Andor's Trail

So, I know that the game is still in development, and our saves should be treated as disposable, and I'm not mad, just heartbroken.
Last night my phone decided to spontaneously factory reset itself. Lost my contacts and photos, but more importantly, RIP to the following characters:
Kashim - Level 38, closest to my own moral compass, had a DR of 10, used shield + QSD, and could just beast through almost any area.
Lux - Level 24, fully Shadow aligned, and had 2 RoLS, and had already gotten to Remgard, and was about to attempt the Hira-Zinn.
Fey - Level 17, fully Feygard aligned, dual wielded brutal clubs. Never spent a level on AD (almost all AC) and only got 1 swing/turn, but MAN did that swing HURT.

And the most painful:
Flux - Level 1, my template, had a full set of reasonable equipment including 2 Villain's Rings, a Hardened Leather Shirt, a JoF, QSD, and others. He also had enough experience to jump him to level ~10 despite never having completed a single quest, or killed a single boss. He had the courage to take a stand against Rabies, no matter how long it took. Thank Elythara I hadn't gotten an RoLS pair on him yet like I was planning.

Has anyone considered linking the game to google play or something to allow drive to backup your saves, or some other backup/restore system beyond copying files off of your phone manually?

I know some set up a Dropbox sync for the saves folder.
I also considered some Google play integration, but it doesn't fit with the free software spirit, and storage is limited (large enough for a couple dozens saves, but too small for worldmap thumbnails IIRC).

There must be a way to set up an rsync client on a schedule too.

Sorry to hear about that. I got paranoid about my savegames and manually backed them up to my PC. I do have some photos that are not backed up though, so I guess I should take care of that

Zukero wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2017 2:23 pm storage is limited (large enough for a couple dozens saves, but too small for worldmap thumbnails IIRC).

Google drive gives you 15Gb for free. That includes your gmail and Google+ photos, but even then, savegames would be minimal. Savegames are unlikely to be more than 1Mb, total.

I was talking about automatic cloud saves on Google play games services.

Limits

Google Play games services currently enforce size limits on binary data and cover image sizes of 3 MB and 800 KB respectively.

More on https://developers.google.com/games/ser ... savedgames

Zukero wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2017 5:33 pm I was talking about automatic cloud saves on Google play games services.

Limits

Google Play games services currently enforce size limits on binary data and cover image sizes of 3 MB and 800 KB respectively.

More on https://developers.google.com/games/ser ... savedgames

Hmmm what if we did something along the lines of including the world map in the apk but only have them revealed on the map screen once the character goes into the map? Would that make the apk huge?
Then the save file can just contain a list of the maps that the player has visited and no need to store the images themselves with the save?

Not really. Map thumbnails are updated when replace areas are triggered, and generating all combinations, while possible, would be painful. But that's only part of the problem. 3MB should fit at least 100 saves (without world maps), for now. What happens when saves grow, and suddenly we don't have enough storage to keep existing saves...
Our system of infinite save slots is nice, and I'd hate to restrict that, even more when it's to fit with a non-free (as in freedom) service.

We could write some tutorials here about how to set up auto-sync with popular services (GDrive, Dropbox...) or homemade hosting (rsync, nfs, scp, smb aka Windows shares...).

Zukero wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2017 5:33 pm I was talking about automatic cloud saves on Google play games services.

Limits

Google Play games services currently enforce size limits on binary data and cover image sizes of 3 MB and 800 KB respectively.

More on https://developers.google.com/games/ser ... savedgames

I see. I wasn't aware of that.

Does the world map need to be backed up? I have never done that, and I've moved savegames between devices with no problems.

Edit: As I read it, the 3Mb limit is per savegame. The only limit on the number of savegames is the users limit.

Maybe I am not understanding something but as I read it, that means with the 3MB limit each GPlay account can have 100 different save files?

They also mention in that same article that it goes against the user's GDrive storage? https://developers.google.com/games/ser ... ames#quota

Yup. You're both right, I misread it. 3MB per save, unlimited saves in the limit of each user's gdrive quota.
Doesn't solve the issue of it being non-free. The principle of free software is very important for me.
Please read https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-sou ... nt.en.html and https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does ... ve.en.html

It took me time to adhere to Stallman's vision, formerly preferring BSD and MIT licenses, but now I see that free software is critical for the freedom of the software user.

I know that we are a simple game project, running on Android, a corporation-controlled OS, lead by a user-control craving company, but I just can't get my head around compromising the freedom of our players for some feature we could provide while respecting their freedom. I hope that AT runs nicely on AOSP or even Replicant.