Hey friends, how are ya? I’m writing because I’ve got a very first-world problem and no idea how to solve it.
So, yesterday I began playing Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag for the first time on my PC, and I really enjoyed it. It being a Ubisoft game with their games connected to a server, I figured it would have cloud saving. Imagine my disappointment when I shut down my PC, move to the other part of the house with my laptop, install the game, and find my saves didn’t come over.
Now, sure, I could use a USB stick to copy the saves from the PC to the laptop, but I’m forgetful so I know I’ll forget to do that. What I’m looking for help with, is to find a way to sync the save files between the two PCs so I’ll always be able to play the most recent save regardless of machine.
So what I want is, basically:
I play the game on the PC, save it, then quit. Those saves get uploaded to a server somewhere via some software.
I turn on my laptop, and software checks to see if the files on the server are newer. If they are, it copies the files to the save game folder, and I load the game as normal.
When I go back to my PC, it downloads the save files from the cloud, and so I can continue from when I was on my laptop.
Basically, I want something like Steam cloud saving, but something I run myself, if that makes any sense, where I can specify which files to be synced.
I hope this makes sense because I’m not sure I’ve explained it very well. Thank you for your time.
Not sure if the free version does this, but OneDrive allows you to select folders to sync. Should work as long as the save files aren't in some wonky system folder.
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My solution for this was to figure out where the save data was, move the folder to my OneDrive (or whatever other cloud storage drive), and then create a symlink pointing to the folder on the cloud drive.
So, let's say the path to the save data was:
C:\Users\bobbywatson\Documents\Assassin's Creed IV\SaveData
I'd then cut/paste the SaveData folder to my OneDrive and give it a more meaningful name:
C:\Users\bobbywatson\OneDrive\Assassin's Creed IV SaveData
Then create a symlink at the original location with the same name:
C:\Users\bobbywatson\Documents\Assassin's Creed IV\SaveData <- this time it's symlink
Symlinks can be created via command line (I'm pretty sure Windows 10 required admin access to do this, but I think this may no longer be the case in Windows 11) with the following command, from within folder C:\Users\bobbywatson\Documents\Assassin's Creed IV\):
mklink /D Link Target
Where Link is the name of the folder (in this case, SaveData) and the target would be the full path "C:\Users\bobbywatson\OneDrive\Assassin's Creed IV Save Data" (with quotations because of the spaces in the folder names.
Not a simple solution, but it's the best I was able to come up with at the time I set this up.
Currently playing: Earth Defence Force 6 (PC), Astro Bot (PS5), Tomb Raider The Last Revelation (PC)
If you have OneDrive set to sync your entire Documents folder like I do, you may not even need to make the symlinks. I'd do some research in that regard, but otherwise, I'd go with bobby's solution.
Computers were a mistake
OMG IT WORKED.
I used this extension to make it happen: https://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlink...
SO. What I did was cut and paste the original 273 directory into dropbox, THEN made the symlink in the Assassin's Creed save folder. I then repeated the process (making the Dropbox folder the source, and the AC folder the symlink) with the directory, and it worked! Just as you said it would, Bobby!
OMG thank you so much guys. This is SO EXCITING. There were many games I wasn't playing because of this save sync issue, but with your helped I figured it out. Thank you!
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+1 for OneDrive. It just works(tm).
GWJ Action Game Club
Glad it worked
Enjoy!
Currently playing: Earth Defence Force 6 (PC), Astro Bot (PS5), Tomb Raider The Last Revelation (PC)
So if one directory is on the first machine is, say:
D:\Uplay Games\Ubisoft Game Launcher\savegames\be337f0b-1b0d-43b7-b4cb-df00be757610\273
And the directory on the second machine is, say:
C:\Program Files\Ubisoft Game Launcher\savegames\be337f0b-1b0d-43b7-b4cb-df00be757610\273
OneDrive will be able to sync between those two folders?
Space Game Junkie | Twitch | YouTube | Podcast
So guys, funny story. After all this today, I found out that Black Flag is on the Switch. And it was at its historic low, so I bought it.
So in the end, I didn't even need to DO all this, but it was a great learning experience and I'll definitely be using it for other games. Like, I set up Pioneer on both machines and it works great!!
I just thought it was funny that after all that, having Black Flag on the Switch basically solves my initial problem.
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I'm not sure if OneDrive behaves exactly the same way, but I've tried using Google Drive for a similar purpose, and I don't really like the "collision" behavior. I sometimes found it hard to properly delete a file because it would just get restored, or a file would get removed that shouldn't have been because it was guessing at which one was more recent. Or with folders where the data changes a lot I might have heaps of duplicate files.
Instead for situations like this I use Syncthing:
https://syncthing.net/
You get a bit more control of how you want things to sync. If it finds a conflicting file it renames it accordingly, and if you're using two-way sync, then both sources get the conflict file. But then if you delete it... it actually goes away and resolves in both places.
Also no need to much around with symlinks/hard links.
Just another option to consider.
(It also has one way syncing options, which I find useful to send ROMs to my Steam Deck.)
It is a sync tool however, if you're shutting down the original PC, it won't be online for the laptop to check against.
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