Suggestion to edit/add info on wiki page about Application Directory

[aalpersen]

Hello
My post -> viewtopic.php?f=49&t=109213

So steam keeps/registers another folder under : ".\Steam\userdata\9197913\427520\ac\WinAppDataRoaming\Factorio\saves\"

Someone need to add this, because when I needed o reinstall windows I followed that page to copy my saves. And my saves were not in cloud. Maybe a year old saves were in cloud in respective Application directory ( C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming ). Why and when steam/factory decided to stop saving in cloud and/or storing under "%appdata%\Factorio" but it/they did. So maybe someone may add a warning in case people try to back their files according to wiki

[Tertius]

This directory doesn't exist on my Windows 11 system. I do have ....\steam\steamapps\<mysteamuserid>\427520\ but neither \ac\ nor \saves\ nor any *.zip saves within. Only a \remote\ directory with some configs (mirror of some files in %appdata%\factorio\...\*). My saves are in %appdata%\Factorio\saves\*.zip and they are synced correctly with the Steam cloud.
I tried to understand how the Steam cloud sync works, especially after getting a new Windows PC, installing everything from scratch, and losing all Steam-synced blueprints after enabling Steam Sync a few months ago, however I wasn't able to work out what exactly and from/to which directory stuff is being synced or skipped.

Things I was able to determine:
- on Factorio executable start, stuff is being downloaded from Steam cloud
- on Factorio executable stop, stuff is being uploaded to Steam cloud and files are being deleted from the Steam cloud

My strategy to restore my destroyed blueprint library, have it not overwritten by the Steam cloud but instead have a new blueprint library synced into the steam cloud was to start Factorio but not start a game within. Then restore blueprint-storage.dat from a local backup. Then start a game within Factorio and edit some item in the (restored) blueprint library, so it gets touched. Then stop Factorio. The library got synced fine from now on.
I guess with the saves it could be the same - dunno if one even need to "touch" the files. Start Factorio, restore save files while Factorio is running, stop Factorio.
Of course it depends on where the files are actually located. To determine the location I propose you start Factorio, start a game, save it with a certain name, then tab away to Windows and search for this file. This is the location where Factorio is actually using its save files.

Unfortunately, the actual sync algorithm and sync directories isn't described to us players, probably only to developers. For players, it's probably expected that it "just works".

As far as I see it, there isn't an issue with syncing saves, but only with syncing the Blueprint library. If you start Factorio and cloud sync for blueprints is currently disabled, the local blueprint library stays what it is. If you now start a game, an empty blueprint library is created. If you now realize you have an empty blueprint library, you might be go into the game configuration and activate cloud sync for blueprint library. If you do this, the game will now upload your current (empty, just created) local blueprint library to Steam on Factorio stop. This destroys your cloud blueprint library.
To avoid this, you must not start a game before you activate blueprint cloud sync and stop Factorio once. In this case, no local library does exist, so it cannot be synced, so with the next Factorio start, the cloud library is downloaded and all is fine. But if you ever started a game with disabled blueprint cloud sync, you need to delete the blueprint-storage.dat file before starting Factorio and enabling cloud sync.
It seems Factorio has to directly and immediately download blueprint-storage.dat from the cloud, if one activate cloud sync. Otherwise it will get overwritten by the existing local file.

[Bilka]

Hey, as far as I can tell and as Tertius says, that is not a standard directory where save files are stored.