Ok reason I am asking about the Steam cloud is I will be traveling when the game comes out so I was thinking of buying it thru steam. I havent had a steam game that used the cloud for saves. How well does it really work?? Yeah I have TF2 and Half-Life but I dont have a game that offers the steam cloud for saves. I usually have to find them and import them from laptop to my desktop. I dont want to wait a week to start playing New Vegas. Please if anyone has experience with it and how well it works let me know and thanks

While Steam Cloud is confirmed, I don't think that storing saves is. Considering how huge some saves, and the amount some people make, I'm not sure if Valve is willing to store that much data on their servers. I mean, TF2 has a limit of 813KB(at least for me), and some saves eventually get to the 5MB+ range.

I have doubts that Steam will support Cloud Saves. If they do, there will be a limit as most saves for this game start at 1MB and quickly grow to 5 MB by mid game, depending on what you do. Comparing that to a shooter where saves are a few dozen KB or slightly larger. My Fallout 3 Saves folder is approaching 1GB, and I just cleaned it out a couple weeks ago. Also, there is no online component to this game, so I don't think cloud storage would serve as much a purpose.

I also don't know how the mechanism works when it is offered Does the save get created and store online or is it created locally and sent up to Steam later. Otherwise, it could cause some delays as saves are made and 3MB to 5MB of data is sent up.

The other issue is, Mods. If you use Mods, if the mix is not the exact same between builds, you will hose your saves going between them.

Really, the best way to move a save between machines is a Flash Drive. Keeping in mind Mod Mixes.

I will check to get a definitive answer on this question.

Talked with Jason Bergman about this. The game uses Steam Cloud for your auto save as well as one quick save file. It won't handle manual saves you create while playing.

But i hear quick- and autosaves are "incomplete" on the Gamebryo engine, and you shouldn't trust those when you stop playing?

Good to hear. I spend many hours stuck at school waiting for my carpool, and I bought my Alienware laptop just for this reason. Good to know it will be relatively easy to continue my saves at school.

Damn, can't you guys simply quicksave? I have several characters and my save file is only 146 mbs.

Autosaves are complete, they has an inherent issue. They are written over many times so the chance the file will become corrupted is greater. Not everyone has this issue, but it does come up enough that I don't reccomend anyone rely on Autosaves but to use Manual Save Slots. If you do make an Autosave or like the feature, make a manual save before you leave the game, then manually delete the Autosave file periodically. That way a new file is created from by the Autosave. This way you can use the Cloud for offsite storage of your saves.

Quicksaves are not complete saves. This usually only causes issues with some Mods. However it is still not something you want to rely on. Make a manual save before you leave the game, and/or at certain waypoints along the way.

I run a series of Manual Save slots, never use a slot more than 10 times before I create a new one. I also run a clean boot so there are no background apps when I play the game. Still I have had 3 manual saves get corrupted in playing this game. It was not a major issue as I had another manual save slot so I only lost about 20 minutes or so.

Thanks for finding the answer for me!!! I assume moving save files between desktop and laptop may be the way to go. Just one other question if the save feature is so limited on the Steam cloud why support it??? I'm also wondering about install limits? Are there any on the hardcopy vs a steam install. I know steam will only allow one instance of their games to be running at one time. So if I am playing on the road and wifey is playing at home that won't work on steam unless off line playing is allowed and I hear that's a pretty hit or miss steam function.

I only relied on autosaves and quicksaves when I played Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3 and rarely made any manual saves, and I never had any issues. But then again, I never used lots and lots of mods either.

The only game where I found it important to keep a lot of different saves is Daggerfall, which isn't a Gamebryo game. And Gamebryo is only a graphic engine anyway, it just draw polygons, and have nothing to do with the save/load routines.