Changing saved games directory

MagikGimp

Hi. I've managed to mess up the OneDrive folder my saves are in (you really don't get a choice that files are backed up to OneDrive with Windows 10) such that the game will crash on attempting to show the Load Game menu. How can I therefore change the directory games are saved to so I can move them out of there and the game still be able to find them (and not crash)?

I won't go into why I'm having problems. I've wasted the best part of a day now attempting to fix the problem and I don't believe it even is fixable. Everything now seems as it was before the problem and yet I'm still getting crashes. I've read elsewhere that this is OneDrive problem and not due to the game. Sometimes I can load my last save but never the Load Game menu. The problem came about as a result of deleting some saves because with over 500 saves now, the Load Game menu took around 2 minutes to appear from the title screen. When you delete saves in Explorer (I am not clicking that delete button in game 500 times!) Steam will write them back in (assuming cloud saving is on) by extracting .CLOUD files (also saved to OneDrive) to the save directory thus causing the problem. This even seems to happen if cloud saving is turned off so I really don't care to understand what's going on any more. Every time I run the game, OneDrive is writing 3000+ files back as .CLOUD files and...
Look, there's more to this as I say, but I'm not going into any more detail now and I am not looking for advice regarding this. Just DO NOT DO WHAT I DID!

tl;dr- If anyone does know how to change the settings somewhere I'd be very grateful for help because my quest is at a halt right now and that's no good!

Many thanks.

Gusinda

@MagikGimp, although it wont change from the Documents folder, if you open 'engine.lua' in the root of the games folder, you can specify where in the documents folder you want the saved games. The default is:
engine_name="Planescape Torment - Enhanced Edition"

As an example, if you want to save the game in a folder called 'PSTEE', then the line would look like:
engine_name="PSTEE"

Make sure the game is not running when you edit. When you start the game, the folder will be created. Upon saving, the game will create another folder called 'save' and place all the saved games in it.

I know you said that you didn't want any advice but, for you OneDrive problem (unless you actually use it for something), you can log out of OneDrive which will then stop it synching. If you do use it for something, you can select which specific folders you want to synch.

Quest on
Gus

MagikGimp

Thank you for your reply. I had read about that solution here and it was a more welcoming approach than this one so I attempted it.

The new folder is created when saving from the start of a new game but the problem is still happening. For some reason, even though Steam Cloud is unchecked in Properties the game starts writing back the cloudsave folder with all the old saves filenames, even though those saves aren't in the new folder directed to in engine.lua. This STILL occurs if I then delete the remotecache files in Steam's userdata folder. Presumably Steam is downloading everything again even though the option is turned off.

I'm now starting to think this isn't entirely a OneDrive problem. Although, saying that there could be some corruption somewhere in the files that occurred back when I first removed a bunch (see first post). Once the cloudsave folder has been written it then starts to rebuild all my saves from those cloud saves (they're essentially compressed archives) but then the game crashes. It always writes the same saves and doesn't start from 12. It goes straight to 67 and then 142 and then 346 or something.

This all has me stumped.

1. Why is Steam writing back my saves and downloading the remotecache files even though the option is turned off?
2. Why is the game rebuilding my saves from the cloudsaves but not in order?
3. What's then causing the game to crash?
4. Is it impossible therefore to delete old saves at all? Baring in mind Steam's behaviour and that unchecking the folder for syncing in OneDrive options deletes the folder from your computer!

Ughhh...

Gusinda

@MagikGimp, is the synching happening on the Steam cloud or the OneDrive cloud. If it is the OneDrive, the you would need to make the changes in the OneDrive app on the desktop. In that app, there is a component that willl allow you to select the specific folders you want to synch (or you can shut it down completely if you don't use it).

If it is the Steam cloud, I don't have the game in Steam but it sounds like you have shut that down.

There may be another possibility. Not sure where it saves as I have never used it, but if you have a look in baldur.lua, there could be a line which reads:

SetPrivateProfileString('Program Options','Cloud Saves Enabled','0')

If this is set to 1, then change it back to 0 and see what happens... If it isn't in baldur.lua, then add it (while the game is closed) and give it a go.

Hope that helps
Gus