Tbh, I don’t understand why you’re arguing against @ameinild in this thread? Nothing you say is new, we know you can do manual backups (I and others have contributed in the past about various methods).
The issue is that the system for saving the game is flawed, and have been since launch. My kids learned this the hard way months ago, which was the reason I discovered it, and wrote my own backup script. Since the devs have taken the extra step to even create a separate backup file that also gets corrupted when this happens, anyone can see it’s not working.
There’s really no argument, the save system needs work.
i was going on the high horse there and saying that it wasnt devs faults for power going out , but then after remembering when the game would crash and corrupt my saves i backed off .
So, i read the last replies here and while blackout can corrupt the data (OS, game save etc), the save corruption due to the game crashing on it’s own, is something i’m not so sure about.
I have very old save, and GZ has crashed on me hundreds of times, even thousands of times (lost count long time ago). In most crashes, crash report is generated, while i’ve had crashes where game just closes and other times, freezes, where “Crtl+Alt+Del -> Task Manager -> End Process” have been the way to close the frozen game.
Thing is, despite all those crashes i’ve had with GZ, i have never had save file corruption. Making me wonder: If the save file corruption is the game’s fault when it crashes or is the fault in user’s PCs?
Running questionable software, malware, or even outdated/corrupt drives can all conflict with the normal operations of a game and it’s save system.
I don’t believe any of this is the case on my system at least, since I haven’t had a single data problem with any other game or application ever (on this PC), and I’ve had many other games crashing occasionally with no negative impact.
However, I’ve sent both corrupted and healthy savefiles to Knivspark, I hope they can use it to diagnose the cause of the file corruption.
I’m quite sure they can find the cause of the corruption. Though, if the issue lies outside of the game, there is little, if any, they can do about it.
What makes this interesting to me, is that i’ve had loads of crashes on GZ but no save file corruption, ever. While another bloke gets his/hers 1st crash, followed by save file corruption.
I can only speak for my kids system for this game, and while that of course could be a possibility (though I haven’t found anything of the sorts on their system, and I’m reasonably tech savvy when it comes to these things), the game should still have some form of incremental, extra save slots going for the rare occasions this still happen to people.
One of the reasons many games recommend saving to many slots, is because of the possibility of data corruption, for whatever reason that may be. I’ve had just that happen to me in both Skyrim and Fallout games, where I had to revert to older saves. In this game that’s simply not possible unless you tinker and fix it yourself through some sort of backups (which I always recommend anyhow, but that’s another topic really).
I didn’t had very many crashes or other mishaps really. But I do make a manual copy of my progress every time, before closing my game. Just to be sure, since I heard about save-game corruption. I do agree that the option to have multiple saves slots, (preferably those which you can name yourself), is possibly “the” solution to the problem.
With a game that is constantly installing new content, I do fear that some day the older manual saves will not work anymore.
so i had a crash when playing with a friend ,and it corrupted my save , ( bac file was not introduced back then) lost all my characters etc and made this post Simple backup and restore scripts to make life easier (Pc - Cloud disabled) , gz not crashing now but back then it was awfull. also i dont run anti-malware software or anti-virus programs in background , never have ( they use too much resources ) , i use them on a regular basis when not running games , but i hear you on interfering software.
Description: Was playing. Lost power. Restarted the game, only thing proposed was to start again from scratch. Though ok the save on my pc has been corrupted, but I surely can get my steamcloud save right? It was enabled. Well it seems that is not the case, this one is gone too for some reason.
Steps To Reproduce: I lost 100+h on this save, so I’m not launching it again if I don’t get my save back
Host or Client: Were you hosting a multiplayer game? Yes, a friend joined my session when this happened
Players in your game: One
Specifications: CPU 9900k GPU 3090 4k monitor, SSD
If the save file corruption is the game’s fault when it crashes or is the fault in user’s PCs?