save files replaced??

[darkwaters]

I was playing for quite some time when I wanted to play around with the map editor. I did that, saved it as its own game name, then wanted to return to my single player world- but its not there to load... what the bleep? Help.

[Koub]

If you overwrote your saves unintentionally, there's not much one can do. Saves usually don't delete by themselves.

[coppercoil]

Some automatic backups would be good. If Factorio is about to overwrite a file, it could make a backup copy by default. HDD are cheap, renaming is easy...

BTW, a complete player files backup on every version upgrade would be also good. I will never forget someone lost all his blueprints after downgrade.

Please don’t say a smart player should make backups by himself, this non-working concept is just obsolete nowadays. A smart application takes care for the user.

[darkwaters]

saving as a new name should not over right all the previous auto-saves.
:/

[Rseding91]

saving as a new name should not over right all the previous auto-saves.
:/

It doesn't. Running a save game for *auto-save-time* produces a new auto-save file which will overwrite if the same name exists.

Manual saves are only ever overwritten when you overwrite them manually. Unless you're using autosave names as your manual saves in which case - you severely misunderstood what a manual save is.

[morsk]

I would like to know how this happens, as it would effect the kinds of suggestions I make. It's popular to request complete overhauls of the save system, but I'd rather hear the real and specific ways people misuse the system, and consider if they could be avoided, not imagine up entire new systems.

[MEOWMI]

Is there a potential problem with how when you load an autosave, the system will next time automatically prompt you to actively save over the same autosave? Even though this functionality is logical, it is against save file principles and can be unexpected behavior, because autosaves are not the same as normal saves. I agree it's mostly a non-issue, but given how big the potential data losses are, maybe something could be done? (It's vaguely similar to how Steam Cloud can sometimes delete saves during sync due to faults in Steam.)

[MakeItGraphic]

I've found the nature of saving in this game confusing and have lost maps as a result. The only thing I've been able to do to circumvent the issue was to use a service like task scheduler and write a script file to make a backup of the autosaves every X amount of time I have the gaming running. I usually set to what I have the game interval set to so if its every 20 mins I'll run the script every 60 mins. Autosave x3. This way I can create project folders for different maps and maintain different iterations of progress/stages if I want to go back and change something, or divert to a different route.

Edit:

IMO the best solution is a bit of a process to implement. But essentially when you generate a new map that would be recognized as creating a new profile. The game will prompt you to enter the name of the new map profile before actually loading you into the map. Once the name is entered saves will be created under said profile (factorio>saves>map name>autosave.zip).

In conjunction to this it would be nice to able to set how many autosaves you can have. The default 3 up to infinity. Therefore if I had an interval of 20 mins and 60 autosaves set I would have a retention of 60 hours worth of game play.

Expanding more on this it would be neat to be able to preview saves from the load menu. You select your profile, it generates the list of saves under said profile, you click on a save and instead of loading it you can preview the map view from in game. That way you can sift through the various save states and delete ones that you no longer need, or save some as hard copy to your profile.

Eg. autosave42.zip > preview oh ok I started blue science here. Save copy > provide name. Now if that file was to be overwritten you have a hard copy.

Then one last option to have in this type of configuration would be a toggle to prompt when the game is about to overwrite a preexisting autosave. Default is off.

[MEOWMI]

To add to my previous post, is this issue perhaps more common than we thought? Via TheSkiGeek on Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... t/fr7j11k/ :

The autosave system is confusing enough that it eats people's worlds with some regularity -- and for every panicked person who shows up here on Reddit I'm sure there are 10 more who are too embarrassed to ask if they can recover their save when they realize what happened. Even if you disagree that they should change how worlds and saves are managed, simple stuff like reminding people to make a manual save if they've been playing for many hours without making one would go a LONG way.