[Game Update] Cloud Saves Now In Preview - 437482

[Ipsquiggle]

Hi friends!

We’re making good progress on the DLC and are on track to give you something juicy before the year is up, but as it’s still a ways out we wanted to give you a little something in the meantime. So with that we’d like to announce we’re opening up testing for: Cloud Saves!

This is something we’ve wanted to implement for a while, and we’d like to get them out before DLC testing starts as they’ll help support the coming DLC infrastructure. So this is a fairly small update to the game, consisting of basically just this new feature.

!! ATTENTION TESTERS !! While we're doing our absolute best to never ever delete your save files accidentally, part of the reason for this public testing is so that we can make sure save migration is as safe as can possibly be. In other words, Please Make a Backup Of Your Save Files before joining the public testing branch, and let us know right away in the bug forums if you encounter any issues with migrating and syncing saves.

Thank you so much for helping us out with this. We're all looking forward to finally getting cloud saves into the game. We know you've been asking for this for awhile!

What does this testing branch contain so far?

Here are the changes we've made so far in this update, loosely categorized:

Spoiler

Fixes and Improvements

Cloud saves

• Cloud saves have been enabled! Use the buttons on the Load Game screen to move your saves for cloud syncing
• Save file migration to one-folder-per-colony:
• New save file migration window reorganizes save files into one folder per colony
• Auto Save deleting policy is now per colony, i.e 10 max auto saves for each colony
• New colony list on load screen, where selecting a colony enters a second page where you view the saves within it

Fixes and Improvements

• Fixed partial heat transfer increasing energy and flaking fountain
• Fixed Fish Feeder flaking
• Fixed both Heavi-Watt Wire Bridges from flaking and doubling mass on melt
• One cell buildings should no longer flake when melting
• "More Info" on the error includes the actual error message in addition to the stack trace
• Enlarged the clickable area to close message notifications so that it's easier to dismiss them
• Clarified Petroleum Generator description
• Clarified level up notification
• "Save As" dialog now shows saves (not auto saves). Also inserts save name + selects it
• Fixed artifacts not being generated if they are the last artifact of a tier
• Small update to Chinese localization strings

Optimizations

• Batch symbol override assignments to avoid call overhead, saves 2-3% of frametime
• Remove duplicate entries in Offsets, saves 1-2% of frame in fetch cost calculations
• Push back sort order for Assignable-related chore preconditions, saves 5-6% frametime
• Replace ArrayRefs in ScenePartitioner with HashSet for 5% frametime savings
• Small optimization to Symbol Override system ~.5% frametime by removing unnecessary data copying
• Small optimizations to Symbol Override system ~2% of frametime by changing the way we look up symbols and removing some debugging
• Facegraph optimization, saves about 1.5% frametime on Dupe stress test
• Optimized the way Dupes think about toilets. Saves about 4% of frametime for colonies with many Dupes
• Further optimizations to toilet selection. Can have huge benefits for large numbers of Dupes and toilets: ~20% of the frame on a Dupe stress-test colony

What is open testing?

"Open testing" means players get to test-drive new content early and give us feedback and suggestions before it goes live. Because this is an unfinished and in active development version of the game, it's pretty likely you'll encounter bugs, crashes or balance issues while playing these builds. We'll try to fix any problems that crop up as quickly as we can, but it's possible you'll lose progress in your games while playing on the Testing branch.

Regarding performance, the Testing branch has additional debugging tools enabled to help us track down crashes. This makes the game run more slowly than the live version of the game.

Please also be aware that once a save is loaded in the Testing branch, it cannot be reopened again in the previous Live branch or previous builds.

What do I do if I find a crash or a bug?

Post it up on the Bug Tracker and we'll fix it as soon as we can. If you can attach a copy of your save file to your report, that helps us even more as we can pinpoint the source of problem more quickly.

Do I have to play the open testing build?

Nope! If you'd prefer to only play a stable build, you can continue to play in the current Default branch until the game launches in full. Playing the Open Testing build isn't necessary, but it helps us a lot to receive your feedback and reports - if you're interested, try it out!

How do I become an open tester?

There's no sign up or registration for becoming an open tester. If you own Oxygen Not Included and want to join the Testing Branch, all you have to do is play the Open Testing build on Steam.

How do I play the open testing build?

You can switch your branch on Steam using the instructions below:

Spoiler

How to change branches in Oxygen Not Included (Steam)

• In Steam, click on Library > Games.
• Scroll down to Oxygen Not Included.
• Right-click and select Properties.
• Go to the BETAS tab.
• In the dropdown, select the name of the branch you want to play. In this case, the branch name is "public_testing"
  • This branch does not require a password.
• In that same Properties window, go to the Local Files tab and press "Verify Integrity Of Game Cache."
• Your game will be updated to the the previous branch.
• Launch and play Oxygen Not Included

 

 

View full update

 

[blash365]

Awesome!

 

Especially the load screen reorganization and performance optimizations:D

 

@everyone: save files are normally found under c:\Users\<user-name>\Documents\Klei\OxygenNotIncluded\save_files

 

@Ipsquiggle: Maybe add the savefile path to the original post where you are recommending to create a backup.

