Annoyed with PC gaming.

What annoys me about PC gaming, is that you can't backup your savefile.

If anyone knows how to save PC game savefiles, like Doom 3, FarCry and Castle Wolfenstien to a floppy disk, or CD. Could you please let me know, I'm fed up after formatting my harddrive to have to restart the same game all over again. What I like about consoles if the memory card. Can't we have a memory card for PC, like a USB 2.0 Memory Stick?

I's easy man, I have backups of all the games I've played, simply go into the game folder and look for a folder called save or similar. For example in the Doom3 folder is one called base and in this folder is one called savegames. Simply backup the savegames folder, then after formatting, reinstall Doom3 and patch to the same level then copy the save games folder in, easy. Sometimes the folder is called profiles.

Everytime I format my PC the same thought pops into my mind "This time I'm going to keep my desktop clean, and organise all my files into their correct folders." Unfortunitly it never seems to last for long. And ends up being more like "Where the fcuk is that file?!?!"

Just make your own folders and stick to the system. Tidy desktop = tidy mind!

Oh, what is the file extention for a PC save file?

wha! Jono, it could be anything depending on what the game programmer made it e.g. .sav or .dat or .doh

.<three letter extention code>

Hey Cygnus, we are no longer limited to 3 letters extension like back in DOS :P
There are a few games that use name like .save, .savegame, etc.
Some games also use a file named 'savegames' (without any extension).

don't forget multiple extensions... savegame.1.0.0.save where the numbers are the version of the game

Some are in "My Documents / My Games" and even "Documents and Settings". Look there for them too. Once you find them, you won't be in doubt.

As for the desktop, buy a higher resolution screen, and run it in a higher resolution - then the clutter will appear less overwhelming. Empty Desktop = Empty Mind. True geniuses rule chaos!

.<Sucky extention here>

FlameDuck: My desktop isn't empty, quite the contrary, just organised. It's just that there are no useles icons like "new folder (2)" or "new Text file (25)" or MiscDownloaded.exe/.jpg/zip etc which I see on some "messy minded" people's desktops.

downloads:

"....:\Files in storage"

Important/shard images:

"....:\danjeruz website\images"

P0rn

"....:\program files\dont look in here\......"

Downloaded and required for future use files:

"....:\Files In Storage\backup downloads"

Backups:

"....:\Files In Storage\Backups"

Desktop=Empty.

Released Builds of programs that support may be required for:

"Desktop\Release Builds\...."

If desktops are an indication of mind then i'm dirty. Actually it's more to do with the brains creativity/systems balance. People with systems orientated minds tend to be neat and tidy, creatives tend to be messy. Look at the desktop of the modeller in your team for proof. Programmers are frequently of either bias, but artists tend to be creatives and about as organised as the British railway network.

And you've been using a pc for how long Jono??????? egad.

Since the release of Workbench.

that'll be 1985 then, amiga1000. Wonder what model CPU the PCs were then 286?

I remember getting a 1MB upgrade.

And you don't know that applications can choose their own file extensions and that the possiblity exists they aren't all using the same one?

Yes, which is what 'annoys' me about 'PC gaming', sheesh. Some people! Hence my suggestion of a 'USB 2.0 Memory Stick' to 'store the save files onto'. Gotta spell it out to some people.

I'd never want to store my saved games on a usb stick, too slow and impractical, consoles only had memory cards because they didn't have hard drives.

They don't need harddrives, unless you're wanting extension packs and downloadable content.

I hate really slow saving on consoles, If a game is on PS2 and Gamecube (I have both) I buy it on gamecube cos it loads faster AND saves faster!

QUOTE OF THE MONTH!!!!!

Disorganised railway networks isn't limited to Britain. Maybe it's a Commonwealth thing.

I usually just copy the save game folder (if there is one) to my backup directoty.

Failing that I look for the files I name Latest, risky and Temp when I saved the game.

Cheers

Garion

Whilst I can accept a small possibility that the British Railway Network is not the most dissorganised in the world, and I can accept that countries which had a strong British influence in the past also have poor railway network, what I cannot do is bring myself to believe that those other countries developed a second network at a later date, called it "The Underground" and made it so bad that it became a tourist attraction in it's own right.

Paris' metro is a tourist attraction, because it's trains have giant rubber wheels. London's is a tourist attraction, because it prooves that the British never learnt.

