Lack of Campaign "SAVE" feature

[Gregg]

Well it happened again yesterday morning.

While the wife and I were out of the house for her medical testing appointment, we had another power outage. The UPS worked fine, running the computer for over 150 minutes before the battery was exhausted (yes, I have a big ups!). The power was out for almost five hours, before FPL restored power; caused by a traffic sign that was being installed, falling over onto a set of very high voltage main feeder lines.

I thus lost a 1890 campaign that I was in April of 1892. I had well over 50 hours invested in that game, and now it is totally lost to me, because there is no save feature in the campaign. This is the second time this has happened to me, and until there is a save feature added to the campaign, it will be the last time I lose that much invested time.

I really do like this developing game, but there is no excuse for the lack of being able to save your campaign game. There is a save feature for the Custom Battles, so there is no reason there is not a save feature for the campaign.

I will keep watch over the games development; but for now, I will now move onto Gary Grigsby's War in the East 2.

Regards;

Gregg

[Littorio]

The game does save though...each time you exit out of it. Have you kept one game going continuously the whole time?

[Norbert Sattler]

It also saves after each round...

Did the crash corrupt the save?

[Gregg]

When I restarted the computer, the game was not running. I restarted the game by clicking the desktop icon, the game downloaded updates, then I went back into the game. Hit the Saved Campaign, and nothing was there.

So, If I understand the above replies, there should be an automatic save? If so, I've never seen it.

Finally, yes, I do keep the game active (running), with the screen minimized. That was the only way I could keep the campaign going.

I posted in "Support - Game Technical Issues" section, back in early December concerning the apparent lack of a Campaign Save Feature, and never got an answer as to if there was a save feature with the campaign, and if there was, how to use it. I never received an answer to either question.

[Panzergraf]

The game saves your campaign whenever you exit to main menu, and loads it when you hit "continue campaign".
There's a savefile stored in the folder (should be in %appdata% > local low > game labs > ultimate admiral dreadnoughts), named save_0

[Littorio]

13 hours ago, Gregg said:

When I restarted the computer, the game was not running. I restarted the game by clicking the desktop icon, the game downloaded updates, then I went back into the game. Hit the Saved Campaign, and nothing was there.

So, If I understand the above replies, there should be an automatic save? If so, I've never seen it.

Finally, yes, I do keep the game active (running), with the screen minimized. That was the only way I could keep the campaign going.

I posted in "Support - Game Technical Issues" section, back in early December concerning the apparent lack of a Campaign Save Feature, and never got an answer as to if there was a save feature with the campaign, and if there was, how to use it. I never received an answer to either question.

I'm sorry but this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. It sounds like a "you" issue with your computing skills, and nothing to do with the game. Let me be clear: this game does not offer manual saving as of yet. For example, you cannot hit a button and write "Save #1."

I hate to break it to you but no game will be "running when you restart the computer." That's just plain stupid to assume. Currently the game works with an auto-save feature. This works every time that you exit your campaign to the main menu.

Apparently somehow you missed this though and just assumed that just because you didn't see a big, blinking save button somewhere, then logically the game must not be able to save at all...I'm sorry but I don't have any more words for this.

Your problem is that the campaign game never saved because you never exited out of campaign.  You never exited out of the game at all........Instead you just kept it running for weeks 🤣

Start a new campaign. Exit to main menu when you are done playing. That's how you save. Problem solved.

15 hours ago, Norbert Sattler said:

It also saves after each round...

Did the crash corrupt the save?

7 hours ago, Panzergraf said:

The game saves your campaign whenever you exit to main menu, and loads it when you hit "continue campaign".
There's a savefile stored in the folder (should be in %appdata% > local low > game labs > ultimate admiral dreadnoughts), named save_0

No guys...he just literally kept the same campaign running for weeks on his computer lol

Edited February 5, 2022 by Littorio

[AurumCorvus]

1 hour ago, Littorio said:

No guys...he just literally kept the same campaign running for weeks on his computer lol

@Norbert Sattler is actually correct here. It automatically saves each time you click new turn. In fact, you can try this: Start a brand new campaign, and click Next Turn. Open up task manager and kill the UAD process to make sure nothing weird is going on. Restart UAD. You start at turn 2, not turn 1. (If you try this with Create Fleet, remember that the first two turns are on the same month, as the "first turn" is just a chance for you to build ships).

