Well i don't know if anyone noticed but in fallout 3 some of my auto saves deleted when i killed someone with good karma this got really annoying because a don't save a lot, I don't if my fallout 3 disc was messed up or if this happened to other people :sadvaultboy:

Was this on the PC or 360? Are you sure you didn't have Auto Save on and it just saved over the previous one, making it different when you loaded again?

"Some"?

There is only one autosave slot, and it will get overwritten when the game autosaves.

I don't know how it works on the consoles, but EVERY autosave is overwritten with the next one on the PC. It keeps ONE backup if you absolutely need it, and then when the next autosave is made, it overwrites the previous backup with the previous autosave. This is why it's imperative to make regular saves often.

Yeah, there's just one Autosave and one Quicksave. And they're constantly written over.

(Which is why I'm always making manual saves. Not about to count on just the Autosave....)


Edit: and the only Autosave triggers I'm aware of are switching zones (going through a loading door or fast travel), resting, or waiting. I know you can turn off the ones you don't want, in Options....

My XBOX version only used one AUTOSAVE, it was overwritten everytime I go from exterior to interior, wait, or use fast travel, etc... But by using a manual save I avoided ever losing my save files...

What you are experiencing is a corrupted save. Happens when the file is written over too many times. Not everyone has this problem, but it is common enough to say this:

Never Rely on An Autosave. Never Load an Autosave. In fact, it is best to turn off those features. However if you do use them, back them up with Manual Save slots. The more the better. I cycle through 10 of them, archiving or deleting after they get written over 10 times or so.

Steam Cloud will offer remote storage of your Autosaves and Quicksaves. Not sure how that mechanism will work. Does the autosave get uploaded each time it is made or does it get uploaded at some point after it is created and how much of this process is in the background and how long will it take to upload 1 to 5 MB of save file each time it does it. And, if you go in and out of a cell, will the Autosaves get mixed up in the transition from off line storage to on line storage.

Me, I am going to be disabling the Autosave Features and not allowing Steam Cloud storage of my saves.

Obviously I can't say anything about how FO:NV will do it, but the way Steam Cloud worked with my Torchlight saves is that it would upload the save files when I quit playing Torchlight. (Of course, Torchlight doesn't have manual saving, being a Diablo-style ARPG. /shrug)

That would make the most sense having the Autosave/Quicksave uploaded at the end.

For that to happen while in the game would be problematic, especially if it was frequent.

You should turn Autosaves off. Unless they did a revamp of the save system, autosaves and quicksaves have a nasty habit of building up corruption in them that could screw things up. Disable autosave, use quicksave sparingly, delete quicksave regularly, and hard save instead. Don't rely on the auto/quicksaves.

Been this way since at least Oblivion (not sure if Morrowind had the problem).

Plenty of help for the PC versions here it seems...

I've never played the PC version of Fallout 3, I have however played both PS3 and Xbox360 versions. There is one autosave slot that is rewritten everytime the game makes another autosave. I keep it enabled simply because it can sometimes be useful if the game crashes during play and I generally make manual saves ever 20 minutes to an hour depending on what I'm doing in game. Often, whenver I'm finished with my gaming sesh I'll make a manual save then delete the autosave. That way when I go back to play again I just hit continue at the main menu and it loads my most current manual save and will make a new autosave whenever I do something that causes it to autosave.

I usually don't delete manual saves at all, instead just making a brand new save each time. Whenver I'm finished playing with my current character entirely (starting a new character) I will delete every single save related to that character. Usually this happens after about 100-120 manual saves. It takes some time to delete them all, but really 3 minutes every 80-100 hours of play time isn't enough to merit any complaining.

I think more to the point, to avoid game corruption you should always exit the game before loading a save. In Morrowind, the game data was flushed completely when loading a save, even a Quicksave, but this doesn't happen in Oblivion or Fallout 3, and it remains to be seen if it happens in Fallout: New Vegas or not.