Factorio Forums

Save syncing. I need it. (And others may find it useful I guess )

What do I mean? Well I'll tell ya, here's a little scenario:

-You have okayish internet, but not enough upload to host a save for your friend to play on, therefore someone else does it.

-You are have an itch, an itch you cannot scratch. There's something in your factory that jusssssst needs a little tweak. You log on to your PC, you start Factorio, and click pl---

-Oh, the regular host is offline....

-Realise you forgot to save the map last time you played, proceed to curse loudly.

Basically, you should be able to "designate" a server/save that you want updated at all times. At the end of each session (no matter who's playing it) if there's nobody online it uploads the save (To where? I have no idea) and everybody who's subbed to this gets a copy. That way nobody needs to wait for the main host to come online, and it's a simple matter of leaving the match so they can get the most up to date version of it.

I realize this has a couple of issues, such as:

-Security. I have this in mind for close-knit groups but if someone decided to troll it could be annoying to have a griefed map. Solution= keep synced saves separate from the main?
-Storage, there would need to be somewhere to hold the saves while they are wait to be distributed. Solution: be able to link a Google Drive/Dropbox account?
-Is it really needed? Or am I just impatient? Solution= Get your butt online, Dave! >:(

Trouble with this sort of thing is the requirements can change drastically depending on circumstance, so you're better off implementing your own external solution. You could use something like DropBox or OneDrive to share a save between friends, just remember to check if anyone is online and using it before you boot up the game so you don't end up with two copies of it. You could create a pointer (I think it's called that, like a shortcut but on a deeper level that most programs don't notice), or manually copy/move the save when starting up and shutting down the game, or write a script to move/copy the file, start the game, wait for it to close, then move/copy it back.