[Feature Request] Save management system (for consideration)

[vesper8]

I know that at first glance this will feel very much out of scope. I just think this would be an awesome addition to your launcher and I've yet to see anything like this on Mac.

In the past I've implemented a quick-save / quick-load feature for different games that would essentially just map a hotkey or a CLI command to doing a backup or restore of the save files for specific games.

This would add quick-save/quick-load functionality to all the games that don't support it. Such as pretty much all roguelike/roguelite games.

I know I would use this a lot!

Once the main logic is setup, the only thing required is to know where each game saves its save games, which could be customized on a per-game basis and ideally would be auto-detected/guessed based on common save file locations.

Please consider adding this : )

[jmshgs]

I think this is a cool idea, I'd just like to have some more info on how the CLI command would work. Can you give an example? We have a discord server you can join to contribute ideas for features. It might be easier to explain there: https://discord.gg/YWNdkJcu

[vesper8]

Well I use the CLI to invoke the quick-save and quick-load because it's convenient for me and moreso because I have no idea how to create a sweet UI like what you've done here.

But I imagine that the implementation via Phoenix wouldn't make use of the CLI at all.

You would specify where each game's save files are stored on the filesystem. And ideally this could be auto-detected/guessed to help users configure this part.

Once we know the path where the game stores the save files.

Then Phoenix would handle a few operations via button clicks.

Quick-save makes a backup of the save files (sometimes it's a single file, sometimes it's a folder containing many files), it would store this backup somewhere and keep track of it. There could be a single quick-save "slot" or there could be multiple save slots.

Then, if the user later wants to "quick-load" or simply "load" one of the save backups, then Phoenix would grab the files it has previously backed up and it would restore them to their original location, overwriting the current ones.

Usually you also have to quit the game and re-open it, or at least quit to the main menu. And then upon clicking "continue" it will use the save file you just restored.

This is very convenient for hard games such as roguelite/roguelike games that don't allow you to save at all. This is also called 'save scumming' which is sometimes frowned upon.

But this feature would be useful not only for games that don't support in-game saving/quick-saving but even for games that do. Sometimes games only allow you to have one save slot and you may want to make backups often.

Another cool feature that I would use would be the ability to periodically make backups of the save files. So making a save backup every 30 minutes for example. Because sometimes you do something bad in a game and wish you could go back but the game won't allow you for various reasons. Or maybe your save gets corrupt.. so having periodic save backups becomes a godsend.

[Shock9616]

I definitely like this idea, and it's definitely not out of scope for the project as a whole, but I think in the app's current state it's more important to get core functionality all working and stable first. This definitely belongs on a list of long-term goals though! I would love for this app to get that sort of functionality eventually!