Hello,
After the first time playing Game Dev Tycoon at work, I saved my game, allowed Steam to sync the file to the Steam Cloud, then closed Steam.
Arriving at work the next day, I had to reinstall Game Dev Tycoon (I work at an internet cafe/gaming centre, so our computers here use software called DriveShield that basically stops any changes to files and/or installation of programs from being permanent, via this method as quoted from their website)—
A temporary storage space on the hard drive is created and any
changes or modifications are captured there and when the system is
rebooted this space is wiped clean.
So basically this means that if I want my saves to stay, I have to either utilise the Steam Cloud, or I have to back-up my saves manually to our file server.
Upon installing the game and then launching it, I was greeted with this message box:
Steam - Warning
<!> Steam was unable to sync your files for Game Dev Tycoon with the Steam Cloud
If you have launched this application from another computer, your application settings and/or progress may not be in sync with what is stored in the Cloud. If you launch the application now, you may lose those changes or progress.
[ Play Game ] – [ Cancel ]
Having tried to right click -> properties -> updates -> disable cloud sync then restarting steam and re-enabling it, I was met with the same error message as shown above.
Irritated, I simply started a new game and managed to get back to around the same point that I’d reached previously. This time, I manually backed my files up to our file server, as well as allowing the Steam Cloud to upload my files too.
I then arrived at work this morning, and to no surprise, I had the same error with the Steam Cloud not being able to download my save files. So I proceeded to copy my save games from our file server to C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data (I use Windows XP here).
I launched the game, and it had my company name in the middle of the screen, so I clicked to proceed and then I was presented with an error message.
Most of it was actually cut off (the message box wasn’t big enough to show the full message, including the button to close it, which was barely visible by about 3 pixels), so I closed the game, deleted my saves from the PC and started a new game. I did this assuming it needed to be run first before I could copy any saves over. The game ran fine, so I closed it, recopied my files over and over-wrote the files that were there, and relaunched the game.
Strangely, my save files seem to have taken no effect at all, as the game loads the old save (even though I deleted the files?) when I run it. So this is also confusing.
I guess, the TL;DR version would be:
Why isn’t Steam letting me sync my saves for this game, when other games sync perfectly fine?
Why can’t I load my previous saves, that I had backed up elsewhere?
Why does the game, weirdly enough, restore files that were actually deleted? Preventing me from loading my save game?