[2022] Save system is badly needed

During play the game is basically always saving incremental progress. Logging out commits any pending changes to the files in one lump action. Using the console command also commits any pending changes to the files in one lump action; But that's all it does, it doesn't make a backup copy or separate copy of the save or anything like that.. It's basically the equivalent of exiting the game, but without exiting the game, and really doesn't accomplish anything of note.

This isn't like most other games that have a 20kb save that you can save any time and have a thousand backup copies without even noticing. A brand new untouched save in 7DTD starts at around 50mb, and only grows from there as you play and explore- 7 hours in it'll be closer to 200mb

Because of that file size, making backups is an iffy prospect- That's a lot of space to many people, but it rapidly balloons when you're making constant backups and not really paying any attention or are expecting based on prior games played that the saves are of inconsequential size- Further, the saves are stored on the C drive which many people tend to try and use only for their OS.

That size also is a hindrance to the way the game can be saved. If, for example, the game didn't constantly commit changes to file as you played and only updated it every 15 minutes for example, that's a 200+mb change every 15 minutes- In order to save in one lump sum this way the game has to literally stop what you're doing, settle all the files into place, save it all, and then return control to you, because you can't be making changes while it's saving if it's saving the entire thing at once. (Much like using the console command, tbh- You have to stop, open the console and input the command, and are unable to effect change on the world during that period).

Most people heavily disapprove of such intrusive game-freezing during a save process. But that's how it has to be- If you're committing a change to a file the game is saving as it's saving it, then you cause corruption; Much akin to suddenly shutting the computer/console off mid-save for any saving process- You interrupted the save mid-process and now the file is corrupted. When the save file is 20kb, that freeze is so miniscule you don't even notice it. When it's 200mb, though? It's very noticable.

Just be sure you have enough drive space to support it. This isn't like most of your games where a save is usually less than 100MB. Saves can take up a few GB of drive space.

Originally posted by Ragequit Inc.: I'm *relatively* sure that these days you don't even have to exit the game for it to save (in SP), it's enough to just hit Esc and it saves at that point. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here though.

The issue most people face is that the game is constantly reading and writing the save data. It's not just one file either, but a number of them for different things.

If your client crashes unexpectedly, or you are a wanker that just hits alt+F4 to escape a dodgy situation, any file being accessed at that time can be corrupted.
It does occasionally make backups of some of the files. However, when you start it after crashing the save, the backup file is over-written.