Also I couldn't believe how clean the underground loos are in Paris, there's a lady in there who cleans up and everything, it wasn't like waterloo that's for sure.

Yeah, um - about public toilets in France. The metro may be fine, I think I did actually use them once but I was about 14 and dont really remember, but what I do remember of French public toilets in general is the stuff of my nightmares.

lol, well I only used the metro ones and hotel so I guess I was safe.

I confirm the creative mind chaos on my desktop :P

Things get worse when once in a while things crash for whatever reason and windows (98se) sets the desktop to 320x240 at arrival after boot (try to find the settings in that popupmenu then :P) All icons are crammed together then.

Typically I make a new folder called 'bla' or 'misc junk' and I put all icons/files from the desktop, that aren't required frequently or recently, in there.

Looks like Denmark is gearing up to join the commonweatlh then...

Never been to Copenhagen, have you?

Brilliant excuse. I'm stealing that! Chalk one more up to 'creative'.

God I hate in when a game resets my desktop size and screws up my icons, I actually keep a screenshot of the current layout for reference purposes, talk about anal.

FlameDuck, I love the underground in Copenhagen I sat right at the front and looked out the big round glass window and went wooooo. Also I notice how clean and bright it is and no ticket barriers and you just go down and it's there without loads of walking, like sci-fi, amazing! Has it deteriorated yet?

I remember getting one for the AtariST then having to solder it onto the motherboard myself, imagine doing that today? ^^

Of course, the logical end result will just be a C:\Miscellaneous\ folder with 3000 subdirectories under it. ;-)

xlsior .... how ... did ... you know? ;-)

I used to organize my icons to the same display as the Mac OSX. So that I could pretend I was using an Apple computer. (I'm sad, but happy.)

I'm suprised you didn't rename your hard disk to Workbench, Jono :)

Which brings back happy memories of that old Amiga favorite of renaming the 'Work' partition to 'Does not'.

That's a brilliant idea, and I'm going to. We should have a topic whereby people show-off their modifyed desktop, without the aid of advance software, only that comes with Windows.

Of course, you can always use the windows equavalent of Dialup Not-Working and the Not-work Neighborhood

And dont forget the Internet Explorer -> Internet Exploder (or Internet Exploiter)

Will you guys please show-off your desktop, I'm looking for new ways of naming files/folders and organising icons. :D

Maybe someone has elite wallpaper. :)

OK you asked for it:

Note that almost everything is a shortcut, but some of the folders just contain shortcuts. The files in the middle are just text docs as quick reminders. I backup my desktop so nothing gets lost, many people forget to backup their desktop.

I've 392 files in my C root .. worth over 107mb ... does that qualify as 'hopeless' ? :P

(including them are (z80-)asm files, compiled B+ exe's, midifiles, images, RAR files of compiled exe's, datafiles for some of those exe's etc.)

my C root contains 14 files (including hidden/system ones), 1 of which is mine (oops) this qualifies the OS as 'hopeless' ;-)

My C root contains 16 files none of wich are mine ;-)
I rarely see my desktop because I use the almighty TOTAL COMMANDER and that's what it looks like:

reminds me of a great amiga file/folder organisation utility I used to use ... now what was it called? Also it looks like windows 2.0 and 3.0 haha, I find desktop and normal folders easy to use now I don't bother with using Windows Explorer or similar apps ever any more,

Oh, yeah? How long does it take you to get to your temp folder in your documents/your name/local settings/temp
And delete all the crap without using recycle bin (the process of deletion doesn't count - just the amount to select the whole thing and press shift-del)???
Takes me 4 seconds using TC....

OK I have a shortcut to my C drive on the desktop, then I press d enter j enter l enter t enter Ctrl+A Shift+Del. I make it around 4 seconds (without practicing over and over!) Of course if I made a desktop shortcut to that folder, much quicker, or a batch file on the desktop v. easy 0.5 secs. ;-p and ;-p again.

