Ren'Py Old saves don't carry over to new version of game

Prancing Pony

Newbie
Jul 16, 2021
37
65
Hi Ren’Py folk,

I just made some changes to a Ren’Py game I’m working on and set it up as a new version. First I copied my game file and renamed it to become the new version. Then I made some additions and modifications. When I open this new version with “Launch Project” from the Ren’Py launcher, I can see all my old saves that copied over, plus the new saves that I have been making as I work on this new version.

But, when I make build distributions of the new version and open them, some new saves are there but all my old saves have disappeared. Can someone advise me on how the make sure my old saves flow through to the new version when I build it? I am using a recent issue of Ren’Py - 7.4.11.2266.

Many thanks for any help you can give.
 

79flavors

Well-Known Member
Respected User
Jun 14, 2018
1,568
2,195
Each time you create a new project, RenPy sets up various things.

Included in those is a parameter within the options.rpy file that is called config.save_directory.
The value is the name of a shared folder RenPy uses to keep continuity for save files between different releases of your game.

Go into the options.rpy file of your original game and copy the value to the new version of you game. As long as the values are the same, the save files will work as you hope.
If you've deleted the original version of the project, you can still extract the value from the built version of the game. Alternatively, you can go looking in the C:\Users\{yourloginname}\AppData\Roaming\RenPy\ folder.
 

anne O'nymous

I'm not grumpy, I'm just coded that way.
Modder
Respected User
Donor
Jun 10, 2017
10,289
15,143
If you've deleted the original version of the project, you can still extract the value from the built version of the game. Alternatively, you can go looking in the C:\Users\{yourloginname}\AppData\Roaming\RenPy\ folder.
Not sure if there's an implicit "to find the name of the folder" implied here, so I'll add that by going in the C:\Users\{yourloginname}\AppData\Roaming\RenPy\backups folder, he can also found all (but not the last one) version of his original scripts.

It do not replace a full backup made properly, but can save life from time to time. There's of course tools like unrpyc, but the comments would be lost. So a combination of the two can help retrieve the whole (and complete) source of your game.