[HorribleOversightInGameDesign] ALL MY STUFF IS GONE.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Most games auto-overwrite auto saves during progress nowadays.

You can manually load any savefile you have from the ALT+F9 menu (and manually save with ALT+F5).

[Sirrobert]

I agree that the way KSP handles saves is abysmal. The game should NEVER overwrite a save if you don't explicitly tell it to, and you should be able to manually load from autosave- any of them.

Almost EVERY overwrites it's own autosaves when autosaving.

The few that don't generate an endless list of autosaves.

And no, KSP does not overwrite quicksave unless YOU TELL IT TO.

The entire 'problem' here is that the OP never told the game to make a quicksave, and than stupidly quickloaded anyway.

[DeadMG]

The few that don't generate an endless list of autosaves.

Good. Just like they should do. The state of a KSP game is tiny and saving hundreds of them would barely be a tiny tiny scratch on hard drive space.

And no, KSP does not overwrite quicksave unless YOU TELL IT TO.

Really? I don't remember being asked if I wanted to permanently lose my current game state when quickloading, or permanently overwrite my old quicksave when quicksaving.

Most games auto-overwrite auto saves during progress nowadays.

They all fall into one of two buckets- either it's SUPER UNBELIEVABLY ANNOYING (the bucket KSP is in), or, the game has clear failure conditions on which it automatically reloads the previous autosave, for example, death in Dishonoured. Even if you die in KSP or run out of fuel, it's not a clear failure condition.

[Sirrobert]

Really? I don't remember being asked if I wanted to permanently lose my current game state when quickloading, or permanently overwrite my old quicksave when quicksaving.

Yes, that's the point of quickload. It's a QUICK LOAD.

Your own fault that there is no quicksave, the game will just load the next best thing. Becuase YOU TOLD IT TO.

Computers are not people. They can't recognize when you are doing something stupid and call you out on it. They simply follow orders.

So there are 2 options:

1) Confirm each and every time you quickload. Which is really annoying all the time, and defeats the entire point of quickload

2) As it is now. Every now and than someone is stupid enough to load an ancient save. Smart people learn from this stupid mistake and move on. Other people... well let's just call it survival of the fittest. Or smartest in this case.

This is indeed a case of horrible oversight. However it is YOUR horrible oversight

[Vonar]

So I was setting up a laythe mission, and I had unlocked most of the tech tree. Tedious landings on the Mun, Minmus, and collecting as much science as I could there. So my Laythe Splasher crashed, and I quickloaded.

I was suddenly back in Kerbin orbit, with only basicRocketry and Start parts. Oh no. This was my first orbital mission. I had lost ALL of the science, tech, and parts that I had unlocked over several weeks of playing.

I tried quickloading again, but to no avail. I realized all of my stuff was truly gone. I literally broke down in tears and cried.

THIS IS VITAL AND MUST BE INCLUDED IN AN UPDATE VERY SOON.

Delete the default quicksave as soon as that craft is recovered or a new launch is attempted. This will prevent this horrible deletion of almost 100 hours work.

Doesn't sound like a problem to me, you forgot to quick save..

[DeadMG]

Or, option 3, the game could just NOT OVERWRITE THE SAVE, so you don't have to confirm anything because there's nothing to confirm, and people keep all their saves! Gosh, it's almost like it's the best of both worlds and clearly the best option, or something.

[Padishar]

Computers are not people. They can't recognize when you are doing something stupid and call you out on it. They simply follow orders.

But they can recognise when you are asking them to do something that is probably not what you actually want to do.

So there are 2 options:

1) Confirm each and every time you quickload. Which is really annoying all the time, and defeats the entire point of quickload

No it doesn't. Quickload is not currently quick because you have to hold the key down. It would be much faster if a press of f9 opened a dialog giving details of the quicksave and asking you to confirm. If you are sure you would be able to click and confirm the dialog faster than you can currently do a quickload.

2) As it is now. Every now and than someone is stupid enough to load an ancient save.

This happened to me a while ago and I don't believe I did anything "stupid". I had just completed a number of docking manoeuvres and then refilled 24 RCS tanks and I tried to hit f5 but due to a biscuit crumb in my keyboard the f5 key didn't actually do anything. I didn't notice the "Quicksaving..." message didn't come up as it isn't exactly in a highly visible place and doesn't stick around for long. I then ran various tests on the vessel to make sure everything was happy and once complete I quickloaded to get all the RCS tanks back to full and found that my last actual quicksave was before all but one of the docking manoeuvres.

Smart people learn from this stupid mistake and move on. Other people... well let's just call it survival of the fittest. Or smartest in this case.

And smarter people realise there are various ways in which this issue could be addressed very nicely so make suggestions that this is done...

