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What are the recommended places to store save data?

CC Ricers · 2015-03-03T08:58:22

When it comes to saving data, whether game progress or maps, or anything that is user-created, what are the recommended places in the file system to save the files to? I see it all over the place for different games. For Windows, some games use the /Users/AppData/Local folder, some use the My Documents folder and others use the same folder that the program resides in (with a separate folder within). And I'm not sure where to begin looking for Linux and Mac.

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by CC Ricers February 16, 2015 09:54 PM

28 comments, last by Brain 9 years, 1 month ago

BitMaster

8,652

February 18, 2015 12:18 PM

2. app-data: this works, but it was hell to navigate the player to the save games if you need them for bug analysis.

Really? Our support has to deal with some really non-IT people and with some encouragement most of them manage to get '%appdata%\MyDirectory' pasted into their Explorer...

3. my-docs: works better, navigation worked, thought I didn't find a way to share them between different accounts (install as admin, play as xyz)

Shouldn't it be irrelevant if the accounts used for installation and playing were the same? The application should query the relevant directory of the currently logged in user on each startup, not once during installation.

haegarr

7,408

February 18, 2015 01:15 PM

For the Mac OS, the guidelines recommend that files that the user can see, select, and/or modify directly should go into the "~/Documents/" folder. Game save states are enumerated as example. A "~/Library/Application Support/<bundle-id>/" folder is for files the user should not access directly but are not part of the application bundle, e.g. add-ons, mods, updated resource files but also configuration files; notice that besides the user's local application support folder there is also the user unspecific "/Library/Application Support/<bundle-id>/" folder as possibility. User selected settings, however, belong into the "~/Library/Preferences/" folder.

purplehuman

105

March 02, 2015 08:24 AM

I wish asking the user where to save was the standard.

Bacterius

13,181

March 02, 2015 08:54 AM

I wish asking the user where to save was the standard.

Where would you store the path to which to store save data?

“If I understand the standard right it is legal and safe to do this but the resulting value could be anything.”

Ashaman73

13,718

March 02, 2015 09:39 AM

Really? Our support has to deal with some really non-IT people and with some encouragement most of them manage to get '%appdata%\MyDirectory' pasted into their Explorer...

Haha... never thought about using predefined-variable as shortcut for such a task. ..yes, doing support is a learning process itself.

Where would you store the path to which to store save data? laugh.png

You could save it in the installation directory at installation time, where you have according writing rights (thought changing this might be uncomfortable), or you could use the registration for it or the appdata....

Ashaman

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Brain

19,058

March 02, 2015 12:33 PM

I wish asking the user where to save was the standard.

Where would you store the path to which to store save data?

Consoles generally don't.

When you start a game on your xbox 360, it asks which storage device to use for that session, and it looks within that storage device and saves and loads from a fixed path upon it.

The better question is "why can't windows be as convenient as consoles for standard saving and loading behaviour?"

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SmkViper

5,396

March 02, 2015 03:19 PM

The better question is "why can't windows be as convenient as consoles for standard saving and loading behaviour?"

My PC isn't a fixed hardware platform
MS can't afford a scorched earth policy for writing Windows the way they can with a new console generation.
MS can't force game developers to adhere to some set of standards like they can for Xbox or Sony with the Playstation. So devs will do whatever is easiest, ignoring the platform standards because that requires work they don't want to pay for.

We can argue all day about the merits of open vs. closed platforms - but in the end, the PC is an open platform, so it's never going to be as "clean" and "easy" as a heavily controlled closed platform like a console or phone

jbadams

26,386

March 03, 2015 03:59 AM

I wish asking the user where to save was the standard.

That still leaves the problem of deciding on a sensible default - which I strongly suspect a majority of users would simply accept without even reading.

- Jason Astle-Adams