What is the best way to save your game?

xitneverendss

So I know you’re supposed to use Save As to maintain a healthy save and save over multiple files but...what’s the best way to go about this? Do you save as and keep creating a bunch of new saves? Or do you rotate between a few different saves? I hope this question makes sense? Lol

Nikkei_Simmer

I generally tend to do at least 6-10 saves and rotate between them sequentially using NRAAS Saver to remind me to save. And I religiously use "Save As" to create those new saves.

Waterdragon

I usually have 4 saves (something like "Hidden Springs 1 - 4") and rotate between them in a play session, normally saving every night after overwatch did its thing. If something special is happening I do an additional save. I back up my saves on an external hard drive.
Normally I don´t have much more than the saves I´m using at the moment in the actual Sims 3 "saves" folder, the others are moved to another backup folder.

bekkasan

I use save as and have several 'master saves' that are saved on desktop in a separate file and that are copied to a external drive for safe keeping. The master saves are usually after a significant event like a birth, move or marriage, or renovating the house for the 5th time.

I label my saves with date MH (stands for the world) 11318 (date) rafeprop1(which stands for Rafeproposes1,if I save in the middle of his proposal because I have to leave or something it will change to 2 at the end. I can get kinda stupid about saving as I lost a bunch of stuff when I first started by not doing save as and having errors and many bad saves.

My masters would be labelled MH11318rafeprop3MAS. All saves go to a desktop folder. I try to keep the folder in the game with only 1or 2 of any of my games. The desktop folder gets culled weekly when I remember, and the masters are copied to the external and am hoping to set up a cloud. Need to do that this weekend!

nickibitsward

I use "save as" and always play the newest one. I only have one game going at a time. I keep two saves of the same game in the main menu and delete everything else.

king_of_simcity7

I use save as and back up previous saves into their own folder

cwaddell

I almost never use "save as". Instead at the beginning of a session I will make a copy of the game I intend to play renaming it. So if I intended to play a game named HS Rose2 the new copy I would be playing would be HS Rose3. Everything through my last play session would be saved in HS Rose2. Then throughout the current HS Rose3 session I would just save.

I don't cycle through old names but I do delete them eventually. I also periodically clean out the Saves folder of all lone ".backup" folders.

TreyNutz

I generally keep 4 saves going, overwriting the oldest when I Save As. I tend to use the name of the world or last name of the family and append numbers, 1-4. I save about every 30 min. NRaas Saver reminds me to save and does the numbering automatically. Sometimes I'll make intermediate saves, particularly when I'm aging up sims. Those I designate with a letter and I'll delete those from the Saves folder eventually.

When my sims travel I make another save adding an abbreviation of where my sims are going (FR, CH, EG, ITF, Uni, etc.). I do that just before my sims travel just in case something goes wrong during the trip. I don't delete that save until my sims are safely back home. Then, while they are traveling I'll use the numbering system above with the new name to keep 4 new saves in the travel world.

For example, my current save is named after the family, the Goodwins. My saves are Goodwin-1, Goodwin-2, etc. If I'm on Goodwin-2 and my sims go to uni then I name the save just before they leave: Goodwin-2-Uni. When my sim arrive at university I start again, Goodwin-2-Uni-1, Goodwin-2-Uni-2, etc. Right before my sims travel home I make a last save, Goodwin-2-Uni-hm. When they safely arrive home I continue with the original scheme, Goodwin-3 would be the next save in this example. Eventually I'll go into the Saves folder and delete all the uni saves.

My system is kind of complicated but I generally keep at least 4 saves. When my sims travel I keep one save in homeworld before traveling until my sims return just in case something goes very wrong during the trip and I need to go back to a pre-travel save. And I always make a save just before returning home in case the traveling glitches and I need to repeat it.

JoAnne65

This is my Saves folder.



