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[Mr Crabman]

For the Steam release, each save should have an associated image displayed beside it in the list of saves, to make for more distinctive identification of worlds/saves.

Fort Mode

A world/save with an active fort should use a screenshot of the fort (will not include any UI stuff), and this screenshot will be taken/updated every time the game is saved (including autosaves or save/exit).

It will take the image directly from whatever Z-level you were on when you saved (so it won't always be the surface), though it might be a good idea if it took 2 screenshots; one of the surface, one of wherever you were when saving, and these could be swapped between in the save menu on a per-world basis (or maybe it would be better to just have a toggle that switches the save image for all worlds at once?).

Alternatively, maybe the player could set a per-world "snapshot Z-level" to use, so they can identify the fort by what they see as the most distinctive layer (if that layer doesn't change much though, this has the disadvantage of not making backups/autosaves distinct from each other).

Adventure Mode

This is the easiest and most straightforward one, take a screenshot of whatever is on the screen visible to the adventurer (basically what you see in adventure mode, but unobscured by the UI), and use that. By default (without clicking on the save to zoom in to see the whole image at least), the image should be cropped/zoomed in enough to make the adventurer themselves easily seen on the save menu.

World

A newly generated world with no active fort or adventurer in it yet should use a screenshot/image of the world map. It should be possible in some way to select/zoom in on the image to see it at full resolution (even if this is just a matter of selecting the save and seeing the bigger image when clicking).

If worldgen has continued, such as by playing in a fort for several years, the world save image should be updated in case the world map itself has changed visibly (like maybe new sites were founded; those should be shown on the map!).

Even while playing as an adventurer/fort, it should be possible to swap between the world map screenshot and the adventurer/fort screenshot (after all, the save is first and foremost a world, forts and adventurers are temporary!).

Past Forts/Adventurers

It should be possible to cycle the image from the world, through all fortresses/adventurers who are available to be reclaimed/unretired (the most recent save/image for each fort or adventurer will be retained until they are dead or un-reclaimable). At least, this would be possible when no forts/adventurers are active (maybe it should only be possible between the world and the current thing when one is active).

[Eric Blank]

This is a great suggestion actually, especially for folks that rely on visuals to remind them what's going on in a save.

That last bit, though, might become a bit vexing in games like The Museum, where you have hundreds of turns of adventurers and forts. It's always been a special case though, including bugs we run into from running so many forts/adventurers over centuries of game time, so maybe not the highest priority as most worlds only last one adventure or fort I'm sure.

The size of the image files getting stacked that way might become a save bloat issue though, so players being able to safely go into the save file and delete images without causing additional problems might be a good idea. Maybe if they're stored in a folder in the save and include the info the game needs to know what that image refers to in the file name or a text document sharing the same name. That way if they get too bloaty I can go in and delete the image and text file or replace the image with a smaller placeholder with the same name.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Why not only keep one image per save.  If an older save is overwritten, then just replace the image.

[Mr Crabman]

This is a great suggestion actually, especially for folks that rely on visuals to remind them what's going on in a save.

That last bit, though, might become a bit vexing in games like The Museum, where you have hundreds of turns of adventurers and forts. It's always been a special case though, including bugs we run into from running so many forts/adventurers over centuries of game time, so maybe not the highest priority as most worlds only last one adventure or fort I'm sure.

The size of the image files getting stacked that way might become a save bloat issue though, so players being able to safely go into the save file and delete images without causing additional problems might be a good idea. Maybe if they're stored in a folder in the save and include the info the game needs to know what that image refers to in the file name or a text document sharing the same name. That way if they get too bloaty I can go in and delete the image and text file or replace the image with a smaller placeholder with the same name.

Hundreds of adventurers? Keep in mind it's not keeping the adventurers/forts that are unavailable to be reclaimed/unretired; adventurers who die in the process of playing other adventurers or forts would have their images deleted.

And yeah, sure, deleting/replacing the images would be possible even if it wasn't specifically coded or anything, that's just a consequence of the fact that the game can't exactly know "hey you changed the image" and change it back (even if you delete it, unless there were cloud saves, it has no way of recreating the original image).

Why not only keep one image per save.  If an older save is overwritten, then just replace the image.

I'm not sure what you mean? There would be only one image for the world/map, and one per fort/adventurer that is available in that world, and the reason to keep the world/forts/adventurers image separately is so that:

1. You can always toggle to see the world map; saves are first and foremost entire living worlds, so that information shouldn't be thrown away even temporarily while playing in a fort; if someone wants to identify their save file in the list by the image of the world that save represents (instead of by the image of where their adventurer currently is), they should be able to.

2. While a game is active (fort/adventure), it's good to be able to allow identifying the save by the adventurer/fort, instead of forcing saves to be identified by the world map at all times (it also makes it easier to recall what you were last doing, and to know where you will be when you start the save again).

3. When there is no game active, but there has been in the past, keeping the most recent image from every fort/adventurer would allow a way to, when deciding whether you might like to reclaim a fort again, see what it looked like (after all, you might have many and have forgotten what they look like!). The same applies to adventurers, but in addition to what they look like, you'd also see what they were doing last, though since the adventurer actually moves and doesn't stay in the same place you retired them, the image wouldn't exactly represent where you will be when you start again (which is less than ideal admittedly).