Is there a way to save the game?

[Retro Starship]

OK, I know about the escape dialog and saving or opening files that are saved with the F5 button and such, but is there a global way to copy some kind of a save file for the day or session? I think I heard someone mention that if you did something silly like spend to much for an upgrade, make a mistake in the mission building or loose a dozen Kerbals and such you could quit the game and restore some kind of saved session if you did that before going into ksp.

[Geonovast]

Inside your save's folder, there is another folder called "Backups".  That may have been what was being referred to.

Otherwise just hitting ESC and clicking the "Save Game" button will let you create a save and you can name it whatever you like.  None of the saves you make are overwritten.  All of your named saves and quicksaves are store separately, the autosave function only replaces the persistent.sfs file.

By default, the Backups folder saves 5 saves.  You change how many it saves in your settings.cfg file.  You can also change the autosave interval. 

Look for these in the settings.cfg file.

AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL = 300
AUTOSAVE_SHORT_INTERVAL = 30
SAVE_BACKUPS = 5

All of the saves are basic text files with a .sfs extension.  So you can move them out of the saves folder if you want at any time.  The only one you have to have is persistent.sfs.  The game won't load your save without it.  The metadata files aren't needed.  The game will remake them if they're missing.

[amarillo114]

take a look into S.A.V.E . mod 

 

On 12/30/2014 at 1:27 PM, Nereid said:

S.A.V.E

automatic backup system

current version: 1.8.0-3165

Have you experienced some kind of major bug in a plugin? Did your save game got corrupt or have you lost all your ribbons in FinalFrontier, because of a single stupid mistake the developer (who is me unfortunately) has made? No? Well, you are lucky then. If you have experienced this, S.A.V.E may come to rescue. This plugin will handle automatic backups of your save games for you to prevent loss of data.

As most other software, this software comes with no warranty of any kind. If you use it, you do it at your own risk.

All releases until 0.9.11-319 will not backup your ship templates!

And a word of warning: I have tested this on Windows only. I do not know, if S.A.V.E works correctly on a MAC or on Linux.

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Important! Please read!

This plugin will store the backups at the location on the file system that is set by the user! It may write on any location on the file system if the user changes the default location. Please keep this in mind, if you are setting S.A.V.E to a different backup location.

The default location for backups is: <KSP-HOME>/backup. There is a subfolder for each save game. Each backup is stored in a folder YYYYMMDD-HHMISS.

Folders containing a .nobackup file are not included in any backup. So if you do not want to backup a game or a subfolder of a game, just create a file of that name there.

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Download: Spacedock

license: LGPLv3

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Features:

• Completely automatic; it will create a backup after a save
• Backups can be stored anywhere in the file system ("a king who must say 'I'm the king' is no real king" -a backup on the same hard disk is no real backup)
• Configurable backup interval
• Configurable minimal number of successful backups
• Configurable maximal number of backups
• Configurable time in days to keep backups
• Backup of all games at once
• Restore functionality
• Automatic backup before a restore is done.
• Compressed backups
• Cloning a game from a backup

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Screenshot:

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Hints:

• Setting "days to keep backups" to 0 will keep backups forever (as long other constraints are not violated).
• Setting "max number backups" to 0 will keep an unlimited amount of backups (as long other constraints are not violated).
• Setting both "days to keep backups" and "max number backups" to 0 will never delete any backup (not even failed ones).
• The value of "min number of backups" determines the number of successful backups that have to be kept in any case.

[Superfluous J]

If you royally mess up you can alt-f4 and exit the game and just reload it. The game is saved every few (5? 10?) minutes and also on every scene change, so you'll only lose some progress and not whatever your mistake cost you.

Unless you alt-f4 in the middle of a quicksave. No idea what happens then but hey we have rolling backups so go for it

[Retro Starship]

Oh great stuff! Thank you @Geonovast, @amarillo114 and @5thHorseman. I will try them today.

One time a while ago I upgraded the VAB and shouldn't have during a career run, so when I went in to make more rockets I was stuck for a long time with no kerbucks. Yea math would have helped, or maybe a yes/no warning being I was so knew at that time, so a re-save for that day would have been perfect to try that sequence all over again, not to mention killing a few Kerbal once and a while too. 

 I do really hate that when it happens. 

Edited January 13, 2020 by Saturn5tony

[Retro Starship]

Wow I tried them all tonight! Thanks peeps!  alt F4 seems like a great way to get out quick and get the current "Backups" folder (as @Geonovast mentioned) with the previous persistent file. Rename, and set it back up (while saving the current one aside, just in case) and your all set to go. I knew about the persistent file by itself in saves but not what the backups did to save a kerbal from KIA! So cool.

Testing SAVES mod is cool as well and has great features for extended save functions. All just great tools for making a Kerbal mission a happy one. From Jebs last task even he wants to Thank you all!

I do have to say tho, watch out for altF4, many times I use altF5 to save some missions I am on with a name! In the dark that could be dangerous, lol!

[ClaytonGraves]

I think you should use the latest game mods of the game on TechCrue, The latest updates will help save and restore your old information.