My first article on here! Hi everyone! :)
I am writing this in the hopes that someone who can do something about this, reads it
eg. Valve and all game devs I guess.
I now have over 300 games for Linux. In most ways this makes me very happy. But there is one thing that is getting me very unhappy. Currently games seem to be saving wherever the hell they like, it's making one hell of a mess. Heaven forbid I might want to ever backup all my savegames.
Just trying to navigate my home folder to find something important is becoming extremely annoying.
There needs to be some rules that are followed. Like making all games save in a certain place
like /home/user/.local/share/gamename or /home/user/.config/gamename or better yet /home/user/.savegame/gamename
If they save ANYWHERE else, DON'T let them onto Steam.
Just for fun here is my current installed saved games (at least that I can find).
I will only write the names of really bad examples though.
3 folders In ~/ and NOT HIDDEN! Devs really didn't care here.
3089/, eschalon_b1_saved_games/, PlanetExplorers/
18 hidden folders in ~/.
4 folders in ~/Documents/ - not hidden
(cause we wanna be like Windows, right? Or maybe we like opening our savegames with LibreOffice.)
7 Days To Die/, BladeofDestiny/, NeocoreGames/, Shadowrun Returns/
The Shadowrun Returns folder is completely empty and doesn't need to exist, it saves elsewhere.
12 folders in ~/.config/
Harebrained Schemes/ is another empty useless folder from Shadowrun Returns.
Zigfrag also has a folder in ~/.config/unity3d/
Snapshot also has a folder in ~/.local/share/
60 folders In ~/.config/unity3d/ (Lots of Unity engine games, but not all Unity games save here.)
Here are some standouts.
Bigmoon Studios_ S_A_/, Bigmoon Studios, S.A./ both for Jagged Alliance
Headup Games GmbH _ Co KG/, Headup Games GmbH & Co KG/ both for Shiny the Firefly
N_Fusion Interactive/, N-Fusion Interactive/ both for Leisure suit larry
Pathea/ Pathea Games/ both for Planet explorers + don't forget also has 3rd folder unhidden in ~/
The Fun Pimps also has a folder in ~/Documents
Entheogen for Zigfrak also has a folder in ~/.config/
Harebrained Schemes for Shadowrun Returns has other folders in ~/.config/ and ~/Documents/
Logic Artists for Expeditions-Conquistador has another folder in ~/.local/share/
24 folders In ~/.local/share/
Snapshot/ Snapshot also has another folder in ~/.config/
71 folders In ~/.local/share/Steam/userdata/somenumber/ for cloud saves
So the Top 3 messiest games
--Planet Explorers
1 folder in ~/ wich isn't hidden, holds the actual savegame
2 folders in ~/.config/unity3d/ both with identical config files
-- Shadowrun Returns:
1 empty folder in ~/Documents
1 empty folder in ~/.config/
1 folder in ~/.config/unity3d/ which has prefs
1 folder in /home/bjorn/.local/share/Steam/userdata/3790390/234650 which has the savegame
-- 3089 and Eschalon Book share this spot for not at least being hidden in ~/
I only have 154 of 301 Linux games installed. I can only imagine the mess if I install the rest. I try to keep my HDD nice and tidy, with everything in its place. I don't have my music collection splattered everywhere, it's all in my ~/Music. Pictures are all in ~/Pictures etc.
Please someone with some pull, FIX THIS. Until then I might make a separate user just for games.
Does this annoy anyone else? Voice your opinion, let them know this isn't acceptable. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I am writing this in the hopes that someone who can do something about this, reads it
eg. Valve and all game devs I guess.
I now have over 300 games for Linux. In most ways this makes me very happy. But there is one thing that is getting me very unhappy. Currently games seem to be saving wherever the hell they like, it's making one hell of a mess. Heaven forbid I might want to ever backup all my savegames.
Just trying to navigate my home folder to find something important is becoming extremely annoying.
There needs to be some rules that are followed. Like making all games save in a certain place
like /home/user/.local/share/gamename or /home/user/.config/gamename or better yet /home/user/.savegame/gamename
If they save ANYWHERE else, DON'T let them onto Steam.
Just for fun here is my current installed saved games (at least that I can find).
I will only write the names of really bad examples though.
3 folders In ~/ and NOT HIDDEN! Devs really didn't care here.
3089/, eschalon_b1_saved_games/, PlanetExplorers/
18 hidden folders in ~/.
4 folders in ~/Documents/ - not hidden
(cause we wanna be like Windows, right? Or maybe we like opening our savegames with LibreOffice.)
7 Days To Die/, BladeofDestiny/, NeocoreGames/, Shadowrun Returns/
The Shadowrun Returns folder is completely empty and doesn't need to exist, it saves elsewhere.
12 folders in ~/.config/
Harebrained Schemes/ is another empty useless folder from Shadowrun Returns.
