Clouding your savegames

[Baldrake]

My new computer is being delivered tomorrow, and I'm determined that for once, I'm going to remember to transfer over my save games before I reformat and re-purpose the old one.

This makes me think, there must be a better way.

Have any of you tried using one of the cloud services to store your save games? I'm thinking about using Windows Live Mesh's Skydrive sync for any folder that has a savegame in it. This of course only really works if the savegames are in their own folder.

Ideally Steam would do this for me, but not that many games seem to support Steam's cloud saves.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else has tried this, and what pitfalls you may have run into.

[Yegolev]

Hard part is finding the save files.  Some people seem to delight in making these difficult to locate and copy.

[Furiously]

Im a bit shocked someone hasn't made a dropbox type app that does just that. Heck I'd consider paying like 20 bucks a year just for the safe feeling.

[Baldrake]

I think this is an interim problem - eventually game support for Steam's cloud saves will be more widespread. I think EA's thing does cloud saves as well now.

[Ghambit]

I just .rar my savefolders and send them to a custom gmail that keeps the files on the server. (if you webmail this is default)
Aside from that, you can setup the file to autoupload FTP to whatever webspace you likely have and it'd serve the same purpose.

[MuffinMan]

I can't count the number of times I make a point to move my save files to my separate hard drive for safe keeping and then... never use them.

[caladein]

SyncToy set to run once a week into Dropbox is what I use.

You could use symbolic links instead so you're not doubling the storage needed but I find the lag time useful in the case of mods or needing a particular auto save.

[Vaiti]

I think this is an interim problem - eventually game support for Steam's cloud saves will be more widespread. I think EA's thing does cloud saves as well now.

You're pretty much right about this being an interim problem. It's all about the publishers. EA is doing it, Valve does it, but outside of them not many publishers are giving it nearly as much notice as it should be getting.
At this point I think there needs to be a giant news fiasco of some sort about the cloud like services out there to get some publishers to even realize people want this sort of thing.

[Baldrake]

For what it's worth, my original plan of using Windows LiveMesh to "cloud" my savegame files is working beautifully, at least for my Steam savegames.

Here's what you do:

• Download and install Windows Live Mesh (free). Be careful to not download all the other Windows Live crap that you probably don't want.
  
• Run the Windows Live Mesh app from your start menu
• Click 'sync a folder' and select your save game folder. You can repeat this to select any number of folders. Specify that you want to sync to SkyDrive.
• Steam puts all the savegames neatly together under C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\###, where ### is your Steam numeric id. Just sync this entire folder.

The advantages of using Windows Live Mesh for this (versus, say, Dropbox) are (1) it doesn't use up your Dropbox quota and (2) you can sync any number of folders right in place without having to copy the data into your Dropbox.

[Talpidae]

You can also use folder links to sync to dropbox, like what I do.

I'd have to dig out the FAQ of how to do that again, so let me know if it's something you care to do.


(I also find it really ironic you're doing this with Steam games.)

[caladein]

You can also use folder links to sync to dropbox, like what I do.

I'd have to dig out the FAQ of how to do that again, so let me know if it's something you care to do.


(I also find it really ironic you're doing this with Steam games.)

Using something like this?

[NowhereMan]

If that works I might actually look into it. Rooting my Android phone (and thus wiping everything on it) made me realise how awesome having stuff cloud saved can be. I've got a folder on my computer somewhere from a couple of years back when I backed up a load of save games pre-hard drive reformatting but having an automatic one in drop-box would be awesome.

[Talpidae]

You can also use folder links to sync to dropbox, like what I do.

I'd have to dig out the FAQ of how to do that again, so let me know if it's something you care to do.


(I also find it really ironic you're doing this with Steam games.)

Using something like this?

Yes.

[Baldrake]

You can also use folder links to sync to dropbox, like what I do.
(I also find it really ironic you're doing this with Steam games.)

Yes, it would be nice if more games took advantage of Steam's cloud save features.