How to Sync Your Save Data Without Steam Sync

A Hat in Time doesn't quite work with Steam Sync at the moment, but you want to carry your save data over to your laptop from your PC. Luckily, there is a way around it!

Introduction

At the time of writing, I'm about 75% of the way through A Hat in Time, and while it is a fabulous game, one issue I hate dealing with is syncing my save data between my desktop PC which stays at home and my laptop, which goes everywhere with me. Luckily, there's an easier solution than manually copying the save file back and forth every time, through the use of a third party cloud service.

Requirements

• Some sort of cloud service that can sync a local folder (I use OneDrive because it integrates nicely with Windows 10)
  
• Windows (at the moment, I need to write up how to do this on MacOS and Linux when I get time)

The Setup

Back up your save data!

Before you do anything with the game, it is REQUIRED to back up your save data to another location, even simply in your Documents folder. If you haven't moved your Steam directory, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\HatInTimeGame and copy the entire SaveData folder to a safe place. I put my Steam directory in a different place, so for the sake of consistency in this guide, your steam directory refers to the location that contains files such as the steamapps folder (which contains all your games) and steam.exe. Be careful when working in here so you don't mess anything up.

Put your backup in a synced folder

Copy your backed up save data to a directory that gets synced by your cloud service of choice. In my case, I put it inside the Documents folder of my OneDrive.



NOTE: You will have to complete the below steps on every PC you want to sync your data to!

Link the new save data location to the old one

This is where it gets kind of confusing and complicated. Remember how you backed up your save data (you did do that, right?) to another directory? Delete the original SaveData folder in your Steam Directory (again C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\HatInTimeGame\SaveData). Delete the folder itself, not the slot.hat files inside! You read that right, to create the link to the new SaveData directory, the old one must no longer exist.

When that is gone, open Command Prompt as administrator. In Windows 10 (should work fine in 7 and 8.1 as well), you can do this by opening the Start menu, typing "command prompt", right clicking it in the search results, and clicking "Run as administrator." Select yes on the UAC prompt that opens.

In the Command Prompt window that opens, you will be using the mklink command to create a junction from the synced SaveData folder to the new one. The syntax of mklink in this context is as follows:

mklink /J "Link" "Target"

Where "Link" is going to be the original SaveData folder location before we started and "Target" will be the synced SaveData folder. In a normal Steam and OneDrive installation, the command you enter should look something like this:

mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\HatinTimeGame\SaveData" "C:\Users\teyan\OneDrive\Documents\SaveData"

Replacing the second location above with wherever your new synced save directory is. The quotes are necessary! Leave them there! If it works, it should say:

Junction created for C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\HatinTime\HatinTimeGame\Savedata <<===>> C:\Users\teyan\OneDrive\Documents\SaveData

In my case, it looked like this:

You should see the original SaveData folder exist again, but with a little arrow on it:

Test it!

You should be able to use your save just as you did before:

And when you save the game, your cloud client should reflect those changes:

Just be careful not to have the game running on more than one PC at a time, or the save on one will overwrite the other. Steam Sync is still smarter at handling this. In addition, these steps don't only apply to A Hat in Time, you can do it with any game, so long as you know where it stores its save data.

TODO: Add Mac and Linux guides

[Conrovbichovshigorbichovkitoshka]

I'll update it soon, don't currently have AHiT installed on my MacBook

[XDeadpool4XD]

when is mac one gonna be made

[Anna]

Thank you really much for making this, really great guide!