It Takes Two to Tangle - A King's Quest Fangame

[Rik_Vargard]

Hey, I had a question about the game files.

This game comes with several ags###.sav (the default name for AGS saves, although the game apparently uses another name since they don't appear in the load menu) files in the main directory if you extract it. I want to delete these files because they take up quite a bit (about 100+ mb).

Now usually for the Ags engine save files are completely useless to make a game function if you're going to start the game from scratch, and also I can easily imagine a way for a dev to forget to delete those files he was playtesting with before release.


Trouble is, since I'm algorithm minded, I can ALSO think of a way a dev can use a bunch of preexisting save files as chapter checkpoints when starting a new chapter, to guarantee that the new chapter starts with a known state.


So my question is, which is it, can I delete those files?

Here's my experience with that before compiling a game:

Developers will of course have save files to test their game.
Just deleting those save files in-game won't work; there will be "invisible" saved games in the GUI.
Before you compile your game, you should remove the saved files from your Windows Saved Games folder.

[Crimson Wizard]

I noticed that this game has "put saves into the game's folder" option enabled in the default config. That is non-standard by today times, and that is how the saves will get into the game directory. This also may explains how these saves ended up in the game archive, if the developer have tested the game on their computer, and forgot to either unset this option, or remove the saves from Compiled folder before distribution.

A player may turn this option off on their computer if they dont like saves to be stored there.
And of course I believe that these saves should be removed from the game's archive.

Here's my experience with that before compiling a game:

Developers will of course have save files to test their game.
Just deleting those save files in-game won't work; there will be "invisible" saved games in the GUI.
Before you compile your game, you should remove the saved files from your Windows Saved Games folder.

Your advice to remove saves from "Windows Saved Games folder" before compiling the game does not make much sense to me, as these files cannot automatically get into your game's distribution, unless you copy them over with intent. I also cannot understand what do you mean by saying "deleting those save files in-game won't work; there will be "invisible" saved games in the GUI." Could you elaborate on this?

[Rik_Vargard]

I also noticed that the game has "save into the game's folder" option enabled by default.

Could you please tell me where to find that? I couldn't find it in the Global Setting under Saved Games nor Compiled...?


I didn't try it with 3.6; I compiled the first part of my game with 3.5.
When I compiled my game and started a new one from scratch, the saves' text would not appear, but when I hovered in the empty list, the spots where the saves were did get highlighted even if clicking on them did nothing.
The only way I managed to avoid that was to remove the saved games from the Windows folder before compiling.
Maybe it's a "same computer" thing but it worked that way.

[Crimson Wizard]

I also noticed that the game has "save into the game's folder" option enabled by default.

Could you please tell me where to find that? I couldn't find it in the Global Setting under Saved Games nor Compiled...?

In the Editor this is in Default Setup, because it belongs to the game configuration.
In WinSetup this is on "Advanced" tab, the option is called "Custom game saves path".

I didn't try it with 3.6; I compiled the first part of my game with 3.5.
When I compiled my game and started a new one from scratch, the saves' text would not appear, but when I hovered in the empty list, the spots where the saves were did get highlighted even if clicking on them did nothing.

That's not a normal behavior. Similar thing may happen when the game is trying to read saves from another game, or saves made by an unsupported version of the engine. Or maybe something was not scripted properly.