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[GameHat]

I like the idea of a fortress autosaving every season.  In fact, I prefer it to the random save/exit of the default.

However - as of the latest version (27_176_38c) it doesn't seem to be working.

My problem - the directory structure seems to get messed up no matter what I do.

Two days ago I re-downloaded the latest DF version (27_176_38c) to try to fix the problem.

I set autosave to "Seasonal"; autobackup to "yes".

Even with this clean intstall the directory structure fails after a few seasons:

Here is the resulting directory structure:

/current
/region1
/region1-aut-1051
/region1-spr-1051
/region1-sum-1051
/region1-win-1051

...so far, so good.  BUT!

/region1-spr-1052
/region1-sum-1052-win-1052
/region1-sum-1052-aut-1052

You can see the save directory getting cluttered.

And God help you if you try a manual save.

I abandoned my last fortress because the save folder got so convoluted that I couldn't tell which was my latest save.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Derakon]

It should be pretty straightforward - anything with a dash in it is a "backup" save, and the bit before the dash indicates what world you're playing in. You might find it easier if you gave the regions more descriptive names. Also, since you don't usually need one backup save after a more recent one has been generated, it should be safe to just wipe the backups on a regular basis (and in fact, an option to  keep only the last N backups for a region would be nice).

[GameHat]

It's not a backup save if I have continued the same fortress through several seasons;

As described, the backup saves should keep a record of a fortress every season.  As such, they are not doing so as the folders get jumbled.

I don't want to delete the older saves; I want a record of a fortress kept every season.

[Another]

Then when the game asks you what game you want to load - simply choose region1 and not your last seasonal save (region1-sum1052). If you want to continue from a backup that is older then the last one - delete/rename/archive/... your region1 folder and rename your autosave folder (i.e. region1-sum1052 -> region1). This will tell the game that the name of your game is not "region1-sum1052" but "region1" .

Though it would probably be a good idea for Toady to not store the name of the game as the folder name but rather - inside the folder.

P.S. I anticipated exactly the same behaviour with autosaves as it is now from the start as it is the easiest to implement and gets the job done in most cases. It hasn't any side issues if you use back-ups as back-ups and/or have enough patience to manually mess with folder names before loading a game. I understand it that DF is really meant to be played without multiple saves and we have the backup mechanism because it is an alfa and a number of bugs and "not yet implemented" features could  sometimes make it extremely frustrating without backups.

[Derakon]

Backup saves shouldn't be stored inside the region1 folder; that would bloat that folder tremendously and make it nearly impossible for a naive user to share their savefile with anyone.

Storing them in a different directory entirely, though, would be reasonable.

[falsedan]

I think Another means that the name of the game should be stored as a value within the folder, not as the name of the folder

like

region1/game_name => "falsedan's crappy death fort"
region1-sum-1051/game_name => "falsedan's crappy death fort"

not

backup saves should be stored inside the main save's folder

[Sean Mirrsen]

The "name of the folder" was specifically added, I think, to address the problem of differentiating between several consequtively saved games. Having run into the "problem", I also think the backups should be saved in a different folder. However, the game must be able to read from that folder, and allow the load screen to switch between them with the left/right keys.