Otherwise, I really, really agree with your rant. OP was critically deficient in understanding how this game works. In fact, the automatic saving is one of the best things of this game because it literally means you can only lose whatever you did in the very turn you were playing. Everything else gets saved automatically.

[Panzergraf]

4 hours ago, Littorio said:

No guys...he just literally kept the same campaign running for weeks on his computer lol

...oh
I failed to consider that😅

Still, it would be nice if the game supported multiple saves, so you could have several campaigns going, or load back to a previous month.

[Candle_86]

the only way it wouldn't write that save would be if you denied the game premission to write to the drive, but then it should crash anyway.

[Norbert Sattler]

On 2/5/2022 at 2:59 AM, Gregg said:

When I restarted the computer, the game was not running. I restarted the game by clicking the desktop icon, the game downloaded updates, then I went back into the game. Hit the Saved Campaign, and nothing was there.

So, If I understand the above replies, there should be an automatic save? If so, I've never seen it.

Finally, yes, I do keep the game active (running), with the screen minimized. That was the only way I could keep the campaign going.

I posted in "Support - Game Technical Issues" section, back in early December concerning the apparent lack of a Campaign Save Feature, and never got an answer as to if there was a save feature with the campaign, and if there was, how to use it. I never received an answer to either question.

I think the issue was the update.

While most updates will not mess with the save-files, some updates have had major changes that meant you couldn't use save-games from older versions anymore. If the update that was downloaded after your crash was one of those major updates, then the game would have noticed that the save doesn't work for this version and the continue campaign buttom would have stayed inactive.

As for the future: The game automatically saves every single round and upon either going back to the menu or exiting to desktop. You can use the continue campaign button to get back into an active campaign. So you do not have to keep the game running... in fact I would even advise you not to keep your computer running for that long. Personal PCs are not made to run non-stop, so restarting them ever now and then is highly advisable.

If your game really does not make any save-files, it might be that windows somehow does not allow it to access the folder. You can try starting the game by using right-click -> Start as administrator (or something to that effect), or if you are running it from Steam, do the same for Steam itself.

The location of the save file is C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\LocalLow\Game Labs\Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts, but the AppData folder is hidden. The easiest way to get into it anyway is to manually go into the <your name> user folder and then just click into the adress bar and type \AppData behind it.

In that folder should be a file called "save_0.json". That's the campaign save.

[Gregg]

8 hours ago, Norbert Sattler said:

I think the issue was the update.

While most updates will not mess with the save-files, some updates have had major changes that meant you couldn't use save-games from older versions anymore. If the update that was downloaded after your crash was one of those major updates, then the game would have noticed that the save doesn't work for this version and the continue campaign buttom would have stayed inactive.

As for the future: The game automatically saves every single round and upon either going back to the menu or exiting to desktop. You can use the continue campaign button to get back into an active campaign. So you do not have to keep the game running... in fact I would even advise you not to keep your computer running for that long. Personal PCs are not made to run non-stop, so restarting them ever now and then is highly advisable.

If your game really does not make any save-files, it might be that windows somehow does not allow it to access the folder. You can try starting the game by using right-click -> Start as administrator (or something to that effect), or if you are running it from Steam, do the same for Steam itself.

The location of the save file is C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\LocalLow\Game Labs\Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts, but the AppData folder is hidden. The easiest way to get into it anyway is to manually go into the <your name> user folder and then just click into the adress bar and type \AppData behind it.

In that folder should be a file called "save_0.json". That's the campaign save.

Thank you for your clear and direct answers.

Regards;

Gregg

[Drenzul]

You can also manually copy the  save file. Its in your user folder, in appLow, in the save folder. 

Copy the save_0.json file and rename it, you can rename it back to save_0.json and the game will pick up from that save file next time you reload.

Its also pretty easy to edit to change tech, give the enemy more money so they don't go bankrupt e.t.c.