Another Completely Random And Pointless Poll! C'mon, admit it; you've
missed 'em.

So, you've spent hundreds of hours on that game you love, but now,
finally, you're done with it. You've played it and replayed it, but
the charm of the game is gone and you're ready to move on to something
else. Maybe you uninstall the old game, maybe not, but regardless,
there's the question of your save games. They are the record of your
adventures, your legacy to the world you just finished exploring. So
what do you do with them?

01) I'm done with the game and I need the disk-space.
I hunt them down and delete the files

10) Meh, who cares? I'll leave them on-disk where they'll
be forgotten and probably lost when I upgrade to a
new machine

11) Hey, I might want to come back to the game, so I'll
happily leave them in place. If and when I ever
reinstall the game, it will be cool to revisit my
79th level Ultra-Ninja again.

100) My precious! The hero digitally encoded within the
save-files must be preserved for eternity! Back them
up before they are lost.

101) Nobody has ever done better than me; the world must
witness my excellence. I'm uploading this to a save-game
archive on the Internet that others can download them
and learn from my excellence.

I tend to vacillate between the first and fourth options. Back in the
day, with pretty much ever game I played, I archived its saves. A
large part of this habit was because - in an era before YouTube - that
was the only way to relive the excellent end-game cutscenes that
concluded the adventure. Otherwise, I'd have to spend another hundred
hours grinding away at the adventure to see it again. But if I save
the saves, I could just reload the last mission, kill the boss, and
see the video.

These days, with entire games being recorded to YouTube (much less the
final video), the need for archived saves is much reduced. Most games,
when I'm done with them, I obsessively clear out the disk-space,
uninstalling game and saves. A few - the ones I had the most fun with
- I'll let the save-games linger on the hard-drive, forgotten. But
there are a handful - "Cyberpunk 2077" being the most recent example -
that I still dutifully archive. After all, if I spent 115 hours on
that game; I want /some/ sort of record of my accomplishment. ;-)

Where do you stand with your saves? Are they worth saving or not?

On 6/15/2023 6:46 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Another Completely Random And Pointless Poll! C'mon, admit it; you've
> missed 'em.
>
> So, you've spent hundreds of hours on that game you love, but now,
> finally, you're done with it. You've played it and replayed it, but
> the charm of the game is gone and you're ready to move on to something
> else. Maybe you uninstall the old game, maybe not, but regardless,
> there's the question of your save games. They are the record of your
> adventures, your legacy to the world you just finished exploring. So
> what do you do with them?
>
>
> 01) I'm done with the game and I need the disk-space.
> I hunt them down and delete the files
>
This. I tend to let the games linger on my machine for some time before
removing them at all, so they've had plenty of time to tempt me back
before they are consigned to the bit-bin. And at least for me the
beginning of games tend to be more fun and interesting, end games tend
to have a lot of grind baked into them. So if I'm going to return to
the game I'd rather start over anyways. Plus I've probably forgotten
half the commands by that point and need the time to relearn how to play
it. :)

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 6:46:45 AM UTC-7, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> Another Completely Random And Pointless Poll! C'mon, admit it; you've
> missed 'em.
>
> So, you've spent hundreds of hours on that game you love, but now,
> finally, you're done with it. You've played it and replayed it, but
> the charm of the game is gone and you're ready to move on to something
> else. Maybe you uninstall the old game, maybe not, but regardless,
> there's the question of your save games. They are the record of your
> adventures, your legacy to the world you just finished exploring. So
> what do you do with them?

> 10) Meh, who cares? I'll leave them on-disk where they'll
> be forgotten and probably lost when I upgrade to a
> new machine

This, not to mention steam cloud saves. Though that can
have the problem of not remembering what I was doing
or how to play and I need to go wipe them out to
start over.

Really when I go back to a game if I haven't
finished it on a character, like say with DS3 or ER I make
a new character until how to play the game has come back
to me.

I kind of wish that was an option with Warframe. I sometimes
fell like I'd just like to just start from scratch, but that requires
starting a new account, and the real money and hundreds of
hours farming and trading for the in game premium money
would be unavailable on that account. Though I suppose I
could just trade some trinket for all the money, but that'd
require somehow logging into both at the same time.

