Older Telltale episodic games saves not detected

[AhmedB237]

Ludusavi version

v0.31.0

Operating system

Windows

Installation method

Standalone

Description

This is a duplicate of #630 since it was closed by mistake.

Some older Telltale games have their saves separated into folders for each episode. The way they are referenced in PCGamingWiki is using <episode number> or <episode name> in the path. Editing the Wiki to add individual paths is not an option because (I believe) the maximum number of paths is 3 while there are 5 episodes per game. I guess replacing <episode number> with a wildcard asterisk in the Wiki will work but might also make it hard for a person to decipher.

Logs

A couple of examples:

Back to the Future: The Game

Sam & Max Save the World

This is a similar example, not a Telltale game. Since the path here depends on the version number, any update to the game will change the path, making it more unpredictable than the previous examples.

BeamNG.drive

[mtkennerly]

Hi! Thanks for reporting this.

For Back to the Future and Sam & Max, those would need to be fixed on the wiki, because if I parse <episode number> as a wildcard *, then the path would collide with other Telltale games. Do you have an example of the actual <episode number> or <episode name> folder names?

For BeamNG.drive, that path is sufficiently specific to just that game, so I can treat <game.version> as a wildcard. I've made that change in the manifest just now: mtkennerly/ludusavi-manifest@2ce8ac4

[AhmedB237]

Thank you for taking the time to implement this.

An example of Back to the Future save is Documents\Telltale Games\Episode 1\*.save. I checked all Telltale games on PCGamingWiki and as far as I can tell, Back to the Future is the only Telltale game that only has the episode number without its name in the folder under Documents\Telltale Games, so I don't think it will collide with anything.

As for Sam & Max, these are a couple of examples: Steam\SteamApps\common\Sam and Max Episode 1\*.save for a game in season 1, and Steam\SteamApps\common\Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 1\*.save for a game in season 2. I mentioned before that the wiki limits the number of paths to 3 (actually 4 as per the wiki guide), but I found other Telltale games with 5 paths instead of <episode number> (example, I guess this is just a readability limit, not something code related?). Maybe we can do the same here, but this game has six episodes and there are already so many different versions on the wiki. Multiply that by 6 paths each and it becomes unwieldy.

[AhmedB237]

Another issue here, how does ludusavi handle multiple base paths? With Sam & Max Save the World (season 1), there are 6 episodes, meaning 6 separate games under this one wiki entry, each with its own Steam ID and folder. Similar case with several Telltale games.

[mtkennerly]

I just updated the Back to the Future article to use glob * instead of <episode number>, so that should start working in the next manifest update.

For Sam & Max, Steam\SteamApps\common\Sam and Max Episode 1\*.save is pretty different from the wiki's <path-to-game>\ep10<episode number>\*.save format, so I wonder where that came from. We might have to write the paths like this:

{{p|steam}}\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Episode *\*.save}}
{{p|steam}}\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Season * Episode *\*.save}}

That could technically be combined into {{p|steam}}\steamapps\common\Sam and Max*Episode *\*.save}}, although that's not as intuitive.

I mentioned before that the wiki limits the number of paths to 3 (actually 4 as per the wiki guide), but I found other Telltale games with 5 paths instead of (example, I guess this is just a readability limit, not something code related?).

I believe it will only display up to 5 paths per platform (5 Windows, 5 Steam, etc). You can write more, but they won't show up on the page, so that's not ideal. Right now, there are 2 paths in the Windows section, so I think we just need 4 (replacing <episode name> with Episode * + Season * Episode *).

I didn't update the wiki in this case since I can't vouch for all of the variations myself 😅

Another issue here, how does ludusavi handle multiple base paths? With Sam & Max Save the World (season 1), there are 6 episodes, meaning 6 separate games under this one wiki entry, each with its own Steam ID and folder. Similar case with several Telltale games.

The manifest can track multiple install folder names (installDir) and multiple Steam IDs (steamExtra), and Ludusavi will check each one of them, so that should be fine. Install folder names mainly come from Steam metadata, which doesn't seem to have anything for Sam & Max, though :( We'll probably need to add them manually in https://github.com/mtkennerly/ludusavi-manifest/blob/master/data/manifest-override.yaml to augment the manifest entry with the correct data.

How many seasons are there, and how many episodes in each season?

[AhmedB237]

If I understand correctly, we don't need any type of Sam and Max*Episode * if the base folder is configured correctly, the save files are thrown directly in the base folders. I went ahead and added them to the wiki, they look like this: <path-to-game>\*.save. There are 3 seasons for this game, first has 6 episodes and the other two have 5 each. Each season has its own wiki page. Let me know if this works or if we should use {{p|steam}} instead.

I didn't understand entirely how Ludusavi detects the base path, but maybe it has something to do with season page vs. episodes pages on Steam? The main Steam IDs for all three seasons link to Steam store pages that have been removed, apparently they were Season pages. The extra IDs are for the individual episodes, which are still up on Steam but are not on sale anymore.

These are the base folders for Sam & Max Save the World (season 1):

Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Episode 1
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Episode 2
Steam\steamapps\common\sam and max episode 3
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Episode 4
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Episode 5
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Episode 6

And these are the base folders for Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space (season 2):

Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 1
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 2
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 3
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 4
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 5

Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse (season 3) is already detected successfully as its save files are in Documents are linked correctly in the wiki, but its folders look like this:

Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max 301
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max 302
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max 303
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max 304
Steam\steamapps\common\Sam and Max 305

[mtkennerly]

Thanks! I think you're right. I've updated the manifest: mtkennerly/ludusavi-manifest@9b8e25c . Please give it a try and let me know if it's detected now.

[AhmedB237]

Thank you. I tried it now, Season 3 works fine as I mentioned before, but only Episode 1 of both season 1 and 2 were detected.

[mtkennerly]

Ah, I see what's happening. If Ludusavi finds a confirmed install folder within a root, then it assumes that's the game's only install folder within that specific root (which is generally true, to be fair). I think I'll just need to update that logic to support multiple exact folder matches.