Using Betas

I was playing 22.5 until Chris reverted it, and got tossed back to 22.4. When that happened I had to re-download the game from Steam, and thankfully my saved game was still playable. However, I now have quite a few hours invested in my current run, and I'm afraid of losing it when the next build comes through. My question is: if I go to the properties tab on Steam and select "opt out of experimental builds" (so I don't get hit by 22.6) I believe Steam will then overwrite 22.4 with the last stable and my saved game will be lost/inaccessible. Is there a failsafe way to protect my current game, or do I just have to hope that the next build is backwards-compatible?

The easiest way is just to copy the current game folder and run from the new folder.

I will just wait till after easter until i continue with my save. The Version got reverted since there was a serious bug in 22.5 and they will hotfix it after easter. After that i will just stay on that build by making steam "Not automatically update this game"

Or maybe disable steam auto-updating ?

Some people have posted to report that even with auto updates turned off their game has still updated.

I don't know if that was user error or not and I haven't tried it myself.

I have plenty of hard drive space I can afford to have duplicates of the game folder so I can continue with an old save if I want while still checking out new features in the newest version.

Turning off auto updates would keep the current version, if it works, but it will not allow you to also check out the latest version.

I prefer to do both.

The easiest way is just to copy the current game folder and run from the new folder.

That's a great idea I never thought of. Thank you.

I should've added in my original post that I did have "do not auto-update" selected on Steam when I was running 22.5, and it reverted to 22.4 anyhow. And it did the same thing when 22.2 went to 22.3. You can't rely on that, thus my request for another answer

Edit: Just did it. Took a couple min for my PC to copy 40,000+ files, but the copied folder is only 2.42G in size, which is nothing on today's computers. I would highly recommend everybody doing this: no more worrying if your saves are going to disappear, woohoo!

It is useful if you are working on your own mod as well.

I have lost count of the number of times I have lost work because I have modded files in my steam folder and there has been an unexpected update.

It is useful if you are working on your own mod as well. I have lost count of the number of times I have lost work because I have modded files in my steam folder and there has been an unexpected update.

I would love to learn how to map and mod. Particularly map. Def think the game needs more from the community aside from the dedicated few that are contributing (Stinky, Skitso, etc) and I'm sure the devs are buried with a billion other things to do. I'm an empty nester now, and am only working 40 hrs a week (as opposed to the 50-60 I put in for years) so I have the time to attempt it; it's just that I don't really have any computer experience to speak of, so I'd be starting almost from scratch, and I don't want to pester other people with a gazillion tedious questions. But I still might give it a shot...

I would suggest starting a thread stating that you are making a new map from scratch with very little knowledge of the system and ask for input to any questions you might need to ask.

If you keep your questions there then only people who want to help will read them.

That way you can't be pestering people with questions, answering those questions is why we are looking at the thread in the first place.