> 11) Hey, I might want to come back to the game, so I'll
> happily leave them in place. If and when I ever
> reinstall the game, it will be cool to revisit my
> 79th level Ultra-Ninja again.
>
> 100) My precious! The hero digitally encoded within the
> save-files must be preserved for eternity! Back them
> up before they are lost.

I had some of those. I sometimes wish I had my old
populous save, though I doubt it would do much good
since it was from my Jackintosh.

There's probably a few I still have around, I see I have one
for Neverwinter Nights. The one I really wish I had isn't
really the save, it's the adventure I made in it. I did a thorough
search both online and through all my old drives and couldn't
find it a couple years ago.

In a similar vein, I also had a modded game of Baldur's Gate
I wish I had the save & mods from. Although that's one of
those games along with PS:T that I've tried repeatedly and
just found so dreadful I couldn't complete it.

- Justisaur

Mostly I toss them out when I am done with the games. However, I do make
back ups on those long games like Skyrim. Also, some games have cloud
saves like through Steam, Battle.net, etc. Old games like Diablo 2, I kept my local saves even though I haven't played since the late 90s. :P

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Another Completely Random And Pointless Poll! C'mon, admit it; you've
> missed 'em.

> So, you've spent hundreds of hours on that game you love, but now,
> finally, you're done with it. You've played it and replayed it, but
> the charm of the game is gone and you're ready to move on to something
> else. Maybe you uninstall the old game, maybe not, but regardless,
> there's the question of your save games. They are the record of your
> adventures, your legacy to the world you just finished exploring. So
> what do you do with them?

> 01) I'm done with the game and I need the disk-space.
> I hunt them down and delete the files

> 10) Meh, who cares? I'll leave them on-disk where they'll
> be forgotten and probably lost when I upgrade to a
> new machine

> 11) Hey, I might want to come back to the game, so I'll
> happily leave them in place. If and when I ever
> reinstall the game, it will be cool to revisit my
> 79th level Ultra-Ninja again.

> 100) My precious! The hero digitally encoded within the
> save-files must be preserved for eternity! Back them
> up before they are lost.

> 101) Nobody has ever done better than me; the world must
> witness my excellence. I'm uploading this to a save-game
> archive on the Internet that others can download them
> and learn from my excellence.

> I tend to vacillate between the first and fourth options. Back in the
> day, with pretty much ever game I played, I archived its saves. A
> large part of this habit was because - in an era before YouTube - that
> was the only way to relive the excellent end-game cutscenes that
> concluded the adventure. Otherwise, I'd have to spend another hundred
> hours grinding away at the adventure to see it again. But if I save
> the saves, I could just reload the last mission, kill the boss, and
> see the video.

> These days, with entire games being recorded to YouTube (much less the
> final video), the need for archived saves is much reduced. Most games,
> when I'm done with them, I obsessively clear out the disk-space,
> uninstalling game and saves. A few - the ones I had the most fun with
> - I'll let the save-games linger on the hard-drive, forgotten. But
> there are a handful - "Cyberpunk 2077" being the most recent example -
> that I still dutifully archive. After all, if I spent 115 hours on
> that game; I want /some/ sort of record of my accomplishment. ;-)

> Where do you stand with your saves? Are they worth saving or not?
--
"When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things." --Mark 6:34. Lite rain overnite after a somewhat slammy flag day. Still winter. American Born Chinese is OK so far after 2 eps. so far.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

>So, you've spent hundreds of hours on that game you love, but now,
>finally, you're done with it.

Wow, I have done this many times, finished a game then thought wow what
if I want to revisit this without losing my completion status or most
especially my control settings. Very occasionally - and I can't cite
examples - I'll load up some old game, and my original settings like mouse
sensitivity are just *there* and I'm kind of shocked in a pleasant way
(actually this just happened in Portal, come to think of it). Steam tends
to save these files -- and increasingly other game launchers -- so I don't
think about it as much

