Please Fix the Corrupt Save File Issue from Game Crashes

[WanderingGun]

So I've encountered this issue dozens of times but never posted about this in the past because the game was in "alpha" so I assumed it was an alpha related issue and just let it go. But I'm currently in 1.0 experimental and this just happened to me again and now I'm beyond fed up with it.

 

Here is the issue. Every once in a while my game will crash while I'm playing. Not a big deal. What is a big deal, however, is that when my game crashes, there is a high chance that it will corrupt my save file, making it so that the game doesn't even recognize it's there anymore, essentially erasing that game and whatever hundreds of hours of progress was on it. It does this to both my save and the game's built-in backup generated save file (how on earth it corrupts the backup as well is beyond me). I have been a hardcore gamer for over 30 years and played everything you can imagine from betas to early-access, you name it, and not once in all those years have I ever played a game that erases your save file if the game crashes while you're playing. Now maybe if there's a power surge in the middle of saving/loading data then yes, it's possible, but if my game freezes while I'm just walking around in the game then no, this should never ever happen. The point is, I don't know who coded your save system, but they need to be fired because this is the most incompetent save system ever created. I am a game developer myself and I can tell you there are numerous, easily implementable systems you can use to keep this from happening. The first and probably easiest solution I can think of is to use incremental backups. Like literally just generate a backup every few minutes that is a separate file from the main save file. That way, if the game crashes and it does erase someone's data, they can at least re-roll a backup from like 5 or 10 minutes prior. They will still lose some progress but it's better than losing everything. Honestly though the entire save system probably should be re-coded from the ground up because it shouldn't be doing this in the first place, but if that's too much work for you then at least use an incremental backup generator or something to mitigate this issue.

 

Please, please address this. This should be priority over any other development you are doing. Players losing entire hundreds or even thousands of hours of progress from a simple game crash is not acceptable from any game, let alone one you have to pay for.

[Riamus]

Be aware that if you load the corrupted save, that is what will corrupt your backup because it will re-save over the backup.  If you crash, copy your backup over your save before loading and you shouldn't ever have a problem.  You can backup that save before copying over it to be safer yet 

 

That said, they have said they are working to improve backups.  Not sure why it isn't done yet or how they intend to do it.  To me, it is pretty straightforward - Before loading, validate the save.  If there are errors, load the backup instead.  Alternatively, save the game to a temp file and then validate it (validation can't occur if it crashes during save).  Only after validating it do you move it to the main save file, replacing that file.  Then you never overwrite a good save with an invalid save.  That is just a very basic explanation of the process and doing this is more complex than I make it sound, but it should still be straightforward.