Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

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YokoZar
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Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by YokoZar »

My roommate just accidentally overwrote his savegame that he'd put about 100 hours into. The cause was the very odd choice of default name for a savegame - any new game you load will want to overwrite your previous save from a completely different game unless you explicitly tell the game otherwise.

I filed a bug about this exact thing about a year ago, but it was closed "working as intended". There's a suggestions thread spawned here, though it's been dormant since: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=47857


I'd like to get a sense of how common this problem is. Has it happened to you?

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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by aober93 »

It has the last savegame preselected upon saving. Which is actually convenient, cause youre repeatedly saving. At least youre doing of more often than starting a new game. Ofc this can be fatal. It has happened in other games for me, but luckily not in factorio.

I would also suggest this is "not working as intended" ,because the game can detect a new game and thus not preselect the last game's save.

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Gergely
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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by Gergely »

It did happen to me once. My save was created in 0.13, and in 0.14 I accidentally overwrote it. 154 hours just gone...

I was soooo lucky that I realized it in time and turned on my computer's flight mode preventing steam from uploading it to the cloud save. Then I downloaded that save onto another computer and manually transferred it back. "Saving" it.

Listen. Factorio, is a game that takes a lot of time from you. And as many many many YouTubers and Twitch Streamers have learned recently, (the hard way) starting over is much much harder than starting up.

Gosh. I think it is still the case.

When saving, the game automatically selects the last data you saved to. But this is a problem, because in the meantime, you could have loaded another save, with which you would overwrite your previous one "by default". As a solution, I suggest that the game could remember the save last loaded, and would always select THAT by default to overwrite. In case the current session was not yet saved, it could generate a new name. So that "by default", it would always save to the RIGHT file.
Last edited by Gergely on Mon Mar 05, 2018 12:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by wvlad »

If you need it backup it. I use hardlink to Dropbox which stores multiple versions of each file.

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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by mrvn »

Factorio already has some creative random names it selects for entities. Most noticeable for train stations.

So why not pick a random name every time you start a new game and suggest saving as that?

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Gergely
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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by Gergely »

mrvn wrote:Factorio already has some creative random names it selects for entities. Most noticeable for train stations.

So why not pick a random name every time you start a new game and suggest saving as that?
I would hate that feature.

So that's why not.

Generating one with the same name but numbered would be better, so that people could keep track of their creation order. Assigning random names is not a good solution.

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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by mrvn »

Gergely wrote:
mrvn wrote:Factorio already has some creative random names it selects for entities. Most noticeable for train stations.

So why not pick a random name every time you start a new game and suggest saving as that?
I would hate that feature.

So that's why not.

Generating one with the same name but numbered would be better, so that people could keep track of their creation order. Assigning random names is not a good solution.
Try reading my message again: every time you start a new game.

So when you start your game you get "Mad Moodies creations" but when you save during the game it will always suggest the last used name just like now.

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Gergely
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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by Gergely »

mrvn wrote:
Gergely wrote:I would hate that feature.
Try reading my message again: every time you start a new game.
So when you start your game you get "Mad Moodies creations" but when you save during the game it will always suggest the last used name just like now.
I understood your suggestion clear for the first time. I would rather have the current lousy system remain than having yet another place in the game where those annoying (and not so) random names appear. Numbered save files like "session_1" and "session_2" would be better.

My suggestion:

When loading/saving, the game remembers the file selected for both, instead of remembering it separately for loading and saving. When you load/save, your filename is remembered, and when saving again, that name will be used by default. If you start a new game, and then save it for the first time, the game finds the lowest positive integer 'n' for which "session_n" does not exist, and then uses that name by default.

This is the best solution I could come up with. It not only avoids creating additional saved data for the same session or accidentally overwriting an old one, it also helps keep track of which session you started first.

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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by mrvn »

Instead of session I would maybe use the name of the map preset or scenario. So a sanbox game will be sandbox_N and a deathworld game deathworld_N.

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Re: Have you ever lost a save file unintentionally?

Post by mrvn »

I just had another idea. Maybe the savegame name could have some meta characters. For example: playing-with-trains-%t would replace the %t with the game time.

Suggested meta characters:
  • %t - game time
  • %s - scenario
  • %m - map preset
  • %p - player name
  • %n - unique number (1, 2, 3, ...)

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