I didn't say anything about Unity, I was talking about Renpy and RPG Maker
I know you didn't say anything about Unity games. It was only an example how a dev can make his/her own option.
Navigate to these directories
C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Roaming\RenPy\SummertimeSaga
C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Roaming\RenPy\FootOfTheMoutains-1541095408
Of course I knew about these folders. I supposed some games use the saves from "...\AppData\Roaming\RenPy" and others from game dir.
I never bothered to check. I was wrong and, for this, I apologize. But, ... you made me curious, so I checked what's the story with the dirs.
First:
All RenPy games I checked (around 20) have both "User\...\AppData\Roaming\RenPy\game_sav" (from now on I'll call it user_dir) and "game_inst\game\saves" (I'll call it game_dir, too lazy to type the whole path).
Second:
Both dirs contain identical autosave files (for the same game, of course).
Third:
For most games, the 2 dirs content is identical for save files. Identical means same content AND timestamp.
For some games, user_dir contains more save files, probably from older versions.
But, for few games, game_dir contains some save files that user_dir don't.
Examples:
"A Wife and a Mother". I found all the autosave files in both locations, but 2 save files only in the game_dir!
"Cure My Addiction". game_dir have 9 save files, user_dir only 2.
Why? I don't know! But the saves are fully functional!
I didn't check all games (I have 69 dirs in \User\...\AppData\Roaming\RenPy), but not all games are still installed.
And I never cleaned user_dir, I have enough space.
So, I dug further: which is the main save_dir and which is the backup (or working?) dir?
From RenPy code I found that \User\...\AppData\Roaming\RenPy\game_save is indeed the save dir (is default, it can be bypassed, changing the code, but I doubt any dev did it).
In the end I suppose game_dir is some kind of working (mirroring?) dir (sorry, but my patience to decompile and read scripts is over).
Oh, and one last test: deleting the content of user_dir doesn't matter; the game will load saves from game_dir.
Ren'Py saves are stored in AppData, the saves you see in Game folder are the linked saves to AppData
Sorry, but there are not links at all, but copies (btw, what kind of links: shortcuts, symlinks or hardlinks? from what I found, none of them
). You can read some explanations above.
Obs. My games are on drive E, not C.