rms

On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 09:46:34 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>Another Completely Random And Pointless Poll! C'mon, admit it; you've
>missed 'em.
>
>So, you've spent hundreds of hours on that game you love, but now,
>finally, you're done with it. You've played it and replayed it, but
>the charm of the game is gone and you're ready to move on to something
>else. Maybe you uninstall the old game, maybe not, but regardless,
>there's the question of your save games. They are the record of your
>adventures, your legacy to the world you just finished exploring. So
>what do you do with them?
>
>
> 01) I'm done with the game and I need the disk-space.
> I hunt them down and delete the files
>
> 10) Meh, who cares? I'll leave them on-disk where they'll
> be forgotten and probably lost when I upgrade to a
> new machine
>
> 11) Hey, I might want to come back to the game, so I'll
> happily leave them in place. If and when I ever
> reinstall the game, it will be cool to revisit my
> 79th level Ultra-Ninja again.
>
> 100) My precious! The hero digitally encoded within the
> save-files must be preserved for eternity! Back them
> up before they are lost.
>
> 101) Nobody has ever done better than me; the world must
> witness my excellence. I'm uploading this to a save-game
> archive on the Internet that others can download them
> and learn from my excellence.
>
>
>I tend to vacillate between the first and fourth options. Back in the
>day, with pretty much ever game I played, I archived its saves. A
>large part of this habit was because - in an era before YouTube - that
>was the only way to relive the excellent end-game cutscenes that
>concluded the adventure. Otherwise, I'd have to spend another hundred
>hours grinding away at the adventure to see it again. But if I save
>the saves, I could just reload the last mission, kill the boss, and
>see the video.
>
>These days, with entire games being recorded to YouTube (much less the
>final video), the need for archived saves is much reduced. Most games,
>when I'm done with them, I obsessively clear out the disk-space,
>uninstalling game and saves. A few - the ones I had the most fun with
>- I'll let the save-games linger on the hard-drive, forgotten. But
>there are a handful - "Cyberpunk 2077" being the most recent example -
>that I still dutifully archive. After all, if I spent 115 hours on
>that game; I want /some/ sort of record of my accomplishment. ;-)
>
>
>Where do you stand with your saves? Are they worth saving or not?
>

*--

I had to back up and save my Elden Ring save file as I played. No way
I would have made it that far without doing so!!

But not other ones (I don't think).

-pw

On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 09:46:34 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>Another Completely Random And Pointless Poll! C'mon, admit it; you've
>missed 'em.

It depends on the game for me.

If it is just an adventure game or a strategy game like Civ, I do not
care what happens to the save files at all.

But if it is something like a hack and slash game like Diablo, I
definitely back up the save files as I will likely keep coming back to
those characters. I back them up several times to ensure I do not lose
them.

Two examples would be Borderlands and Titan Quest. I have every
character I ever made for these games.

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:

> So what do you do with them?

> 01) I'm done with the game and I need the disk-space.
> I hunt them down and delete the files

I guess I had this when I had a 40 MB hard drive. Sometimes later too
though.

> 100) My precious! The hero digitally encoded within the
> save-files must be preserved for eternity! Back them
> up before they are lost.

This. Although I can't say I make sure my backups cover all
games. Hopefully Steam/GoG/Epic clod saves cover the rest.

And it's nice to have the saves. I'm sure I have sometimes picked up a
game after quite some time. But not that often.

On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 20:24:16 -0600, "rms"
<rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net> wrote:

>>So, you've spent hundreds of hours on that game you love, but now,
>>finally, you're done with it.
>
> Wow, I have done this many times, finished a game then thought wow what
>if I want to revisit this without losing my completion status or most
>especially my control settings. Very occasionally - and I can't cite
>examples - I'll load up some old game, and my original settings like mouse
>sensitivity are just *there* and I'm kind of shocked in a pleasant way
>(actually this just happened in Portal, come to think of it). Steam tends
>to save these files -- and increasingly other game launchers -- so I don't
>think about it as much

Oddly enough, cloud saves tend to annoy me with their longevity. If I
reinstall a game and see the saves automatically repopulated, my first
reaction isn't of joy ("Oh, hey, there's that 46th level Paladin I
used back when I played this game in 2012!") but aggravation. It's not
that I don't want the save; in fact, I might exit out of the game just
to make an offline back-up that I can stash on my network (and
subsequently ignore). I just don't like it happening automatically and
'behind my back', as it were.

Of course, a lot of this peevishness could be averted if I just, you
know, TURNED OFF cloud saves, but then what would I bitch about?* ;-)

------------------------
* I'd find something, I'm sure. ;-)

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 100) My precious! The hero digitally encoded within the
> save-files must be preserved for eternity! Back them
> up before they are lost.

