Change savegame location (to simulate cloud storing)

Morrandirr

Is there a way to change the savegame location (or the location of the complete MyDocuments BG:EE folder)?

I'd like to change it to a location that is automatically synchronized (like DropBox or GoogleDrive) to simulate cloud storage of savegames. I'm playing on diferrent machines, so this would save me the copy and paste stuff. :-)

If not, is there another way to do such a thing?

joshykins

As for Dropbox, I think the best way to save your game would be to copy the file to your Dropbox folder, and if you plan on playing on an Android device, this would be the easiest way to transfer save games across platforms. Although, constantly transferring files manually would be tedious no doubt.

Wouldn't it be great if you could set up multiple Dropbox folders? This would let you select your BG:EE save game folder to act as another Dropbox folder so that it would automatically upload any modified files. Maybe you can do this? I'm not sure as I don't have a lot of Dropbox experience.

Morrandirr

That's neither possible with GoogleDrive, nor with DropBox. You can only move your synchronized folder to another location, but you can't force an existing folder to be the synchronized folder.
So it is possible to move e.g. your dropbox folder to "C:\Users\username\Documents\Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition\Dropbox", but only the "Drobbox" subdirectory will be synchronized.

Perhaps there's another cloud service I don't know of, that can do this?

Lazaar

I would also like to change my save game locations if possible. I'll be playing either on my main workstation or my laptop. I have a batch file now that I use to copy the save games from one to the other, but it's a bit of a hassle. Being able to set both machines to save to \\SERVER\Share would be a lot more convenient

Gumba

You can use a symbolic link to have Dropbox (or any other cloud storage solution that works similarly) sync your save game folder. Basically, instead of changing where BG:EE stores save games, you make that location a link to where the files really are, completely transparent to BG:EE.

See http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/15_things_you_have_know_about_dropbox

muaddib7

why are the savegames not in the baldursgate-folder like in the old baldurs-gate ?

this would be much more portable. I could even play the old baldurs-gate from an external usb-drive an carry it around while travelling.

Please developers always think of the best solution for the players...

cOg

Guys, you have to try Sugar Sync! It does exactly this, you can define as many sync folders as you want. I don't know why the other cloud solutions don't offer this, it's ridiculous to expect users to move all their disparate files from everywhere in their system into *one* folder. Probably, the paid versions allow you to do this.

Anyway, I cloud sync all the games I play on my notebook, it's very nice

alnair

@cOg, as far as I know you still have to use The One Sync Folder even with the paid versions of Dropbox and Google Drive.

I tried SugarSync a while back, but it gave me more problems than advantages
(It's actually the only sync service that managed to lose some of my files!)

All in all, Dropbox is still the best one for me, and if I need to synchronise something out of its main folder I just symlink it (one way or the other, usually the hard copy inside and the link outside) like @Gumba suggested.

AluminumHaste

Yeah having the save game in the game folder would have saved me losing 6 hours of lost game time. Was on a computer last night that is no longer here, and now my USB key installation of Baldur's Gate EE is asking me to create a new game.
Why in the hell was that changed? It never used to be like that, now I have to start over and to tell you the truth, I'm not sure I want to bother going through all that again.
One of these days I'll forget to copy my savegame folder and will lose all my progress again.
A game like this which has very low requirements is just dying to be installed on removable media, and played anywhere.

ChainsawXIV

muaddib7 said:

why are the savegames not in the baldursgate-folder like in the old baldurs-gate ?

Security, basically. In any version of windows after XP, the authority an application has to modify the contents of the Program Files folders is significantly limited, in order to prevent rogue applications from screwing with the other stuff you have installed without your knowledge. Saving things to those locations, you'd get a system warning dialog every time it went to write the file.

Documents written by your applications - whether they are word files or saved games or whatever else - are expected to reside somewhere in the user's folder on the machine, where access permissions are more relaxed. This also enables machines set up for multiple users to handle things correctly, with each user having their own files in their own folder, but the application installed only once.

In any version of windows released in the past seven or eight years, this separation of space is enforced by the system itself. Even in XP (and perhaps some other elderly Windows versions, I really can't remember), it was recommended, and required for some certifications, but not something that was actually locked down as it is now.

On the actual topic at hand here though...

Found this thread on a google search, trying to set up the same thing. The suggestion of a symbolic link (symlink) is an ideal solution. If you don't want to create it at the command line, I'll recommend this tool which adds related options to your context menus in Windows. For those unfamiliar with them, symlinks are like super-shortcuts that allow a file (or in this case, a whole folder) to be in more than one place at a time. To programs, they look exactly like the real deal, but under the hood they point over somewhere else.

Emptiness

@AluminumHaste: Write a batch file that copies the saved games from a folder on the removable storage device to the computer's My Documents location and then launches the game, and then when the game is exited copies the saved games from the computer's My Documents location back to the removable storage device. Then you won't have to do any manual copying of files and there won't be a danger of forgetting to back up the saves after to finish playing.

-------------

As for the original question of trying to set up a situation where the My Documents folder is archived by a cloud storage service, you can do this:

1) Set up your cloud storage service, so that the contents of some specific folder will automatically be synchronized with the cloud. (Make sure that your cloud storage service never overwrites newer files with older ones.)
2) Relocate your My Documents folder to be inside that archive location. (Instructions for relocating My Documents in Windows 7 can be found here; a web search should find instructions for other OSes.)
3) Repeat step 2 for each other computer that will access the cloud storage, pointing them all to the same My Documents folder.

That should put you in a situation where all of your My Documents files are automatically shared amongst your various computers. This solution should be simpler and less risky than using a 3rd-party utility.

Edit: Actually, Gumba's link above (15 Hacks Every Dropbox User Should Know) already covers relocating My Documents into a Dropbox folder. See the last page of that article for details.