I always 'save as', name the save after my sim and number files. Sometimes I add a word (like 'jodie', indicating Jodie had been born, or china when my sim's in China). I save as every sim night. When I save during the day (because of an important event I don't want to lose or because I had to stop playing in the middle of the sim day) I add a, b, c. As you can see I'm a bit sloppy where is comes to emptying the folder But I keep backups of all of them, untill the generation is played. Then I delete almost all of them, except for like five or so. I like to be able to go back into a save/family from the past if I want to. I hardly ever overwrite.

xitneverendss

Wow, thanks for the responses everyone! I typically do the same as most of you, rotating between about 4 saves. I just wasn’t sure if I should be deleting old saves in the process or whatnot. Seems like everyone has their own way of doing it and there’s really no “wrong way” (besides using save and quit of course lol).

@JoAnne65 that many saves would make my head explode! Haha

JoAnne65

xitneverendss wrote: »

Wow, thanks for the responses everyone! I typically do the same as most of you, rotating between about 4 saves. I just wasn’t sure if I should be deleting old saves in the process or whatnot. Seems like everyone has their own way of doing it and there’s really no “wrong way” (besides using save and quit of course lol).

@JoAnne65 that many saves would make my head explode! Haha

The reason I forget to move them is because I don’t see them haha.

bklienhart

I do it more or less like @TreyNutz, except I don't keep as many old backups. I don't reuse the numbers either, just keep going up. I'm up to Sunlit Tides 14 now. But I just scored Aurora Skies on MMAO and am considering moving my family there. They started in Midnight Hollow, moved to Roaring Heights, and are now in ST.

TreyNutz

xitneverendss wrote: »

I just wasn’t sure if I should be deleting old saves in the process or whatnot. Seems like everyone has their own way of doing it and there’s really no “wrong way” (besides using save and quit of course lol).

The save game chooser screen has a limit on how many saves it can display. Too many saves in your Saves folder (50+) can cause issues. That's probably the only limitation to be aware of. For that reason I try to keep the number of saves in my Saves folder fairly small (less than 20). I'll move saves I want to keep to another drive in case I want to play that save again someday.

JoAnne65

TreyNutz wrote: »

xitneverendss wrote: »

I just wasn’t sure if I should be deleting old saves in the process or whatnot. Seems like everyone has their own way of doing it and there’s really no “wrong way” (besides using save and quit of course lol).

The save game chooser screen has a limit on how many saves it can display. Too many saves in your Saves folder (50+) can cause issues. That's probably the only limitation to be aware of. For that reason I try to keep the number of saves in my Saves folder fairly small (less than 20). I'll move saves I want to keep to another drive in case I want to play that save again someday.

True, and it won’t surprise you, looking at my folder ahem, that has happened to me in the past But with what I have in there now (about 80 as you can see) they still all show (does anyone know what’s the maximum?).

Waterdragon

My saves chooser screen gets finicky at about 30 saves in the folder (the saves are there, but it doesn´t show all of them, which ones are shown seems to be completly random). No clue, why.

TreyNutz

JoAnne65 wrote: »

But with what I have in there now (about 80 as you can see) they still all show (does anyone know what’s the maximum?).

I don't know if there's a maximum. One person who posted with this problem said she had over 50 saves. @Waterdragon above says 30. And you report no issues with 80. It may just depend on your system.

JoAnne65

TreyNutz wrote: »

JoAnne65 wrote: »

But with what I have in there now (about 80 as you can see) they still all show (does anyone know what’s the maximum?).

I don't know if there's a maximum. One person who posted with this problem said she had over 50 saves. @Waterdragon above says 30. And you report no issues with 80. It may just depend on your system.

I figured it was a good idea to do some cleaning up though Just did.

Mikezumi

I just checked my saves folder and I currently have 124 saves. I think it's time to move some as I know I am getting to the limit. From looking at the number of saves from my current game I know that I probably won't see the most recent when I next start the game.

TadOlson

I've had over 80 save files in my saves folder a few times and they all showed up in the game menu to select.I just lcean them out if I just used it to save the game and have a folder to keep unused save files in.I also save as to new file names each time though I used to overwrite in the past and have stopped that practice a while back.