Game specific autosaves

[Walky]

TL;DR Save to folder unique to each game/map instead of in an open directory, both normal saves + autosaves

Did a quick search but couldn't find anything apart from a thread from ages ago suggesting this. I did a stupid overwrite of my save file (100+ hours IIRC) and rushed to check the autosaves to see that they were all overwritten as well while I was fooling around with creative mode.

I don't know how hard it would be to implement but is there any possibility of having map-specific autosaves like the way it works in games like Stellaris and other Paradox games, each save file you have is added to a folder for that game and each game has a unique ID to keep track of multiple save files. I've atttached some screenshots (ignore the empire names; my friends do too).

Main save folder - Ignore the names tyvm

The consciouscancer game saves

As you can see even if you save the game multiple times during a playthrough it gets added to the same folder, however it is possible to copy folders and change its name causing two different save trees to branch out without messing with each other. So in the end it's just tied with the folder the game was loaded from or last saved to, the folder names don't matter after the first save, (could just ask for "Game Name" at map creation).

I understand this isn't a priority issue and is mostly just QoL, I only have myself to hate, it's just a frustrating experience as I can't do anything.

[Koub]

You're not the first to have been bothered by this autosave thing :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12733
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=49154
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3888
And there are loosely related topics you might find interesting :
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=28393
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28952

I personnaly think this feature should be in 1.0. It's the kind of polish a game needs to feel complete, out-of-alpha.

[Walky]

Whoops, guess I'm still bad at searching on forums. Guess this is already on the radar.

[quyxkh]

I'd like continuing after an autosave (by taking the startup/in-game "load game" default, or via command-line `--start-server-load-latest` or however it was found) to use the original save-game file as the default target when manually saving afterwards.

After continuing an autosave, take the default to continue from that latest autosave. Now hit "save game". It'd be really nice if the default it picked for you was the save file that game was last saved to manually, rather than the autosave, especially so if the original hasn't changed since then.

So I propose that the engine remember the full path and timestamp of save files it loads, and that specifically autosaves remember them. Then, when loading a game, if it has a saved path and timestamp, and that saved path is in the current saves directory and has the right timestamp, the engine can instead remember that path and timestamp as the default save target for future explicit saves. Behavior from then on is exactly as if you'd loaded the game from the original file but in the autosaved state.

I know that default-save-target picking will always be a bit guesswork-y, you can't get perfect safety and I'm not trying. The method I'm proposing is only intended to be clearly a better guess than offering a default that will be silently overwritten. Anything resembling this method, i.e. anything that lets me reliably save to the default save target, switch to a different map for a while, and then return to the file I explicitly saved, would be clearly better than what's there now.

[Koub]

In other worlds, you want a "per game" system of autosave, instead of a global autosave for all games, right ?
I think It has already been suggested somewhere, I'll try to find it.

[Edit] Right, found it, topics merged.

[quyxkh]

In other worlds, you want a "per game" system of autosave, instead of a global autosave for all games, right ?
I think It has already been suggested somewhere, I'll try to find it.

[Edit] Right, found it, topics merged.

Simply relocating the autosaves won't cure the current symptom -- which I think everyone can agree could stand improving -- of offering an autosave which will soon be silently overwritten as a default explicit-save target.

I think the way I'm proposing has the additional advantages of being completely compatible with the way saving is currently done and easy to implement, and not increasing the population of autosaves. You could implement both it and the per-game autosaves independently, they're really different symptoms.