I remember upgrading my agnus chip... and not having one of those square socket tools and breaking the socket. Which caused much consternation, screaming, and crying as I took it to the not-so-local amiga shop to fix my screwup. :)

And as for Total Commander... Screw that norton commander wannabe. DIRECTORY OPUS IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE THE KING OF FILE MANAGEMENT UTILITIES!!!! :)

Opus is always... ALWAYS... the first thing I install on a new install of windows. :)

Weird. That's exactly the reason why I like it so much... It's the closest thing to NC than all other file managers.
This shot of yours looks quite simlar to it anyway... What features above the NC ones doesn it have (I can see ftp manager, but TC does have one too)? Anything to speed up browsing process? As you can see I'm all about speed. ;-)

Dude, I have NEVER seen software as customizable as opus. Every combination of hotkey can be made and even made to be system-wide outside of opus. FTP is as easy a local drive... Bookmarks and favorites... A plugin for Nero so you can burn cd's and dvd's from within opus... every panel, pane, toolbar and menu item is customizable. You can add new menus, new toolbars, have as many directory panes open as you want (I just made it look like opus did on the amiga, which is coincidentally what norton commander looked like as well)... A media viewer/converter... a half dozen different ways to view directory items and customizable on a directory by directory basis (or you can let opus figure out what's in a directory by itself) or globally... themes/preferences/layouts can be saved and recalled instantly... MASS SMART RENAME (too too useful)... It even has a rudimentary scripting language to allow it to have commands added to it that it doesn't already have.

Seriously. This is probably the most powerful piece of software you'll ever find for the price. :) It's definitely on my short list of MUST HAVE SHAREWARE software.

Go to www.dopus.com and download it. It runs for 60 days if I'm not mistaken for free. Then you gotta buy it. But it's soooo worth it.

Thanks, but I'm satisfied with TC, and I don't need over-complexity... Though from your screenshot I can see that extensions and joined with filenames (Unlike NC and TC), but you say it's highly customizable.
I might give it a try out of interest to see what it's like, but I'm not going to spend money (I've been out of job since june!) on something don't need.
TC works very well in conjuction with IrfanView, so I don't need a built-in viewer/converter.
The only feature I'm missing from TC is the ability to view HTML pages with pictures, but other than that I found it absolutely suitable for everything I required from it...
System Resources are another consern of mine and I tend to see that the more customizable is the look of an app the more resources it eats up...
I'll give this thing a go anywway, just to compare...

Mine too. It's the only thing my Windows box has, that I actually miss when using Linux.

They should stop making KDE and Gnome Windows wannabes, and get some decent DiskMaster / Directory Opus action going there instead.

Anatoly: hey you never responded to my double ;-p so I'm doing it again so hard my eyballs are expanding dangerously 8-p

FlameDuck: DiskMaster, that was the Amiga King.

Calm down, man! 8-0
Yes, batch file would be much faster, but that's not what we are talking about here...
To highlight everything I just need to press one key (Instead of combination)...
How 'bout viewing file in HEX then? How long does it take in Windows? ;-)
Just two key presses here (One to view file, another to switch to hex)!

Well, DOpus was my compulsory software back on the Miggy... I tried it on the PC, but seriously... it's not as compulsory as you make it out to be ;] Windows Explorer is fine <ducks for cover>

Anatoly: well I wrote my own Hex viewer in Delphi and can make a shortcut to it if need be but I take your point, you have it all and wouldn't give it up for the world. I do think the standard windows stuff is pretty good if you get used to all the shortcut keys and tricks etc.

I bet, but why do I have yo learn new stuff if I have fond memories and some skills from my DOS days?
It's just easier for me...
One problem that I had with windows with integrated explorer (Read - 98 and up) is that if the performance of the machine is slow, the folders are not opening up fast enough...
I don't like anything that takes more resuorces just to be pretty (We all can see that in Windows Media Player - install media player classic and be amazed at supersonic speeds!).
Now this problem is going away, just because now several gHz processors and gigabytes of ram are norm, but I still have my habbits from the old days...

You should come to Montreal then. We have both influences here, so the metro has big rubber wheels and both the train and metro suck.

I hate slow folders too, I switch all the fancy crap off for instant response.

So do I, but when the new version of something comes out - it works even slower...
I just can't take it! What will Vista be like with all this new DX10 and no backwards compatibility whatsoever?
I don't even want to imagine!

I make a Central file folder, then i make subfolders

Programs, Installs, Upgrades
Documents
Music
Videos
Ebooks
Games

and then sub-sub folders like:
Programs, Installs, Upgrades
-Audio
-Video Editing
-FTP
-File Utils
-etc.