Edited October 29, 2020 by blash365

[chemie]

cloud saves is always the first thing I disable in a game....

[blash365]

13 minutes ago, chemie said:

cloud saves is always the first thing I disable in a game....

True, they are not always working in your favor. Also i kinda thought cloud saves were already part of ONI.^^

But at least we have a good batch of other changes along with it.

!!! Word of caution:

Quote

FileNotFoundException: Could not find file "C:\Users\...Documents\Klei\OxygenNotIncluded\save_files\x.sav"

file exists, but cant load it after migrating save system.

 

Restarted ONI, loading worked afterwards. Might be a strange caching effect.

 

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by blash365

[spkthed]

Awesome. Happy to provide feedback, thanks a ton for all of the work, and super excited about the performance updates.

P.S. Thanks a ton for letting us know it'll be a few more weeks!

Edited October 29, 2020 by spkthed

[blash365]

@Ipsquiggle: How can we tell that the cloud saves are working? There is no on/off option that i was able to locate. My local cloud_save_files folder is still empty (apart from a hashfolder inside it). Also when i save my game, i dont see any cloud synchronization happening.

Also some kind of indication on the load screen showing whether a game is cloud/local would be nice.

[klei.ruby]

@blash365 cloud saves are per colony, so on the main load screen you'll see a list of colonies showing whether a colony is cloud or local.

There's a button on the top right to convert all colonies to cloud, they're not automatically moved to the cloud, that's up to you. You can move an individual colony with the cloud/local button on each one. See below!

Regarding timing, syncing happens when you exit the game. Steam will sync the saves to the cloud at that point only.
The next time you play, it will make sure the latest cloud files are downloaded. It doesn't sync otherwise, that's how Steam cloud saves operate.



 

[blash365]

8 minutes ago, klei.ruby said:

syncing happens when you exit the game.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

i totally didnt realize the top bar on the load screen.

 

So when i have a colony with 550 mb of savegames, that means a long syncing time.:&

Guess i have to clean up some of my savegames.

Edited October 29, 2020 by blash365

[klei.ruby]

Yea, if you have a lot of saves it will take some time to upload. It doesn't block playing other games, but ONI will wait to finish syncing before you can press play again. We plan to warn about that as well.

[dani9]

Great Update! Great performance!

But.... When I Close the Game my Google Drive is Syncing my User's Documents Folder. Steam thinks Oxygen Not Included is still running until the Google Drive Sync is finished.

Can you move the Cloud Savegames in the Steam Cloud Savegame Folder? ( C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\XXX\457140\remote )

[AzeTheGreat]

Quote

"More Info" on the error includes the actual error message in addition to the stack trace

Thank you so much, this will help a lot.  Please consider encouraging users to send the full output log - it can make a massive difference in fixing bugs (which I'm sure you know).  Adding a button to open the log location, and a message telling users to submit it to crashing mods would be ideal in my opinion.  (I still really think the stack trace shouldn't be shown to end users, but oh well).

[blash365]

2 minutes ago, AzeTheGreat said:

Thank you so much, this will help a lot.  Please consider encouraging users to send the full output log - it can make a massive difference in fixing bugs (which I'm sure you know).  Adding a button to open the log location, and a message telling users to submit it to crashing mods would be ideal in my opinion.  (I still really think the stack trace shouldn't be shown to end users, but oh well).

I imagine that already happens when you press "report issue" on the blackhole screen.

 

Also there is a button (a bit hidden) under options -> feedback -> log files to navigate to your log file folder.

[AzeTheGreat]

3 minutes ago, blash365 said:

I imagine that already happens when you press "report issue" on the blackhole screen.

 

Also there is a button (a bit hidden) under options -> feedback -> log files to navigate to your log file folder.

I am specifically speaking from the perspective of a mod developer trying to fix crashes.  The blackhole screen is different from the "standard" crash screen with a stack trace.

Having the button there does nothing to encourage end users, who know very little about coding or bug reporting, to report issues with sufficient information to reproduce/solve them.

Half of the bug reports I get include no information at all, and those are unavoidable, but the other half frequently include just the stack trace pasted in.  While actually including the error will make the stack trace a lot more useful, it would be even better to encourage users to submit the full logs.  Making attaching the full logs just as easy as pasting in the stack trace (and telling users to do that) is the best way to do that.

[Gurgel]

27 minutes ago, AzeTheGreat said:

Thank you so much, this will help a lot.  Please consider encouraging users to send the full output log - it can make a massive difference in fixing bugs (which I'm sure you know).  Adding a button to open the log location, and a message telling users to submit it to crashing mods would be ideal in my opinion.  (I still really think the stack trace shouldn't be shown to end users, but oh well).

I had a look at the logs and decided to never upload one due to privacy concerns. Since I have made some bug reports without actual logs and some of the reported bugs got fixed based on the description I gave, my guess would be that given a good bug description and a way to reproduce, the logs are not needed. 

