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Quicksaves increase without bound [No limit to the amount of quicksaves that can add up to a lot of data]


krbvax

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Reported Version: v0.2.0 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes 
OS: Wine 9.0-rc3 on Linux | CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 | GPU: NVIDIA 3060 Ti | RAM32GB

 

There seems to be no limit to the number of quicksave files which are created when pressing F5, resulting in potential excessive disk usage. (My two-day-old Exploration campaign already has 52 quicksave files.)

Severity: Medium

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Start a new campaign.
  2. Open the campaign's save data folder in a file manager.
  3. Launch a vehicle.
  4. Repeatedly press the F5 (quicksave) key and observe the content of the save data folder.

Expected behavior: The number of quicksave files in the campaign save directory reaches an upper bound, after which the game takes action (reusing filenames, deleting older quicksaves, etc.) on each quicksave to keep the number of quicksave files within that bound.

Observed behavior: The number of quicksave files increases without apparent bound.

 

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I was thinking about this problem today as well and had another possible solution. While there may be a reason to hold on to a large volume of quick saves during the Early Access build so users can help analyze bugs by comparing data across time in a game session, there needs to be a better solution by the final build for sure.

Limiting the quick save pool to a smaller number like the autosaves are is one idea, but I had another. Compression. These save files are lengthy text files that can easily be compressed. While running compression during a game may take longer and slow it down during a quick save, there is time to complete compression on these files while sitting in the opening menu or upon closing of the game (menu close, not Alt F4 close, as this can be coded to be different).

The idea here is that a limit of maybe five of the most recent quick saves remain uncompressed while older ones are managed by the system to be placed into a single file (per game) save archive compatible with ZIP or 7Z (preferred) compression so the user can still access the files outside of the game for sharing or archiving but doesn't have to manage these files all the time. A game setting may also be set to put a user defined expiration on quick saves for the archive so when archive management kicks in while in the main menu or on exit, expired saves are removed. The numbering sequence can continue upwards on quick save file names just as they do now and not revert to lower numbers should those saves later be deleted. This gives the user an accurate assessment of just how often they perform quick saves in a single game.

At the same time, being user friendly is key here and many users don't want to hassle with any sort of file management in a game. So a default archive setting should be in place to hold quick saves up to one month. Additionally, a Minimum to keep value may also be kept in settings with a default set to keep a minimum of 10 quick saves in the archive. This figure is independent of the number of uncompressed saves allowed to remain before management occurs. So with this idea, there are only two settings a user may see related to save game management. The maximum length in the archive, and the minimum kept (regardless of expiration).

The UI for loading a save should list the archive as a file such that when you choose to view it, a new listing shows of it's contents and allows pulling a load from an archived file without removing it from the archives.

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6 hours ago, emerald said:

Just let people specify how many quick saves they like to have and rotate them accordingly, then everything is fine.

And just for the record, the game already does this with autosaves (3 slots) so the framework is already there. I'd honestly be fine with a single quicksave slot like KSP1 and a requirement for me to manually save if I want to be able to go back farther in time - though I grant that there's certainly a debugging benefit to preserving quicksaves during Early Access.

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On 1/6/2024 at 1:07 AM, emerald said:

Just let people specify how many quick saves they like to have and rotate them accordingly, then everything is fine.

this

And allow users to rename quicksaves eg Orbit, Maneuver 1, descent etc, as well as bind them to hot keys

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