Zigfrag also has a folder in ~/.config/unity3d/
Snapshot also has a folder in ~/.local/share/
60 folders In ~/.config/unity3d/ (Lots of Unity engine games, but not all Unity games save here.)
Here are some standouts.
Bigmoon Studios_ S_A_/, Bigmoon Studios, S.A./ both for Jagged Alliance
Headup Games GmbH _ Co KG/, Headup Games GmbH & Co KG/ both for Shiny the Firefly
N_Fusion Interactive/, N-Fusion Interactive/ both for Leisure suit larry
Pathea/ Pathea Games/ both for Planet explorers + don't forget also has 3rd folder unhidden in ~/
The Fun Pimps also has a folder in ~/Documents
Entheogen for Zigfrak also has a folder in ~/.config/
Harebrained Schemes for Shadowrun Returns has other folders in ~/.config/ and ~/Documents/
Logic Artists for Expeditions-Conquistador has another folder in ~/.local/share/
24 folders In ~/.local/share/
Snapshot/ Snapshot also has another folder in ~/.config/
71 folders In ~/.local/share/Steam/userdata/somenumber/ for cloud saves
So the Top 3 messiest games
--Planet Explorers
1 folder in ~/ wich isn't hidden, holds the actual savegame
2 folders in ~/.config/unity3d/ both with identical config files
-- Shadowrun Returns:
1 empty folder in ~/Documents
1 empty folder in ~/.config/
1 folder in ~/.config/unity3d/ which has prefs
1 folder in /home/bjorn/.local/share/Steam/userdata/3790390/234650 which has the savegame
-- 3089 and Eschalon Book share this spot for not at least being hidden in ~/
I only have 154 of 301 Linux games installed. I can only imagine the mess if I install the rest. I try to keep my HDD nice and tidy, with everything in its place. I don't have my music collection splattered everywhere, it's all in my ~/Music. Pictures are all in ~/Pictures etc.
Please someone with some pull, FIX THIS. Until then I might make a separate user just for games.
Does this annoy anyone else? Voice your opinion, let them know this isn't acceptable. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I've only recently started using that so Cheese wouldn't save in root :O and "Documents" is set to a temp location. So whatever's creating it is ignoring $XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR anyway. Thanks for trying to help though (+ what Stan said) :)
I'd be fine with that as an option but there are some of us who don't trust the cloud and don't want the cloud any where near our files. I don't want the cloud forced on me and am quite capable of backing up my own files.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who had that thought when reading through all the comments.
But I totally agree that there needs to be some form of regulation how to arrange saved games. The current situation is a total mess!
Well, looking at the source, for Linux (and, apparently, FreeBSD), SDL_GetPrefPath("companyname", "gamename" ) points to $XDG_DATA_HOME/companyname/gamename/.
EDIT: Damn smilies...
- Under the .config folder -> OK
- Under the .local/share/ folder -> OK
- Anywhere else -> NOK
On your list there is only 7 games that really do not follow any standard, maybe you should report the problem to them. Also if someone try to create a standard saying that savegames should be in .savegames it will just make the problem worse because we will just have one more folder to search for savegames (3 is already enough).
Not ok to me. I'm looking at my hidden files everyday and this huge list of disorganized stuff in my Home bothers me a lot. My Home is MY home, why do I have no control on where the apps can put their stuff?
Rob Pike did a nice little write up a couple of years back if anybody's keen to learn more.
I don't have a huge amount of games on this system, so I haven't worried too much about folder pollution. As a test, I did try launching one game from a script that exports a new $HOME and that did seem to work (after some copy paste). So, at least for some games, that does seem to be one way to solve the organization problem.
No. Local storage should continue... but all games should sync to the Steam cloud.
But to be fair... We are linux users. It's not hard for us to setup links ("ln -s" command) from the save locations to our dropbox folder. We don't need our hands help like Windows users.
Steam Beta Update: "Changed Steam Cloud file paths to be preserve case instead of converting to lowercase. This will not retroactively affect files already synced to the cloud."
Awesome
But to be fair... We are linux users. It's not hard for us to setup links ("ln -s" command) from the save locations to our dropbox folder. We don't need our hands help like Windows users.[/quote]
Actually that solution is just as possible on Windows when using NTFS. This solution is used e.g. to spread Steam libraries over multiple drives (though by now Steam supports to change the location during installation at least) or to sync directories outside the Dropbox directory to Dropbox.
But it is really sad to see this mess imported over to Linux... On Windows the Documents directory is all but unusable for actual user data due to cluttering by program data. And then there are all those games, where I lost the savegames and had to start over, because they were hidden in awkwardly named places inside AppData or, DOS-style, inside the game directory, and thus were forgotten when reinstalling the OS.
BTW, that floating horizontal bar is awful for smartphone screens, when trying to write comments...
I don't like it since it's not a proper fix, it's a dirty workaround. If developers got an email asking them to follow XDG specs for every post in this thread I think we already would have this almost solved.