[Random Tank]

Really? I don't remember being asked if I wanted to permanently lose my current game state when quickloading, or permanently overwrite my old quicksave when quicksaving.

You do know what a quicksave is right? It's just a simple function that saves a snapshot of the games current state; it's quick because you don't have to name it or select a slot, it's just a quick button press and you're done. They traditionally only have 1 slot as well, as they're supposed to be a quick, temporary save.

So what your complaining at a quicksave for is pretty much exactly how they're supposed to be; what your asking for is a proper named save system, which can be accessed with alt-F5.

Anyway, as Sirrobert said, losing all your work because you didn't save (and then loaded for some reason) is no-ones fault but your own; stupid mistake = stupid result.

[pizzaoverhead]

Yes, that's the point of quickload. It's a QUICK LOAD.

what you're asking for is a proper named save system

Sounds like we have the solution: A slow main menu load/save system.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Sounds like we have the solution: A slow main menu load/save system.

We already have that - Alt+F5/F9. And the main menu loads the persistent. And from there you can either quickload your quicksave or Alt+F9 any save (quick or otherwise) you want.

[Sirrobert]

No it doesn't. Quickload is not currently quick because you have to hold the key down. It would be much faster if a press of f9 opened a dialog giving details of the quicksave and asking you to confirm. If you are sure you would be able to click and confirm the dialog faster than you can currently do a quickload.

You have to hold a button for 5 seconds. WOW. Such extreme delay

This happened to me a while ago and I don't believe I did anything "stupid". I had just completed a number of docking manoeuvres and then refilled 24 RCS tanks and I tried to hit f5 but due to a biscuit crumb in my keyboard the f5 key didn't actually do anything. I didn't notice the "Quicksaving..." message didn't come up as it isn't exactly in a highly visible place and doesn't stick around for long. I then ran various tests on the vessel to make sure everything was happy and once complete I quickloaded to get all the RCS tanks back to full and found that my last actual quicksave was before all but one of the docking manoeuvres.

Congratulations. You learned to always check if it actually saves. It's really easy to do, just look at the top right corner. You don't even have to move your head

Sounds like we have the solution: A slow main menu load/save system.

Yes, that would indeed be a perfect thing to have.

Destroying the quicksave system, as people want here, is not

[Random Tank]

Oh wow, this is actually starting to get funny...

But they can recognise when you are asking them to do something that is probably not what you actually want to do.

No they can't! Computer's just do exactly what you tell them to do; if you told them to save over your quicksave (even by accident), that's what they do, because YOU told them to do it. You're asking for a solution to a problem caused by the person sitting in front of the PC... I'm afraid SQUAD can't do that! If you don't want to overwrite your quicksave, don't use quicksave, just use Alt+F5 and Alt+F9 instead.

No it doesn't. Quickload is not currently quick because you have to hold the key down. It would be much faster if a press of f9 opened a dialog giving details of the quicksave and asking you to confirm. If you are sure you would be able to click and confirm the dialog faster than you can currently do a quickload.

A. No it isn't, you have to navigate a menu instead of just one button press; B. There already is a save menu (ALT+F9), which will show your persistent, and any save from using ALT+F5. Having to confirm each and every time time you want to quicksave or quickload would be a huge pain, and would break the point of a quicksave, as it wouldn't be quick anymore.

You have to hold a button for 5 seconds. WOW. Such extreme delay

Congratulations. You learned to always check if it actually saves. It's really easy to do, just look at the top right corner. You don't even have to move your head

This is exactly what I was going to say, are you reading my mind?

[Specialist290]

Friendly moderator reminder: Whether or not the game's loading / saving user interface needs an overhaul to be more user-friendly is a legitimate topic for discussion. Insulting another user's intelligence for failing to understand how it works or failing to back up their save-state is not, and can be considered user harassment. Let's try to keep this discussion civil, shall we?

[Sirrobert]

As a fun addition: Confirmation windows don't work.

People get used to them, and once they are, they will hit yes without thinking about it. Boom, confirmation window useless.

The only thing a confirmation window is actually good for is preventing accidental clicks. And that's already covered by making you hold down the button (and the fact that your hands are nowhere near the button when you are using the keyboard normally)

[Padishar]

You have to hold a button for 5 seconds. WOW. Such extreme delay

I didn't say it was an extreme delay and your sarcasm is not helpful to the discussion. I was simply pointing out that the current mechanism is not exactly "quick", if f9 paused the game and opened a confirmation window which could be confirmed with enter (or even with another press of f9) the result would be a quicker quickload.

Congratulations. You learned to always check if it actually saves. It's really easy to do, just look at the top right corner. You don't even have to move your head

More of that very helpful sarcasm, there's a reason it's called the lowest form of wit. In any case I didn't learn to always check if it saves, what it actually taught me is that the game has shortcomings in the quicksave/load mechanism and prompted me to write a small utility program that monitors my save folders and automatically backs up changes to the files so that I can recover if this happens again.

