For non steam games how do you sync saves between Steam Deck and Desktop?

3 years ago by NightOwl to c/steamdeck

rotopenguin 12 points 3 years ago

I have Syncthing installed via pacman (since flatpaks cannot keep a daemon running). For every game that I care about, I find its save file, move it to a sync dir, and symlink it back to where it is expected. My savegame sync folder has folders for the many varied places that games like to hide their saves - "gamedir", local, locallow, "my documents", dot_config, etc. The most fun part is finding out where the appropriate proton prefix is.

If I was starting over again, there's a decky loader plugin that looks promising.

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fazo96 2 points 3 years ago

I have the same setup, but I am using the flatpak version of syncthing. It can run a daemon just fine, however I am running a user systems service. Works great and starts automatically in both desktop and game modes

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klay 1 point 3 years ago

Same here, except I didn't even need pacman; you can download a standalone executable of syncthing and run it as a user service.

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insomnium138 1 point 3 years ago

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insomnium138 1 point 3 years ago

Also using Syncthing. It was pretty simple to setup. I’ve been using it for syncing emulator saves mostly but also started using it for steam games that don’t have cloud support.

I’ve had zero issues and the syncing can be set to a low amount of seconds so it’s basically in real time. No need for the app to close and then sync. If I save while playing TOTK, I can see it on PC immediately.

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Dups 1 point 3 years ago

I use syncthing too.

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Helvedeshunden 9 points 3 years ago

Syncthing and/or Warpinator.

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walderan 9 points 3 years ago

If you have cloud storage available, either by a company or self-hosted, you can look into Ludusavi and OpenCloudSaves, both open source and using the same savegame path database.

Ludusavi is more mature with more features.

OpenCloudSaves aims to target better usability with the Deck specifically.

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tom 3 points 3 years ago

+1 to Ludusavi. It auto detects savegame paths based on pcgamingwiki. Great design!

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minutnudler 7 points 3 years ago

I haven't done this for game saves but you could probably use syncthing for this.

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SurfingPikachu 5 points 3 years ago

I use syncthing for automatic transfer of emulation saves. It's pretty fantastic

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Dups 1 point 3 years ago

I use syncthing

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Fubarberry 6 points 3 years ago

There's a decky extension that will automatically backup game saves to various cloud storage types.

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NightOwl 3 points 3 years ago

Oh I love decky. I'd love something automated that doesn't need me to go into desktop mode so I'll look for that.

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klay 2 points 3 years ago

to clarify, once you set up Syncthing, it runs in the background even in gaming mode! You do need desktop mode to add new games to syncthing, but I think there's not really a good way around that since every non-steam game has its own save file location. Plus you need desktop mode to install non-steam games anyway.

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NightOwl 2 points 3 years ago

That is really good to know! I'll go with Sync thing, since I did want as much of a forget and use type situation for games I did have set up.

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klay 2 points 3 years ago

The one downside to syncthing is that it needs two machines running at the same time to sync them, my workaround for that is to have a raspberry pi running it at home all the time :p

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azvasKvklenko 5 points 3 years ago

For Epic and GOG games I use Heroic Launcher and for games that support it, it does the trick. The feature isn't fully stable yet and I remember specifying a path to saves manually, but once I did so, it synchronizes fine

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Bjoern_Tantau 4 points 3 years ago

Depends. Many games from Epic have that built in. For everything else I use Nextcloud. I think most people use Syncthing.

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Kissaki 3 points 3 years ago

I moved a Jubilee save from my Windows desktop to the Steam Deck once.

Never again. It's a hassle. I ended up only playing it on the Steam Deck henceforth.

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mustbe3to20signs 3 points 3 years ago

By exclusively playing on Steam Deck there is no need to sync anything ;)

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klay 2 points 3 years ago

Related question: does anyone here know if it's possible to sync windows registry data across machines? Say, between a wineprefix and a real windows machine? Apparently F.I.S.H. by Fireapples (Timotainment) uses the windows registry to save your game, and I can't find a good way to sync that.

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Anarch157a 2 points 3 years ago

I wrote my own script to sync games on my own Nextcloud instance, it's here: https://gitlab.com/Nerdeiro/game-cloud-sync

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mrfriki 1 point 3 years ago

I send the save file over email, both from windows and Steam desktop mode. Not doing this too often so doesn’t bother me too much.

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quarterlife 1 point 3 years ago

Resilio Sync and Symlinks

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steamdeck

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A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.

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steamdeck

@sopuli.xyz

login for more options

A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.

As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title

The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Controller] - Steam Controller related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.

If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.

These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.

Rules:

Follow the rules of Sopuli
Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
No piracy, there are other communities for that.
Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
Have fun.

Link to our Matrix Space

go to feed...