Basically this for me. I keep all my save files. I used to back them
up, but for the most part that doesn't happen these days unless they're
stored in the Documents folder (where they belong but a lot games get
this wrong).

And it's not just my current and latest save. If the game allows
multiple saves, I'll make multiple saves as progress through the game
and keep them all. If the game allows multiple saves but only lets
you have a limited number at a time (like 10) then I'll zip up the save
files when I've used up all the slots and start on a new set of saves.

For the most part this isn't a problem. Aside from a few Total War games,
most games saves are pretty small and don't take up a noticible amount
of disk space. I rarely uninstall games as well, only lately because
of how huge they become but my new system with its 2TB SSD and mirrored
8TB HDs should solve that problem. Well for a few years, I'm sure.

But I find being able to load up old saves, even ones in the mid point of
game useful at times. When I wanted to test out whether Gothic worked
on my new PC (it doesn't unfortunately) I was able to try out a few
different saves at different locations in the game. In the past I've
loaded old saves to help diagnose problems other people had, or to help
me remember what I actually did when playing. Sometimes I've just looked
at the list of file names to see what countries I've already played in
a strategy game so I can pick one I haven't already played.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

On Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 8:24:14 PM UTC-7, PW wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 09:46:34 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
> <spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >Another Completely Random And Pointless Poll! C'mon, admit it; you've
> >missed 'em.
> >
> >So, you've spent hundreds of hours on that game you love, but now,
> >finally, you're done with it. You've played it and replayed it, but
> >the charm of the game is gone and you're ready to move on to something
> >else. Maybe you uninstall the old game, maybe not, but regardless,
> >there's the question of your save games. They are the record of your
> >adventures, your legacy to the world you just finished exploring. So
> >what do you do with them?
> >
> >
> > 01) I'm done with the game and I need the disk-space.
> > I hunt them down and delete the files
> >
> > 10) Meh, who cares? I'll leave them on-disk where they'll
> > be forgotten and probably lost when I upgrade to a
> > new machine
> >
> > 11) Hey, I might want to come back to the game, so I'll
> > happily leave them in place. If and when I ever
> > reinstall the game, it will be cool to revisit my
> > 79th level Ultra-Ninja again.
> >
> > 100) My precious! The hero digitally encoded within the
> > save-files must be preserved for eternity! Back them
> > up before they are lost.
> >
> > 101) Nobody has ever done better than me; the world must
> > witness my excellence. I'm uploading this to a save-game
> > archive on the Internet that others can download them
> > and learn from my excellence.
> >
> >
> >I tend to vacillate between the first and fourth options. Back in the
> >day, with pretty much ever game I played, I archived its saves. A
> >large part of this habit was because - in an era before YouTube - that
> >was the only way to relive the excellent end-game cutscenes that
> >concluded the adventure. Otherwise, I'd have to spend another hundred
> >hours grinding away at the adventure to see it again. But if I save
> >the saves, I could just reload the last mission, kill the boss, and
> >see the video.
> >
> >These days, with entire games being recorded to YouTube (much less the
> >final video), the need for archived saves is much reduced. Most games,
> >when I'm done with them, I obsessively clear out the disk-space,
> >uninstalling game and saves. A few - the ones I had the most fun with
> >- I'll let the save-games linger on the hard-drive, forgotten. But
> >there are a handful - "Cyberpunk 2077" being the most recent example -
> >that I still dutifully archive. After all, if I spent 115 hours on
> >that game; I want /some/ sort of record of my accomplishment. ;-)
> >
> >
> >Where do you stand with your saves? Are they worth saving or not?
> >
> *--
>
> I had to back up and save my Elden Ring save file as I played. No way
> I would have made it that far without doing so!!

I do that with the Fromsoft games, but that's more because that game
doesn't have multiple save points and it's possible for your current play
to get corrupted or some bug like getting stuck in an infinite death loop,
or if you play online like I do for some hacker to break your save or
get you banned with hacked items.

There is a single backup, but it's from the same save point, so I'm
not sure what the point of that is. It might help in the case of a
one in a trillion chance of changed bit from cosmic rays I guess.

It's not really backing up for posterity.

- Justisaur