Now, everybody can decide that for themselves, but, for example, I do not want my real name on the site here via the log file.

Incidentally, I just reported a bug with the process that sorts saves into folders. 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Gurgel

[Slvrsrfr]

slightly off topic, but a concern for me. Is there any indication that the next update will change seed/map generation? Is it expected that seeds/maps will remain in the format they are in? Will maps be re-generated, as has happened in previous updates?

[minespatch]

I'll definitely check out the beta after I finish my video review of Shanghai Office Simulator.

[krop]

11 hours ago, Ipsquiggle said:

Hi friends!

We’re making good progress on the DLC and are on track to give you something juicy before the year is up, but as it’s still a ways out we wanted to give you a little something in the meantime. So with that we’d like to announce we’re opening up testing for: Cloud Saves!

This is something we’ve wanted to implement for a while, and we’d like to get them out before DLC testing starts as they’ll help support the coming DLC infrastructure. So this is a fairly small update to the game, consisting of basically just this new feature.

!! ATTENTION TESTERS !! While we're doing our absolute best to never ever delete your save files accidentally, part of the reason for this public testing is so that we can make sure save migration is as safe as can possibly be. In other words, Please Make a Backup Of Your Save Files before joining the public testing branch, and let us know right away in the bug forums if you encounter any issues with migrating and syncing saves.

Thank you so much for helping us out with this. We're all looking forward to finally getting cloud saves into the game. We know you've been asking for this for awhile!

 

 

Migration worked both ways on Linux *BUT* if I launch the file browser from the game (in the 'SAVE INFORMATION' dialog) then quit ONI, Steam considers the game is still running until I close the file browser.

 

Edited October 30, 2020 by krop

[Loraty]

Quote

• Auto Save deleting policy is now per colony, i.e 10 max auto saves for each colony

Thank you! This is a huge quality of life improvement.

[Ipsquiggle]

18 hours ago, dani9 said:

Great Update! Great performance!

But.... When I Close the Game my Google Drive is Syncing my User's Documents Folder. Steam thinks Oxygen Not Included is still running until the Google Drive Sync is finished.

Can you move the Cloud Savegames in the Steam Cloud Savegame Folder? ( C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\XXX\457140\remote )

The first time you move your saves to the cloud, it may take quite a long time for Steam to do the initial Sync. Unfortunately, Steam does not make it clear what's happening, it just looks like this while it's uploading saves:

I also believe Google Drive is (supposed to be ) smart about not resyncing a file that's moved. Please let us know if this continues to be a problem after the initial sync.

[DefectiveNu]

21 hours ago, Ipsquiggle said:

on a Dupe stress-test colony

curious how many dupes you use in this stress test, I've got a 200 dupe colony that my computer hates me over, going to see how much this update helps

[Beowulfe]

1 hour ago, DefectiveNu said:

curious how many dupes you use in this stress test, I've got a 200 dupe colony that my computer hates me over, going to see how much this update helps

Remember that the public test branches also have more debugging built in, which means you're not likely to see the full brunt of the performance improvements until it hits live! Debugging data can add a lot of performance overhead.

[DefectiveNu]

Well I was playing with the custom speed mod, set at 0.25x for the slowest, and even then it ran at 4fps (it even did this while paused) now it seems to hit ~10-20 (21-25 paused) which is quite nice.  Regular speed still chugs (~5-10fps) but still, great improvement.  I have to see how much this drops "ponder" times although that is hard to see due to how the tooltip displays (it shows the bottom full of garbage like "life support supply to <dupe> 0.01%)

 

1. An interesting error I'm getting loading a mod (printing pod manager) its the last mod by id in the steam mods folder.  I get in quick succession these screens (I recorded the game launching since it closes after clearing the last one)

Spoiler

From the output log it just seems like it fails to patch Telepad.Update() but then tries to delete the mod which it can't do because its dll is loaded

 

all my other mods seem to have survived the update which is very nice

 

2. My saves seem to not be migrated though, 0 bytes used in steam cloud storage and no long wait for sync on first quit

Edited October 30, 2020 by DefectiveNu

[blash365]

50 minutes ago, DefectiveNu said:

2. My saves seem to not be migrated though, 0 bytes used in steam cloud storage and no long wait for sync on first quit

 

You need to activate cloud saving for each colony (or for all) by pressing the cloud symbol on the load screen. See Rubys answer above for more details:

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/122968-game-update-cloud-saves-now-in-preview-437482/?do=findComment&comment=1386047

Edited October 30, 2020 by blash365

[avc15]

On 10/29/2020 at 2:24 PM, chemie said:

cloud saves is always the first thing I disable in a game....

I feel the same about it, but some very vocal community members have been giving klei a hard time about it. So it's important to someone at least.

[DefectiveNu]

Ah, I was dumb and thought the first conversion was supposed to do that...

 

anyway I tested the ponder times a bit and they were reduced by ~25%+ when running at 0.25 speed compared to before the patch, and at 1x were about on par with 0.25x pre-patch