Yes, that would indeed be a perfect thing to have.

Destroying the quicksave system, as people want here, is not

I don't remember anyone posting anything that implies they want to "destroy the quicksave system". I certainly didn't and don't.

Oh wow, this is actually starting to get funny...

Strange sense of humour you've got there...

No they can't! Computer's just do exactly what you tell them to do; if you told them to save over your quicksave (even by accident), that's what they do, because YOU told them to do it. You're asking for a solution to a problem caused by the person sitting in front of the PC... I'm afraid SQUAD can't do that! If you don't want to overwrite your quicksave, don't use quicksave, just use Alt+F5 and Alt+F9 instead.

They can be told by the programmer to do any number of relevant tests that could indicate that the user is likely doing something silly, e.g. if the quicksave was done last week then loading it after having just designed a new rocket and sending it on a 4 real-time hour mission is probably a mistake and the program could easily detect this and warn you.

Yes, computers do exactly what you tell them to but this is not always what you think you are telling them to do. I didn't say anything about overwriting saves but I'll respond to your inaccurate statements anyway. The user isn't hitting quicksave because they want to overwrite their previous save, they hit quicksave to do a "quick save". The fact that this uses a single "slot" and hence each quicksave overwrites the previous one is down to Squad writing the program that way. It could easily be written a different way to be more helpful to users without compromising the current functionality. The accidental overwriting of a quicksave with the current system is far to easy, there is no reason (other than the time needed to actually implement the code) why quicksave couldn't behave more like alt-f5, pausing, opening a dialog asking what you want to call the new save (with a sensible default chosen to not overwrite anything) and allowing you to just hit enter (or f5 again) to actually do the save. This would simply require two presses of f5 to do a quicksave which, in my opinion, would be an acceptable compromise that stops quicksave overwriting.

When loading again, the press (not hold) of f9 would open a dialog showing all the save files with the most recent selected. Hitting enter or f9 again would do the load. This would give a faster quickload mechanism that also allows you to check if you're loading the correct save or choose a different one.

A. No it isn't, you have to navigate a menu instead of just one button press; B. There already is a save menu (ALT+F9), which will show your persistent, and any save from using ALT+F5. Having to confirm each and every time time you want to quicksave or quickload would be a huge pain, and would break the point of a quicksave, as it wouldn't be quick anymore.

Who said anything about navigating a menu? The dialog that opens with a press of f9 would either just have some details about the save file if the current "single slot" mechanism were kept or would have a list of saves with the most recent being selected by default if it was changed to keep multiple saves. If you are going to reply to my comments then, at least reply to what I wrote. If you really think that a press of enter or a second press of the f5 or f9 key (or even finding the OK button to click with the mouse) would be a "huge pain" (or even any slower than the hold f9 method) then I am surprised you ever managed to sit through the initial game loading process without quitting in disgust (and, no, this isn't sarcasm, I am genuinely surprised).

As a fun addition: Confirmation windows don't work.

People get used to them, and once they are, they will hit yes without thinking about it. Boom, confirmation window useless.

Yes, people do get used to them and end up sometimes doing something silly but that doesn't mean they don't work and it doesn't make it any worse than the current implementation.

The only thing a confirmation window is actually good for is preventing accidental clicks. And that's already covered by making you hold down the button (and the fact that your hands are nowhere near the button when you are using the keyboard normally)

This just isn't true. The "confirmation" window in the system I described above also allows the alt-f5/f9 functionality and the holding down f9 doesn't do anything about accidentally hitting f5 and overwriting your "real" quicksave.

And smarter people realise there are various ways in which this issue could be addressed very nicely so make suggestions that this is done...

Was there any particular reason why neither of you commented on this bit or could you just not think of any reasonable argument against it?

[DeadMG]

Ultimately, what it really comes down to is this. Yes, I'm lazy. Yes, I'm not thinking about this. That's what I bought a computer for. To think about mundane things for me so I could think about interesting things. If I didn't want to do that, I'd play KSP by simulating every facet of the mission by hand on paper. But I don't and it's because it's way cheaper and easier to just buy a machine to do it for me. So yes. The computer should do what I want, when I want it to, and it should act in a way that maximally benefits me, always. That's what I paid for. When I play KSP, I want to be thinking about how I can increase my rocket efficiency, or what is the most efficient maneuver to make, or other gameplay details, and nothing else.

The core problem with the current save system is that it only makes sense when applied to a totally different kind of game than KSP. A game where it's a roughly linear progression, as long as you didn't lose then you're fine to continue, and it's clear when you've "lost" and to resave. KSP is not that kind of game. It is the kind of game where the player creates complex decision trees with no clear failure condition and he needs to reload to arbitrary points from arbitrary points.

