can quickly check, and that conflict dialog trigger has been misty a few times, so I added that "copy" thing just to be sure: if you delete the local copy and then only rename "savefile.bak" back to "savefile" latter would retain the file-time of "savefie.bak", i.e, be older. That has caught me off-guard a few times in (different) backup situations so thought I'd mention it.

The Steam cloud is rather non-magical and I'd feel free to experiment a bit as long as you have local backup copies. In essence it's just...

1. On quiting a Steam-cloud enabled game, Steam gathers up the by the game so denoted local save/config files and uploads them to the Steam cloud.
2. On starting a Steam-cloud enabled game, Steam compares those so denoted local files to the cloud copies; downloads the cloud files if deemed to be newer (or if local files don't exist at all) and should put up a conflict dialog if instead deemed older so that you can resolve things yourself.

"Compares" in 2 I've myself only used in a metadata sense; file time/size. Latter so as to be able to delete cloud copies: if you replace a local savefile with a 0-size file and get the sync conflict dialog to upload the local file that will in fact delete the cloud copy. The above linked "remotestorage" interface doesn't provide for deletion so that's a way you can DIY.

If I even know I don't currently recall if rather than just a metadata compare it also compares file content (as a hash supposedly) but that's also fairly irrelevant; if you want to intervene the local/cloud savefile content is going to differ already, since what's the point otherwise...

Anyways. Sorry if this is now doubly too long. Just experiment a bit to demystify :)

[Sergeant Tuff-Stuff]

And remember not all games are stored in-cloud.

[Wahooka]

If I turned off sync, replaced my save files with an earlier save, and then played the game for a few weeks, and then turned on sync, would it store the current save in the cloud, or would it try to revert back to a few weeks ago?

According to you, it might give me a choice of both, right?

[Lithurge]

Or you could use something like gamesave manager to regularly back up your save locally or to a third party cloud of your choice.

That way you have exact control over which save you use.

[Wahooka]

Okay, I finally got around to copying an older save into the save folder and deleting the current save.

I played the game for a few minutes, and then it just synced correctly and didn't detect any conflicts.

Perhaps because I played a few minutes, it saw the latest save was newer and everything was fine.

Problem solved, thanks :)