Syncing Save Games

Well, how about that. No glitches on Intel graphics out of the box.

These synced GOG Galaxy saves might have me using Windows more yet… that’s potentially quite useful!

(That being said, could there be a more generic mechanism around? Being tied to GOG Galaxy is an antifeature. Also, that one time I wanted to use it on Steam it turned out Linux saves and Windows saves were incompatible for Tomb Raider…)

What do you mean? Savegames are just files and you can use your favourite sync tool to share them on your various devices. Some saves work even cross-platform (TWP for example).

Yes, which is what I would presume GOG Galaxy automatically does for you. Manually copying stuff around or spending time setting things up hardly offers the “hey, this is convenient” factor! That’s just what we’ve always done. :wink: What I mean is something like http://www.synctocloud.net/screenshots/ which comes up within a few seconds of searching.

NB I haven’t tested it.

PS Broken Age comes with built-in Dropbox support. A bit limited in that it’s Dropbox-dependent, but I did use it.

They played it on GT Live.

Yeah, that’s why I wrote “use your favourite sync tool”. It’s not what we have always done but we are doing now. No need for game or platform specific sync tools like Steam/GOG/iCloud.

Of course you are ∗beeped∗ if you are using closed platforms, like consoles stuffed with DRM.

I already bought it, I’m not going to watch anything about the game until I have played it :slight_smile:

We shared (some) savegames, custom levels/tracks, and high scores on 3.5" disks, so I’ll stick to “always.” :slight_smile: The main difference in my case is that I’ve had two or three computers just for me for “only” a little over a decade, so it’s become pertinent to be able to switch over from playing at my desktop to lying down on the couch (or whatever) since then, at least if the game runs well on both systems.

I’ve been using Dropbox for (some) ScummVM saves since 2010 (?), for example, and Unison in a much more limited form (as far as savegames go) probably since '07 when I built my first/third desktop.

In fact I probably did very little savegame sharing at all except for ScummVM, which ran equally well on all three of my systems. That’s desktop, proper laptop, and netbook. The latter two have been subsumed by my current thin, light laptop that’s roughly on par with my proper '09 laptop as far as most performance goes, except it’s much much lighter and the battery lasts longer.

But there is, sort of. ScummVM is about as user-friendly as they come as far as sticking in your own save path goes, but I’ve never had a thought along the lines of “oh, how convenient!” or “what a nice surprise!” like I experienced with Escape from Monkey Island on GOG Galaxy yesterday.

It’s never bothered me sufficiently to look into it or anything, and heck, that very well may not even change. But after the graphical glitches disappointment mentioned above, it was a nice surprise.

But this is the manual approach and not we are talking about.

Solutions like ScummVM are the same as GOG Galaxy and specific to a game/platform.
You can just use generic cloud sync tools instead. Done. (like DropBox as you said, but why did you ask in the first place?)

And when looking at all the cloud providers FolderSync supports: I don’t even know most of them! :man_shrugging:

But I wasn’t asking about file sync… I don’t think I can be any clearer than I already was when I said SyncToCloud looks exactly like the kind of thing about which I asked whether it already exists. A database that knows where the saves are stored and automates the rest for you, that would be regularly updated through user contributions.

Huh? ScummVM savegames very much work across platforms. And yes, they’re game specific, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? :wink: Did you get confused with Steam or something?

No, not at all. On a more modern game you might be able to set that up with relative ease, especially on platforms with easy symbolic linking, but you can’t just put a program that expects executable, config and saves in the same directory on Dropbox/Syncthing because of the differing config. Monkey 4 does happen to use an Escape from Monkey Island/Saves subdirectory, so that would be a simple one to sync. Of course you need to find it first. You start in the game dir, move on to the likes of AppData and My Documents, maybe UserData? Local Settings? Where’s the stupid savegame hiding?! C:\Users\frans\Saved Games? No, that’s some Darksiders thing… Ah, found it. C:/Users/frans/AppData/LocalLow/Microids/Syberia3/. Oh, and great. It includes the options. So it’s still worthless for simple sync even after spending a couple of minutes to find it.

Another example of the same format is Hocus Pocus. It stores saves and config in the same directory, with the game. So how could it possibly be that I don’t want the same config on a game that old, as opposed to Syberia 3? Well, my desktop has a gamepad and my laptop does not. Also, even though old games are typically on the smaller side that still doesn’t mean I necessarily want hundreds of megabytes in my sync folders.

These aren’t hugely complex problems, but it’s a far cry from “just use generic cloud sync.” It requires starting the game, figuring out where it’s created the save, setting up all kind of stuff, and that on every single one of the platforms where you might want to run it.

The GOG Galaxy process for Monkey 4, by contrast, is two clicks. One click on install on the one system, and a second click on install on the other. You won’t be able to make it quite that simple with a generic solution, but you might be able to make it just two or three if you wanted to and the means exists. One for install, one for generic specialized sync.

You were asking for synching savegames and savegames are typically just a bunch of files.
All I need is a file sync tool. And I want to control it myself. I don’t even want a program using some database fed from people I don’t know which then leads to file uploads from my computer from arbitrary directory locations.

Sure, finding file locations is not everyone’s cup of tea :slight_smile:
But it isn’t hard. And you don’t have to sync a whole directory, proper sync tools allow filters like wildcards (e.g. *.sav; *.s??).

ScummVM savegames only work for games supported by ScummVM.
GOG Galaxy only works for games installed using GOG Galaxy.
Steam only works for Steam games.
A custom implementation in Broken Sword, Broken Age etc. only works with that particular game.
Also they may be using cloud storage I don’t trust, no encryption etc.

Generic file sync always works. And I need it anyway for all other kind of files I want to have synced between devices. Savegames is just another use case.

I see. SyncToCloud really seems like a good solution for you. It’s multi platform and also supports different cloud storage providers. I didn’t find anything about encryption though.

I don’t think you’re getting what I’m saying.

a. That’s no problem. On the contrary, I typically enjoy it.
b. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised by the It’s Synced Before You Know It™ of GOG Galaxy as a concept.

The rest is called idle curiosity. It’s fun. Or I think so, anyway. :wink:

But what does that have to do with anything? Why would you draw a parallel between ScummVM and GOG Galaxy/Steam/Broken Age? ScummVM supports setting a custom save path. This makes it extremely low effort to treat ScummVM saves however you please on just about any platform. (I understand Windows 10 does regular symlinks now, so this feature might be less useful than it used to be.) Broken Age by contrast does who knows what with some proprietary Dropbox API.

I severely doubt it. :slight_smile:

This is true.
You talk about how neat one/two click solutions are. No wait, setting up all the custom sync is no problem at all?
I’m confused what you wanted to achieve. Whatever.

Oh OK, I was talking about cloud sync integrations in games and tools like Steam/GOG Galaxy/ScummVM vs. generic file sync in general.
You were/are using ScummVM with a generic method already, not the built-in one.

I don’t see a real advantage here: To use this feature you have to know it exists and set a path or get the default setting.
There is no real difference in just finding the default (but non-changable) path for savegames for any other game and sync this one.


(This should be moved into a separate thread, it would be really nice to have some process so regular users can do this somehow…)