multiple save files?

[megpie1134]

Hello! I am new to prison architect. I saw one of my husbands youtube subscriptions playing it, and I absolutely needed the game. and so far, I love it! but heres my question. is there ant way for us to have 2 prisons? like, 2 separate save files? my husband was playing earlier, and I went to start my own prison, and when it autosaves, it saves over his file. so his prison is now gone! which totally sucks, because he has spent a lot of time on his prison, and ive spent a lot of time on mine, and I would love for us to have our own, without having to start over every time. I know the game is still in alpha, so I know it may not be possible, but I figured id ask, just in case I was missing something. any help would be much appreciated. thanks so much!!!

[DelayedReaction]

make a manual save and call it something like "Wife's save" or something that will let you remember it. the autosave will always overwrite the previous autosave but if you remember to save manually every so often there shouldn't be any issues.

[LordBowler]

In case that wasn't 100% clear, to make a manual save, open the main menu (Esc) and the Save button should be somewhere on the right. The list on the left is your existing saves. Enter a prison name in the grey box, hit save (bottom right). You can make sure it saved by opening that save menu again and checking the list of saves on the left.

A curious quirk is the extension (.prison). Should you choose to manually save over another existing file (or select an existing file just to modify it's name, ie "Wifes Prison 2" or "Wifes Prison 3"), you'll notice that the .prison extension appears in your save name grey box thing from earlier. You don't want it in there. It doesn't want to be there. The game doesn't like it when it's there. Get rid of it before you click save in those cases.

Also, while we're there, note that the save files are located *outside* the steam folder by default. At the bottom of the list of saves there will be a windows/mac directory listing for your save-games At some point that'll be useful to know. That's where it is.

Example:
C:\Documents and Settings\LordBowler\Local Settings\Application Data\Introversion\Prison Architect\saves

Final note on the save files. If you choose to open one directly from that directory, by default it will open in your default text editor instead of PA. This can make the file not open in PA any longer. You can fix this, but it's easier to just associate .prison extensions with the PA .exe file ahead of time. The .prison files live in your saves folder, and the .exe lives in the steamapps\Prison Architect\ folder.

And that is about all anyone could ever want to know about saving in Prison Architect.

[LordBowler]

I take that back. One more thing for posterity.

Backups and save file editing.

I suggest all players make a copy of their saves folder called Backup Saves, and routinely copy the contents of the saves folder right up in there.

The game is in alpha. And while I've only started in a28, I've already encountered problems in my prisons that were actually fixable by modifying these save files by *purposefully* opening them with a text editor, changing the values of some in-game variables [changing TimeWarpFactor from 0.5 to 1.0 in my case] and then converting them back into .prison files associated with PA. Since, I've found it easier to manage all that with a back-up folder ready to go.

Not at all pertinent to your question, but hopefully useful nonetheless.

[megpie1134]

Thankfully my husband was much smarter than me, and figured it out. And it worked just like you said. Thanks so much for the information!