[herbal space program]

I find that the way I generally mess up in this vein is by accidentally hitting f9 went I meant f5 and vice versa. FWIW, one thing you can do if you accidentally quickload away a lot of progress, as I have done before to my exasperation (5 seconds my SAS!), is to immediately kill KSP using the task manager and then restart the program. That will put you back to whatever state the persistent save file contained at your last autosave. Usually that will be before you messed up, although obviously you will still lose some amount of progress. I recovered about 8 hours of tedious vehicle construction, launching, and orbital rendezvous for an Eve sample return mission that way.

[WindShieIds]

This is why you back up your saves people!

[Dunbaratu]

So wait.

You quickload after having NEVER quicksaved before. And blame the game?

Damn, it really is never your fault is it?

Because of course, nobody *EVER* types the wrong function key by accident. It's always intentional right?

If you play hardcore enough not to use quick saves, you are one flubbed keystroke away from permanently destroying your entire career save, not just your current mission.

How hard would it be to have the button pop up a window saying "about to load quick save saved at [display date/time stamp]. Continue?"

Then it really would be the player's fault if they said "yes" to that, and a single fat-finger key error wouldn't delete the entire campaign.

[regex]

If you play hardcore enough not to use quick saves, you are one flubbed keystroke away from permanently destroying your entire career save

That's why you have to hold down F9 and it gives you a message about holding it down to quickload. There's no way you could "flub" that keystroke.

[Sirrobert]

Because of course, nobody *EVER* types the wrong function key by accident. It's always intentional right?

If you play hardcore enough not to use quick saves, you are one flubbed keystroke away from permanently destroying your entire career save, not just your current mission.

In this case, yes.

There is no button with a function anywhere NEAR F9. You have to move your hand over TO it, and than HOLD it down for several seconds.

The closest button with a function is backspace, for abort stage. And even IF you use that, it's only a quick press, not hold down

[TinfoilChef]

So I was setting up a laythe mission, and I had unlocked most of the tech tree. Tedious landings on the Mun, Minmus, and collecting as much science as I could there. So my Laythe Splasher crashed, and I quickloaded.

I was suddenly back in Kerbin orbit, with only basicRocketry and Start parts. Oh no. This was my first orbital mission. I had lost ALL of the science, tech, and parts that I had unlocked over several weeks of playing.

I tried quickloading again, but to no avail. I realized all of my stuff was truly gone. I literally broke down in tears and cried.

THIS IS VITAL AND MUST BE INCLUDED IN AN UPDATE VERY SOON.

Delete the default quicksave as soon as that craft is recovered or a new launch is attempted. This will prevent this horrible deletion of almost 100 hours work.

There's an easy way to prevent total catestrophic loss like this.

Before each KSP session I make a backup copy of my save directory.

I keep the three most recent backups

If something goes catastrophically wrong I can restore the most recent backup. If that's corrupted I can try again with the two previous backups

Given this procedure, I don't quicksave OR quickload. Ever. (except in "test saves" which don't count, only the main LP save counts)

If said catastrophe is something that happened because of my design or piloting failure then it stands as is and I move on from there.

[Dunbaratu]

In this case, yes.

There is no button with a function anywhere NEAR F9.

I have hit F9 when trying to type zero when typing a new vessel name. Don't jut look at the keys adjacent in the horizontal direction.

[BudgetHedgehog]

I have hit F9 when trying to type zero when typing a new vessel name. Don't jut look at the keys adjacent in the horizontal direction.

Again, F9 requires a press and hold. Unless you were planning on naming your craft 'something0000000000000000000000', I don't see the problem. Especially if you're in the VAB, where F9 does nothing (I'm not sure if having the 'rename vessel' window open during flight would register an F9 keypress). The press and hold is critical to the F9 function as it specifically stops accidental presses, such as trying to hit F8/10 or 7/8/9/0 - there's no reason at all why you'd need to hold down any of those. The only one in that area that you need to hold down to function is F9 and holding it down requires a concious decision and isn't something that can be done by accident. If I need to quickload, chances are I can take 1 second to look at the keyboard if I'm really uncertain of where the keys are.

However, if someone were to manage to press and hold a completely different button by accident, I would probably say that quicksave and quickload are a bit too advanced for them. It's basic computer skills.. not even that, it's basic motor functions of the brain. 'I pressed and held down a key I didn't want and now my progress is lost, someone please fix it so that doesn't happen'.. there's no idiot-proof solution because idiots are, well.. idiots. It's the same as saying 'I closed my laptop without saving and now my work is gone, someone please fix it so that doesn't happen'. No, what needs to be fixed is your brain.

[Commander Zoom]

Are you sure you want to do this?

Are you really sure?

Are you really really sure?

Are you really really really sure?