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Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 6:35 pm
by deepdriller
What it says on the tin. When your internet connection is made of bamboo, this can be relevant.
As tiny as a normal save can be (my largest save is 10MB, after compression, although more ambitious players might have twice that), the syncing of these files eats my bandwidth for several minutes. In this time, I can't start the game again.
And no, I don't want to turn off the cloud entirely, I want my work to survive a potential head crash, thank you very much.
(On a side note: Why does the save file include a copy of the freeplay-locale?)

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 6:52 pm
by vtx
Check proprieties of factorio in steam, second panel you can deactivate steam cloud for factorio.

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 7:25 pm
by deepdriller
vtx wrote:Check proprieties of factorio in steam, second panel you can deactivate steam cloud for factorio.
deepdriller wrote:And no, I don't want to turn off the cloud entirely, I want my work to survive a potential head crash, thank you very much.

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 7:33 pm
by daniel34
deepdriller wrote:And no, I don't want to turn off the cloud entirely, I want my work to survive a potential head crash, thank you very much.
So how you want it to act? Although the question is redundant anyway since cloud saving is handled by Steam and only has two options, on or off.
deepdriller wrote:On a side note: Why does the save file include a copy of the freeplay-locale?
Factorio copies the complete scenario into the savegame so you can also continue it on an installation where that scenario is not installed, for example in multiplayer. This is done for all scenarios, and freeplay is one.

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 7:43 pm
by deepdriller
But how does Steam know which files need to be synced? Clearly either the game submits a list, or the save folder is synced directly. In either case, there are ways to subvert that.

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 8:35 pm
by daniel34
deepdriller wrote:But how does Steam know which files need to be synced? Clearly either the game submits a list, or the save folder is synced directly. In either case, there are ways to subvert that.
It's the contents of the saves folder (see here) and the player-data.json, maybe some other files too.

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 6:35 am
by vtx
When the cloud is enabled it tends to compare the cloud to your hard drive to see which is newer.

It's how cloud sync work. I think my point is still valid because how it'll be different to disable in-game instead on steam directly?

Locale folder unziped only take 156 KB.

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 6:09 pm
by SyncViews
Keeping auto saves off the cloud (while manual saves are on cloud) would certainly be nice for a slower internet connection.
Personally (and I suspect many people) only really use autosaves for crash recovery (which is pretty rare :) ) and explicitly save anything I want to keep, and like that getting backed up and synced to my other devices.
daniel34 wrote:
deepdriller wrote:And no, I don't want to turn off the cloud entirely, I want my work to survive a potential head crash, thank you very much.
So how you want it to act? Although the question is redundant anyway since cloud saving is handled by Steam and only has two options, on or off.
I have seen other games that allow a per-save cloud choice when on steam, e.g. with a checkbox when saving. In my experience with those games (e.g. when trying to send a friend a save), steam cloud saves just go in a different directory to the non-steam saves (e.g. in Steam/userdata/:userid/:gameid/remote/, where turns out Factorio already puts some config files)

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2021 3:54 pm
by Borax Kid
I know this is an old topic but is there a way to do this now?
I have a slow internet connection and I don't really need the auto saves to be in the cloud.

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:40 am
by ssilk
Just put your saves somewhere else?

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:44 pm
by Borax Kid
If I move the autosaves the game will just recreate some in the original directory I believe

Re: Add option to turn off syncing of autosave to Steam Cloud

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2022 8:26 am
by Stargateur
Divinity original sin 2 have this feature, total war warhammer, while I don't have a list of game that have this feature just by memory, I know that it's exist. Factorio savefile are BIG, I think this feature would save a lot of bandwidth for both user and steam cloud server. Also, when you need to close and open factorio doing some mod stuff and that your cloud sync take forever it's really slowing you.

That would also allow to not fear to have more autosave slot.