Virtual Machines and other means to save your progress and/or remain anonymous.

[Hanson]

Hello people,

i recently changed my pc and one thing which i noticed during the file shuffeling onto the new computer is that my savegames of my various games are saved on different locations and i would need to check for every game (or engine) where the data is saved and copy it to my new computer.

I had the idea of using a virtual machine for the games, as then i would be able to transfer the whole virtual machine onto my new computer in the future. So, i tried a VM with a game and it did not work so well as i was hoped. Somehow the virtual machine does not utilize the the graphics accelerator correctly, it seems.

But this sparked another question. How are you coping with the problem of transfering saves to different computers? If all the games would just store it in their local folder, it would not be a problem, sadly some of them store their data in for example the documents folder or in APPDATA. Transfering saves isnt the only benefit, as it would give you an additional level of privacy. Also you wouldnt have your main OS cluttered with saves from games you dont play anymore and have already deleted.

I am looking forward to your solutions. I understand its a very niche problem, yet i do like to hear about different solutions if any of you come up with some.

Thanks!

Have a good day!

 

[scrumbles]

You could redirect all your saves to a USB flash drive (or to a shared folder/partition, I don't know). This would make importing saves easier and would protect your privacy.
For Ren'py games, for instance, you can replace the folder %APPDATA\RenPy with a symbolic link pointing to the new location. Same for Unity games.
Just google symbolic (or soft) links for your operative system.

 

[Hanson]

Hi,

thanks for the answer. That is an interesting solution. The downside would be that I had to set it up again every time i build a new pc. Obviously that does not happen very often, but that is the "problem". Will i think of that again in x years when i rebuild my pc again? The good thing is nothing is lost if i forget it, as the save are still saved in a separate folder.

Thanks for the idea, i have to think about it!

If anybody else has other ideas, feel free to share them!